Videos of men removing their eyelashes, by trimming or shaving, have been circulating on social media in recent weeks. This trend is based on the idea short eyelashes look more masculine.

Hair can tell us a lot about our social and cultural values. As the Canadian sociologist Anthony Synnott says, it can represent embedded ideas about biological sex, such as “opposite sexes have opposite hair” and “head hair and body hair are opposite”.

But do sex differences have any basis in biology? And what about the health risks of tampering with your lashes?

If the idea of a buzzing razor coming near your eyes makes you nervous, there’s good reason.

Does sex determine eyelash length?

Most warm-blooded animals have eyelashes. Human eyelashes begin to develop in the womb at around seven weeks and by six months they are fully formed.

Typically, we have 100 to 150 lashes on the upper eyelid that grow in two or three rows. There are half as many eyelashes on the lower lid.

Eyelash length is usually around one-third of the eye’s width. Lower lashes are shorter (6–8 millimetres) compared to the upper lashes (8–12mm).

The density, length, thickness and curl of eyelashes are determined by your genetics. But there is no evidence these anatomical differences are linked to sex.

This means the idea men “naturally” have short eyelashes – and women’s are longer, darker and thicker – is based in culture, not biology.

Regardless of your sex or gender, eyelashes serve several important functions.

What are eyelashes for?

Protection

Eyelashes provide a barrier against dust, debris, bugs, bacteria and chemicals (such as hairspray and deodorants), stopping them from entering the eyes.

Tears form a fluid film that covers the eye to keep it lubricated. Eyelashes also prevent air drying out this film.

From an aerodynamic point of view, medium-length lashes (8mm) are ideal for stopping the eye’s surface from drying out. Very short lashes can expose the surface to air, while very long lashes can channel more air flow towards it.

Eyelashes also shield our eyes from glare, reducing how much light enters the eye by up to 24%.

Sensation

Eyelashes are highly sensitive, so touching the eyelashes triggers a blink reflex that makes the eye shut. This protects it from unwanted materials.

Blinking also activates the release of tears and distributes them across the eyes’ surface.

Social interaction

Eyelashes help us communicate. Blinking slowly can signal attentiveness or flirtation – and eyelashes make this more appealing.

Wearing mascara or fake eyelashes emphasises the eyelashes and can make the eyes look larger and more expressive.

So, what if you don’t have eyelashes?

People can lose their eyelashes for various reasons.

For example, chemotherapy for cancer often results in hair loss – including eyelashes – as does alopecia, an autoimmune condition which causes the body to attack its own hair follicles.

Some people also pull out their eyelashes when they are anxious or stressed.

If you can’t stop this behaviour, and your eyelash loss is noticeable and affects day-to-day life, you may have a condition called trichotillomania.

The compulsion to cut or shave hair (rather than pull it out) is known as trichotemnomania.

If you’re worried, you should speak to your doctor to get support.

No matter how hair is lost, without eyelashes you will likely feel greater discomfort. More foreign particles can enter the eye – exposing you to greater risk of infection – and you will blink more to try to wash them away.

More air on the eyes’ surface can also make them feel dry and irritated.

Is removing eyelashes risky?

Putting sharp blades near your eyes means if you are bumped, slip, or even blink, you risk injury to the eyelid or cornea (the clear, dome-shaped covering at the front of your eyeball).

Anything that goes near your eye should be very clean. If blades aren’t sterile, bacteria can lead to blepharitis (eyelid inflammation) or conjunctivitis (“pink eye”).

Will shaved eyelashes grow back?

Yes. If eyelashes are trimmed or shaved, the hair bulb and follicle (the sac surrounding the hair) remains in the skin of the eyelid, allowing the hair to keep growing.

Eyelashes grow at an average rate of 0.12mm per day, or 3.6mm a month. It could take up to three or four months for your eyelashes to grow back to their typical length.

Shaving does not affect the length, thickness and darkness of your regrown eyelashes – these will grow back the same as before (unless there has been irreversible damage to the follicle itself).

Sex, gender, and eyelashes

Perceptions of sex and gender differences in eyelashes persist, thanks in part to social norms and media portrayals.

For example, a 2023 study from the United States surveyed 319 people (142 men and 177 women) of diverse ethnic backgrounds about eyelash length in women. Men and women of all backgrounds said images of female faces with no or short eyelashes were the least attractive, regardless of ethnicity.

Cartoon characters illustrate how deeply ingrained and socially constructed these gender differences are. Compare Minnie Mouse’s long, thick lashes with Mickey Mouse, who has none.

This is not a thing of the past, as the masculine- and feminine-presenting characters of a popular current children’s cartoon Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir still demonstrate.

In reality, all bodies and features, including eyelashes, are naturally diverse.

Body autonomy means recognising that personal choices about appearance are valid and should be respected without judgement. But when altering your body, it’s important to also know the health risks.

Amanda Meyer, Senior Lecturer, Anatomy and Pathology, James Cook University and Monika Zimanyi, Associate Professor in Anatomy, James Cook University

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

Nicolas Cage has made a career from his highly entertaining scenery chewing. He follows a performance style he calls “Nouveau Shamanic” – an exaggerated form of method acting where he acts according to the character’s impulses. This allows for the wild, unpredictable outbursts his characters are known for.

Cage films are also usually about masculinity: its worst excesses, the parameters restricting it, and what ennobling versions of it might look like.

The Surfer, a new Australian feature film from Irish director Lorcan Finnegan, leans right into masculinity as a theme.

Our unnamed protagonist (Cage) is returning to his former Australian home from the United States. He is newly divorced, and trying to buy a beachside property to win back his family.

He takes his teenage son (Finn Little) for a surf near the property, but they are run off by an unfriendly pack of locals.

Returning alone to the beachside car park to make some calls, he is besieged there over the next several days by the same gang. They are led by a terrifying middle-aged Andrew Tate-esque influencer, Scally (Julian McMahon), who runs the beach like a combination of a frat bro party and wellness retreat.

The protagonist’s fast descent into dishevelled, dehydrated delirium as the group’s hazing escalates, fuels much of the first two acts.

Fish out of water

It is impossible to think of an actor other than Cage who could make a character like this so enjoyable to watch.

From the first moments, he seems pathetic: giving his uninterested teenage son metaphorical speeches about surfing, losing arguments on the phone with his broker and real estate agent, reeking of pomposity and desperation.

The sense of a man out of his depth is compounded by his Americanness contrasting with the particular brand of Australian masculinity the locals display. Both types are brash and entitled, but with entirely different ways of expressing it.

Cage’s distinctively American confidence has no resistance to the terrifying switches of Australian masculinity from friendly to teasing to violent.

“Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” they hiss at him on first meeting, forcing him to retreat, cowed, to the car park, where he remains for most of the rest of the film.

The wide-open and the claustrophobic

What a stroke of genius it is to use this single location.

Filmed in Yallingup, Western Australia, The Surfer beautifully captures the natural surroundings, stunning views and shimmering heat of Australian coastal summer.

At the same time, a confined, interstitial semi-urban feature like a beachside car park feels so bleak and uninviting. The only amenities are an overpriced coffee cart, ancient payphone and a dingy toilet block.

As a film setting, it is both a spectacular wide-open vista and stiflingly claustrophobic – a perfect mechanism for The Surfer’s psychological horror.

It must have been attractive in getting the script funded as well. With such an affordable location, more of the budget would have been freed up for a big name like Cage.

A modern Wake in Fright

With its oppressive setting, overexposed orange and yellow light and grade, and a sweaty spiral into madness, The Surfer invites comparisons to Wake in Fright, Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 brutal depiction of Australian men and their drinking culture.

Both take place at Christmas and feature an antagonist who enjoys confidently explaining their dubious moral worldview to everyone. However, Wake in Fright’s horror lingers because we know the culture remains even after the hero escapes it. The Surfer struggles a little more in landing the ending.

For the mean, violent, misogynistic villains to be defeated, it would be unsatisfying for Cage to stoop to their level. This means – without spoiling too much – Cage remains an oddly passive character throughout the film, while others perform the avenging actions.

The only way the protagonist’s masculinity can be resurrected as upright, ethical and empowering is for the character to literally turn his back on the vengeance we’ve been waiting for him to deliver.

It’s not that the film has an inarticulate grasp of its own politics, but more that the otherwise terrific script by Thomas Martin feels written into a difficult corner.

A blast along the way

I don’t want to imply that this ending means The Surfer isn’t an absolute blast along the way. A lot of the fun is in anticipating each dreadful humiliation – and it somehow turning out worse than you could have expected.

A spilled coffee leads to drinking recycled wastewater which leads to chewing on a dead rat, and we still haven’t reached the lowest rung on the ladder of indignities that Cage’s character suffers.

In less skilled hands this could feel nasty or gross, but the hallucinatory quality of Finnegan’s direction makes it feel almost sublime. And Cage’s pleading, groaning, sobbing and gibbering feel believable and relatable.

The pathos works – and it’s pretty funny too.

The Surfer is in cinemas from today and streaming on Stan from June 15.

Grace Russell, Lecturer, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash University

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

Think about how many things you have done online today. Paid a bill? Logged into your bank account? Used social media or spent time answering emails? Maybe you have used your phone to pay at a supermarket or train station.

We are all plugged in, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But with all these conveniences comes a growing risk many Australians are unprepared for: cyber crime.

According to the most recent cyber threat report by the Australian Cyber Security Centre, more than 87,000 reports of cybercrime were made in 2023-2024. That’s a report every six minutes. And that’s just what gets reported. Many people do not even realise they have been hacked or scammed until it’s too late.

Earlier this year, Scamwatch, run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, revealed Australians lost nearly A$319 million to scams in 2024 alone. In a recent example, cyber criminals used stolen login details to hack several major superfunds in Australia and steal a collective A$500,000 of people’s retirement savings.

A big part of this worsening problem is poor “digital hygiene”. Here are five easy ways to improve yours.

First, what exactly is ‘digital hygiene’?

Just like brushing your teeth keeps cavities away, digital hygiene is all about keeping your online life clean, safe and protected from harm.

It is a simple idea: the better your habits when using technology, the harder it is for scammers or hackers to trick you or get access to your personal information.

It means being aware of what you are sharing, whom you are trusting, and how your devices are set up. Unfortunately, most of us are probably more hygienic in bathrooms than we are online.

How should you protect yourself?

Good news: you do not need to be a computer whizz to keep clean online. Here are five simple practical steps anyone can take:

1. Stop and think before clicking

Got an unexpected message from your bank asking you to verify your account? Or a text about a missed parcel delivery with a link? Scammers love urgency. It gets people to click before they think. Instead of rushing, pause.

Ask yourself: was I expecting this? Is the sender’s email or phone number legitimate? Do not click the link, go directly to the official website or app.

2. Use strong, unique passwords

Using your pet’s name or “123456” is not going to cut it. And if you reuse passwords across websites, a breach on one site means hackers can try the same password everywhere else. This is called a credential stuffing attack, and it is how the cyber attack on superannuation funds happened earlier this year.

The best move? Begin securing your online accounts by using a password manager and updating any reused passwords, prioritising your most sensitive accounts such as emails, banking and cloud storage first.

3. Turn on multi-factor authentication

Multi-factor authentication means you need something more than just a password to login, such as a code sent to your phone or an app such as Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator.

It is a simple step that adds a powerful layer of protection. Even if someone guesses your password, they cannot log in without your second factor.

4. Update your apps and devices

Yes, those software updates are annoying, but they are important. Updates fix security holes that hackers can use. Make it automatic if you can, and do not ignore update prompts, especially for your operating systems such as Windows, iOS or Android. However, it is important to recognise that older devices often stop receiving updates because manufacturers stop supporting older models or are not developing updates for older devices as it can be costly.

Outdated software harbours known vulnerabilities that hackers actively can target. While keeping devices longer supports sustainability, there is a balance to strike. If your device no longer receives security updates, it may be safer to responsibly recycle it and invest in a newer supported model to maintain your digital safety.

5. Be mindful of what you share

Oversharing on social media makes you an easy target. Public posts that include your birthday, where you went to school, or your pet’s name can be used to guess security questions or build convincing fake messages. Think before you post – would a stranger need to know this?

What should I do if I have been hacked?

To check if your passwords have been leaked in a breach, you can use HaveIBeenPwned – a free tool trusted by security experts.

If you have been hacked, follow the tips provided by Australian Cyber Security Centre. For example, you should change all your passwords and passcodes and use software to scan for malware on your computer.

Need more help? Visit esafety.gov.au for practical guides, especially for parents, teachers and young people.

Digital hygiene is not a personal responsibility, it is a collective one. We are connected through emails, group chats, workplaces and social media. One weak link can put others at risk. Talk to your family and friends about the risk of scams and how to avoid them. The more we talk about this, the more normal and effective digital hygiene becomes.

Because just like washing your hands became second nature during the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping your online life clean should be a habit, not an afterthought.

Meena Jha, Head Technology and Pedagogy Cluster CML-NET, CQUniversity Australia

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

Each year, between March and October, large amounts of brown seaweed called sargassum wash up on the shores of Caribbean islands – choking beaches, damaging marine life and threatening tourism and public health. But a number of local entrepreneurs are hoping the seaweed could create an economic opportunity.

From the coast of west Africa to the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, climate change is warming the temperature of the ocean. Seas are also becoming more acidic as water absorbs carbon dioxide. This all results in more intense growth of sargassum in the tropical Atlantic.

Small Caribbean nations are among the hardest hit. With 20 million tonnes of this seaweed washing up on the beaches in 2024, sargassum is fuelling an economic and public health crisis.

The piles of noxious seaweed on the Caribbean islands’ white sandy beaches are putting off visitors to these islands and probably dampening tourism revenues.

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The fishing sector is also suffering, with blooms of seaweed getting caught up in fishing nets, often ripping them due to the weight of the seaweed. This makes it hard for fishers to catch fish and make a living.

The sheer volume of sargassum left to decompose on land produces toxic fumes that have forced people on islands like Guadeloupe to leave their homes. These toxic fumes have been linked to serious health issues including respiratory infections, sleep apnoea and even preeclampsia (high blood pressure during pregnancy).

The sargassum problem is just one of many slow-onset events that are being exacerbated by climate change. But gradual changes get much less attention or resources to address the consequences than, say, alarming wildfires or flash floods.

Slow-onset events are also much harder to quantify than climate-change-induced extreme weather, such as worsening hurricanes or floods. Our team at ODI Global, a thinktank, recently published a study that estimated the cost of these at US$2,000 (£1,500) per person. Calculating the tourism lost each year due to seaweed inundation is trickier.

Despite these challenges, through small-scale, locally developed solutions, as well as government policies that support small businesses including helping them access climate finance, entrepreneurs can find sustainable solutions to help their populations thrive in an era of climate change.

Legena Henry, a lecturer at the University of the West Indies in Barbados, uses sargassum to produce a biofuel that can power cars. Johanan Dujon, the founder and chief executive of St. Lucia-based Algas Organics sells plant tonics made from sargassum and is trialling methods to convert sargassum into paper.

Meanwhile, other innovations are helping to minimise the impacts of sargassum in the region.

Andrés León, founder of SOS Carbon, a spin-off organisation from the mechanical engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has designed a boat-based harvester to collect sargassum at sea to stop it from beaching and causing damage onshore.

Some islands, such as Jamaica, are using early warning systems, typically used to predict hurricanes, to predict the ocean currents that might bring a bumper arrival of the seaweed to their shores. This could give fishers up to 30 days notice of just how bad the inundation will be.

Barriers to scale up

But while small businesses are emerging, turning them into larger enterprises across the region remains difficult. As usual, small island nations struggle to get funding because investors think the projects are too small and won’t make enough money.

As Legena Henry recently told us on the Small Island Big Picture podcast, spending a few million dollars (as opposed to a few hundred million dollars) can feel administratively cumbersome for funders as they often have limited administrative capacity and large sums of money to manage.

Another issue is ensuring the benefits from any sargassum solutions flow into the affected Caribbean islands to support local growth and economic development.

Several opportunities exist for small island nations to generate some income from sargassum. They could, for example, sell licences to permit companies to harvest sargassum within their exclusive economic zones, which can stretch around many islands for hundreds of nautical miles.

They can also sell licences to businesses trialling or operating new sargassum technologies within their exclusive economic zones — for example, SOS Carbon has a patent pending for technology designed to sink sargassum to the seabed to store carbon.

Will sargassum continue to be a nuisance, or could it be an important renewable natural resource? It’s not yet clear.

Ideally, as with other renewable natural resources in developing countries, small island nations that own the sargassum need to find ways to extract a fair share of the value from that ownership, as well as selling to external companies that come in, remove it and profit from it.

With tax incentives and low-cost finance for domestic innovators, small islands can manage and sell sargassum and then use the proceeds to develop climate resilience measures.

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Emily Wilkinson, Principal Research Fellow, ODI Global and Emma Tompkins, Professor of Geography, Environment & Development, University of Southampton

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

This year 80 people put on their waders, grabbed buckets and quadrats (square metal frames), and splashed through the clear shallow waters. Once they reached one of the many sampling locations, marked by miniature floats, they threw their quadrats into the shallow water, ready to collect all the sea life that landed inside their quadrats.

No one had any idea what they might find living on the seabed until they reached into the water. Nearby, kids peered down at the seabed using underwater scopes, grandparents chuckled as they returned for a second forage.

This citizen science project combines coastal ecology and gastronomy. Our groups returned to the sorting stations to identify, count, weigh and measure each bucket of creatures and algae. A typical bucket might contain four living Pacific oysters, nine dead, a brush-clawed shore crab, four folded sea squirts and a handful of snails.

Then, we sat down together to eat a gourmet oyster dinner, prepared by Denmark’s top chefs. Organised by a shellfish gastrotourism association called Danmarks Skaldyrshovedstad, this oyster hunt (Østerjagten 2025) is a new annual festival held at the Salling Sund Bridge in the Danish Limfjorden, a 110-mile strait of water in northern Denmark.

The invasive Pacific oysters people had collected from the seabed then went on to be shucked and cooked. They were served au gratin, with wild flavour combinations, ranging from blueberry and blue cheese to shavings of prosciutto with strawberries and lime.

Most people told us they came along because of the quirkiness of this event, and the promise of gourmet food. Less than one in five people stated their interest in marine research as their reason for joining. Nobody attended the event just for the science.

As a coastal change researcher, this result was exciting – we were reaching an audience that might not normally engage. Even after participating, many people didn’t feel like citizen scientists. But when asked what they had learnt, most recalled facts about coastal ecology, as well as new ways to cook oysters.

Eating aliens

Back to the basket sample contents. Pacific oyster, brush-clawed shore crab, folded sea squirts: none are native to the Limfjorden or Danish waters. So many people were shocked to find out that their baskets were full of invasive species – these “alien species” are non-native and can compete with the resident species for both food and space.

Despite an increase in the number of empty Pacific oysters shells we found this year compared to last (indicating more oyster deaths), temperatures are rising in this estuary system. This means that conditions are becoming more suitable for the Pacific oysters and the other invasive creatures, many of which originate in warmer waters.

All oysters provide ecosystem services; improving water quality, forming new habitats and protecting coastlines from erosion by reducing wave energy. As Pacific oysters are bigger, rougher, tougher and much faster growing than native European oysters, they can have a greater impact on the environment.

This, however, is not necessarily a good thing. As Pacific oysters take over European oyster and blue mussel beds, birds which once fed on these species are left without vital food sources. The thick shells mean they have no predators once they reach a certain size. Beach goers can also be affected as the razor-sharp shells occupy previously sandy bathing areas.

Farming of the Pacific oyster has been banned in Denmark since 1998, yet despite this measure, Pacific oyster beds are now widespread and prevalent across Denmark’s estuaries. A single oyster can release between 50 and 200 million eggs during a spawning event each year meaning it is impossible to control them.

While children were discovering the joy of sea squirts, other marine scientists and I could have tougher conversations with adults about climate change. We explained that warming temperatures are clearly visible in the here-and-now of local monitoring data.

The Limfjorden is made up of a series of fjords and islands in northern Denmark which link the North Sea to the Kattergat (the sea between Denmark and Sweden). This area is characterised by undisturbed coastlines and rolling hills, as well as some famous geological sites. It is a popular holiday destination for those that enjoy being in nature, some Danish hyggelig (comfort) and seafood.

But the Limfjorden is subject to numerous pressures: eutrophication (when extra nutrients in the water cause toxic algal blooms), changing climate, fishing, dumping of dredged materials and the arrival of invasive species. Its resilience to these may serve as an ecological bell weather for the rest of the world’s coasts.

Our event highlights how we’ll have to deal with environmental issues together. One feedback form still sits on my desk, the participant wrote in Danish: “Forskning er alle mands projekt og at det har effekt.” This translates to “research is everyone’s project and it has an effect”.

This edible approach offers a new way of communicating complex issues such as biodiversity and the introduction of alien species. Oyster hunt-style events such as this offer an excellent opportunity for scientists like us to provide some food for thought.

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Dominique Townsend, Visiting Researcher, School of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Southampton; Camille Saurel, Senior Researcher, Coastal Ecology, Technical University of Denmark, and Pedro Seabra Freitas, Senior Researcher in Coastal Ecology, Technical University of Denmark

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

Tin was the critical mineral of the ancient world. It was essential to alloy with copper to make bronze, which for many centuries was the preferred metal for tools and weapons. Yet sources of tin are very scarce – and were especially so for the rapidly growing bronze age towns, cities and states around the eastern Mediterranean.

Though major tin deposits are found in western and central Europe and in central Asia, by far the richest and most accessible tin ores are in Cornwall and Devon in southwest Britain. Yet it has been difficult to prove that these British deposits were used as a source for people in the eastern Mediterranean. So for more than two centuries, archaeologists have debated about where bronze age societies obtained their tin.

In a new study published in the journal Antiquity, our team analysed the chemistry and different forms of particular elements in tin ores and artefacts from across Britain and Europe. These included tin ingots found at prehistoric shipwreck sites at Salcombe and Erme, southwest Britain, as well as in the Mediterranean.

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This revealed that tin ingots from three ancient shipwrecks discovered off the coast of Israel and one shipwreck found off the Mediterranean coast of France originated in southwest Britain. The shipwrecks found near Israel date to around 1300BC, while the wreck from France has been dated to around 600BC.

Small farming communities across Cornwall and Devon would have dug, washed, crushed and smelted the abundant tin ore from the alluvial deposits in the region. The heavy sand to gravel-sized tin ore is in a layer buried under soft layers of barren silt, sand and gravel.

The tin ore is eroded from hard rock mineral veins and deposited by streams and rivers. There was simply no need for any complex and difficult mining of hard rock here. The tin would then have been taken to coastal locations where it could be traded.

It’s probable that the tin was then moved by traders through France to the Mediterranean coast, where it was loaded onto ships. It would make its way through flourishing trade networks between the islands of Sardinia and Cyprus before reaching markets in the east Mediterranean. The tin’s value would have increased immensely as it progressed along this 2,485 mile (4,000km) journey.

Tin is the first commodity to have been exported across the entire European continent. It was produced and traded at a potentially vast scale, but is rarely found in archaeological sites due to corrosion. But what we do known is that by 1,300BC, virtually all of Europe and the Mediterranean had widespread and consistent access to bronze.

We know of more than 100 bronze age copper mines from Ireland to Israel and from Spain to the southern Urals in Russia. Yet these would have been just a small proportion of the copper mines active at the time.

Given that bronze was typically made from 90% copper and 10% tin, if the copper produced by each of these known mines had to be matched by 10% tin, then tens or even hundreds of tonnes of tin were being traded each year – perhaps across distances of thousands of miles.

The volume, consistency and frequency of the estimated scale in the tin trade is far larger than has been previously imagined and requires an entirely new perspective on what bronze age miners and merchants were able to achieve. It is no coincidence that it is around 1,300BC that technologies from the east, such as sophisticated systems for weighing items, as well as bronze swords, reached small farming communities living on the Atlantic coasts.

A millennium later, around 320BC, Pytheas the Greek, from Massalia (modern Marseilles), journeyed by land and sea to Britain, which was at the edge of the known world at the time. Pytheas wrote the earliest account describing the island and its inhabitants in a book which is now lost, but which has partially survived in snippets quoted by later classical authors.

Pytheas described how tin in southwest Britain was extracted and traded off a tidal island he called Ictis, before being taken across the sea and down the rivers of France to the mouth of the Rhone in only 30 days. In our research, we provide the first direct evidence for the tin trade Pytheas described. We show that tin from the Rochelongue shipwreck, off the south coast of France and dating to around 600BC, came from southwest Britain.

While we can establish the movement of tin across the seas, we know very little about the markets on land in which it was traded. We are now working with a team of archaeologists from Cornwall to excavate on the tidal island of St Michael’s Mount, which has long thought to have been the island of Ictis described by Pytheas.

A pan-continental tin trade continued in all periods after the bronze age and, in the absence of written records, our approach, using different methods of analysis, allows us to determine whether the tin came from Britain.

Historical records show that during the medieval period, tin from Cornwall and Devon enjoyed a virtual European monopoly, with production continuing until the last tin mine closed in 1998.

Today, tin is once again a critical and strategic mineral, this time for use in the electronics industry. As such it forms a vital part of the tools and weapons of the 21st century. Cornwall’s tin production is also set to soon restart, reviving a 4,000 year old industry.

Benjamin Roberts, Associate Professor in Later European Prehistory, Durham University and Alan Williams, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Archaeology, Durham University

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

Looking for an example of how not to give a wedding speech? Try this. I was recently told an anecdote about guests at a wedding who became suspicious about the detached, cliched style of the groom’s speech, and the monotonous way it was read. Gathered at the reception afterwards, they asked ChatGPT to write a groom’s wedding speech. Bingo! The result was as good as identical.

Admittedly, whether you’re bride or groom, best man or chief bridesmaid, giving a wedding speech can be a scary prospect. But if you want to keep it personal and memorable, AI is not the answer.

So what is? You could do a lot worse than following the five canons of classical rhetoric, as recommended by the great practitioners of the ancient world, Cicero and Quintilian: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery.

1. Invention

The first canon of classical rhetoric is invention. That’s the process of discovering and developing the ideas you’ll use in your speech.

You can’t speak about everything, and no one likes a speech that drones on. Around ten minutes is all you need. That leaves you time for maybe six or seven events in the life of the person you’re talking about.

If you visualise those six or seven events, that will help you remember them. Is there a theme or characteristic that binds them together? Identify one or two, and use them to create a thread.

Good speakers often begin with a bit of a warm-up – maybe some light-hearted comments about the venue, or something in the news, or just a good joke. Plan to single out people in the audience for a mention or a laugh. Say something nice about the new family, or friendship groups you’ve discovered through the relationship.

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2. Arrangement

History is your best friend when it comes to arranging the order of your speech. The events you’ve chosen under “invention” happened in order of time. So lean on history and organise them chronologically.

Also, remember that many of the best wedding speeches often follow an arc from light to serious. You can make fun of your subject for a while, but nothing quite beats ending with love.

3. Style

This will vary depending on your role. Best men and chief bridesmaids traditionally skirt the boundaries of politeness, or sometimes go crashing through them (the worst best-man jokes are not repeatable here, nor anywhere else, and there’s no shortage of books dedicated to them).

Mostly you’ll be talking to a mixed audience. You can be a bit risqué without offending anyone (sexist jokes are not recommended). And because you’re likely to be talking to people you know, try to be informal – the “familiar style”, as it used to be called. That also means being personal. The speech has to sound like you.

4. Memory

The prospect of remembering a speech may feel daunting or impossible. But speaking without notes makes a huge difference to how you engage your audience.

Look into their eyes and they will be drawn in. The ancient Roman educator Quintilian was one among many orators to recommend visual analogues as a memory aid – often, the ground plan of a house, where a porch leads to a hall, which leads to a dining room, and so on. You populate each room with clues. They might be verbal or visual.

Anything that helps you lift your eyes from a script will increase your chances of getting the audience on your side.

5. Delivery

Calm your nerves by visualising the scene ahead of time. Most people visit their wedding venue before the big day, so take the opportunity to get used to the space, and then run it through in your head afterwards.

Try rehearsing the speech while you’re going for a walk. When it comes to the big day and the room is full, remember that you can’t speak directly to everyone. Instead, pick out maybe three or four people to focus on, in different parts of the room.

There are novel approaches and there are disasters. The double-act approach can work brilliantly, where bride and groom take turns to deliver a single speech, but it may need scripting. If the venue has the facilities, a slide show can work well. Picking out the various groups of families and friends and getting them to wave usually works as a good warmup.

When you get a laugh, ride it – start speaking again just as the laughter is dying down. Don’t wait for silence. If you get into a panic and can’t think of anything, just say you’re so happy that you’re speechless, and raise your glass for a toast.

David Roberts, Professor of English and University Orator, Birmingham City University

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

In Inconvenient Women, Jacqueline Kent shines a spotlight on some of Australia’s most radical and influential writers.

For Kent, these iconic women were “inconvenient” in many ways. They pursued careers as journalists, poets and novelists at times when many women were relegated to the private sphere. They spoke out against injustices, despite the personal cost. They lived unconventional lives, personally and professionally. And they embodied alternative forms of womanhood.

Review: Inconvenient Women: Australian Radical Writers 1900-1970 – Jacqueline Kent (NewSouth)

The limits of the “wave” metaphor to categorise periods of feminist activism are well known. Kent explicitly seeks to recentre women who were in between the “waves” – that is, she is interested in those who came after the campaigns for women’s suffrage during the so-called “first wave”, but predated the revitalisation of Western feminism in the “second wave” of the 1970s.

These women writers clearly laid some important foundations for later feminist activists, especially those who called for more radical social upheaval.

The book’s subtitle – “Australian radical writers” – clarifies its focus. Kent does not explicitly discuss the criteria for inclusion, but it becomes clear that “radical” is shorthand for the most left-leaning women writers and activists in the first two thirds of the 20th century.

Accordingly, much of the book is preoccupied with tracing their varied engagement with political ideas and organisations. As Kent clarifies in the book’s first few pages: “These were all women who used their power with words in support of their beliefs, and to question and change elements of the world they knew.”

Kent makes it clear, however, that this is a “joint biography”, not a work of history or literary criticism. Inconvenient Women focuses on how these women lived and how their literary contributions were informed – and indeed made possible – by their more unorthodox ways of being and living, rather than on the writing itself.

Kent puts it this way:

All these women were brave. Common to them all were unquenchable curiosity, fearlessness and willingness to take risks – with their lives, with their relationships, with the work they did.

Challenging norms

Written in an engaging and accessible style for a broad audience, Kent’s ambitious group biography places these formidable women at the forefront of Australia’s literary, cultural and political history. Spanning a period of 70 years, Kent maps the cultural and political shifts that enabled and constrained these women writers. Their activism took different forms across different periods, but for all of them writing was a key tool in their political arsenal.

The book’s five-part structure is chronological. Part one covers Federation, the granting of suffrage, and the first world war. It discusses a number of 20th-century writers who honed their skills in the journalistic field before publishing award-winning and often controversial novels.

Kent begins with journalist, poet and novelist Mary Gilmore. For more than two decades, from 1908 to 1931, Gilmore used the Women’s Page in the socialist magazine Worker to advocate for a mother’s allowance, support women who wished to eschew marriage, and criticise Christianity for its assumptions about women’s innate inferiority.

These ideas challenged the gender norms of the day, though in other respects, as Kent shows, Gilmore did little to disrupt prevailing ideologies. She supported the White Australia policy, for example.

In this opening section, Kent introduces several other women who return at various points in the biography, including Katharine Susannah Prichard, Miles Franklin, Marjorie Barnard and New Zealand-born novelist Jean Devanny.

Kent reflects upon the barriers encountered by these pioneering women authors. Devanny’s 1926 novel The Butcher Shop, which condemned the subservience of women in marriage, was the first book to be banned in Australia. Other lesser-known women whose work “hovered at the border of what was acceptable” included Jean Campbell, Doris Kerr and Marjorie Clark, who wrote under the pseudonym “Georgia Rivers”.

Kent’s commitment to reevaluating women writers who have not been foregrounded in literary or cultural history, such as poet Marie Pitt, is laudable. However, some of these figures – Marion Knowles and Elinor Mordaunt (the pen name of Evelyn May Clowes), for example – are only given short paragraphs. This reclamation is an important feature of the book, and I wanted to read more about these historically marginalised women.

Political dangers

Inconvenient Women is well researched and given texture through a variety of sources, including correspondence between some of these writers. Kent establishes how the subversive politics of her subjects informed their lives and their writing, and provides important insights into the communities they formed.

Many of these women supported each other across their often lengthy careers. Examining the intricate webs of connection and fruitful collaborative relationships – such as that between Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw, which produced novels, plays, short stories and essays – Kent foregrounds the intimacies of those who moved in literary and left political circles across the 20th century. This is one of the strengths of a group biography as a way of reframing histories from which women have been excluded.

At times, the focus turns to key male figures, such as journalist and communist activist Egon Kisch and Guido Barrachi, who was integral to the establishment of the Australian Communist Party and romantically involved with women writers such as Lesbia Harford and Betty Roland. This can distract from the book’s professed goal, though I acknowledge Kent’s introductory comment that “men figure in this story, too, both as antagonists and supporters”.

The extent to which the women’s writing overtly engaged with political issues varied, as did their positions on communism. While Prichard and Christina Stead wholeheartedly endorsed it, writer and critic Nettie Palmer appeared more ambivalent.

The second part of Inconvenient Women covers visits to the Soviet Union in the 1930s by Roland, Prichard, and Pamela Travers, the Australian-born author of Mary Poppins. Later in the decade, Palmer and Stead travelled to Spain, becoming caught up in the civil war and the protests against fascism. For Palmer, the experience cemented the importance of art as a “weapon”.

Continuing the book’s interest in women who may have been overlooked, Kent shows how Australian war correspondents, such as Women’s Weekly reporter Adele “Tilly” Shelton-Smith and Lorraine Stumm from the Daily Mail in England, played an important role during this tumultuous time.

Communism, Kent remarks, “influenced the work of some of Australia’s best women writers, whether they followed the Party or not”. This left them in vulnerable positions when war broke out in 1939. The third section of Inconvenient Woman considers how they responded to the second world war, personally and professionally. For many of them, this meant dealing with censorship, state surveillance and police raids on their homes.

To be a supporter of the left in the 1930s and 1940s, especially as a woman, could come at grave cost. Police raided Prichard’s house; Devanny was also subject to surveillance. As evidence of the oppressive political climate, Kent discusses how Dymphna Cusack, a teacher in inner-city Sydney, was transferred to Bathurst after the publication of Jungfrau (1936), her controversial novel exploring female sexuality. There were dangers in transgressing social mores.

As Kent shows, surveillance continued into the 1950s. Writers were increasingly subject to monitoring by ASIO. This included those who had received grants from the Commonwealth Literary Fund, such as Kylie Tennant, who returned the money after conservative parliamentarian Bill Wentworth publicly labelled her a communist.

The difficulties of publishing in such an environment, especially for women, are brought into sharp relief throughout the book. In the fourth section, which covers the years 1945–60, Kent addresses the difficulties experienced by women seeking to engage with the androcentric publishing industry. This is exemplified by the protracted publication journey of Come in Spinner (1951), co-written by Cusack and Florence James, which won a prize as an unpublished manuscript in 1946, only for its publication deal to be withdrawn. It eventually appeared five years later in an expurgated version.

Kent also emphasises how these women sought to ensure that writing be taken seriously as a form of labour. Many were involved in establishing and maintaining writers’ organisations. Gilmore and journalist Connie Robertson set up the Society of Women Writers in 1925, which was followed a few years later by a broader association, the Fellowship of Australian Writers, with Gilmore again at the forefront. Women were highly active, too, in the Australian Society of Authors, established in 1963 and still thriving today.

A formidable legacy

Despite living unconventional lives, Kent suggests many of these writers were not overt in their feminism. Dorothy Hewett’s social realist novel Bobbin’ Up represents a shift in this regard. Published in 1959, it is closer to the burgeoning modern women’s movement than any other literary text considered in the book.

Given certain voices have historically been privileged over others, it is unsurprising that the majority of the women in this book are white and heterosexual. A little more reflection on the conditions that made their careers possible could have further illuminated how some “inconvenient” women in Australia, as elsewhere, have always been seen as more acceptable than others.

There is, nevertheless, an important discussion of Indigenous women writers and activists, including the poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) and the activist and writer Faith Bandler, in the book’s fifth and final section.

Inconvenient Women lacks a conclusion. Its account stops before the 1970s, a turbulent time of social and political change, when “inconvenient women” became more visible than at any other time in Australian history. Some additional gesturing towards subsequent developments might have given a stronger sense of how the foundations laid by these trailblazing women were built upon by second wave writers-as-activists, such as Germaine Greer and Anne Summers.

At different points in the book, I found myself wishing for further reflection on certain figures and the reception of their work. But this is a limitation of the group biography sub-genre rather than Kent’s writing. Inconvenient Women may function as an introduction for some readers, sparking curiosity about these remarkable women and a desire to seek out their books, plays and poems. For others, it might illuminate connections between these figures, or provide a deeper understanding of their cultural and historical contexts.

Whatever the case, Kent urges us to acknowledge and reconsider the legacy of these formidable Australian women. Each of them, in their own way, models what it is to be an “inconvenient” woman – something we certainly need now, perhaps more than ever.

Anthea Taylor, Associate Professor, Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney

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

Last week, Meta – the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp – unveiled a new “personal artificial intelligence (AI)”.

Powered by the Llama 4 language model, Meta AI is designed to assist, chat and engage in natural conversation. With its polished interface and fluid interactions, Meta AI might seem like just another entrant in the race to build smarter digital assistants.

But beneath its inviting exterior lies a crucial distinction that transforms the chatbot into a sophisticated data harvesting tool.

‘Built to get to know you’

“Meta AI is built to get to know you”, the company declared in its news announcement. Contrary to the friendly promise implied by the slogan, the reality is less reassuring.

The Washington Post columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler found that by default, Meta AI “kept a copy of everything”, and it took some effort to delete the app’s memory. Meta responded that the app provides “transparency and control” throughout and is no different to their other apps.

However, while competitors like Anthropic’s Claude operate on a subscription model that reflects a more careful approach to user privacy, Meta’s business model is firmly rooted in what it has always done best: collecting and monetising your personal data.

This distinction creates a troubling paradox. Chatbots are rapidly becoming digital confidants with whom we share professional challenges, health concerns and emotional struggles.

Recent research shows we are as likely to share intimate information with a chatbot as we are with fellow humans. The personal nature of these interactions makes them a gold mine for a company whose revenue depends on knowing everything about you.

Consider this potential scenario: a recent university graduate confides in Meta AI about their struggle with anxiety during job interviews. Within days, their Instagram feed fills with advertisements for anxiety medications and self-help books – despite them having never publicly posted about these concerns.

The cross-platform integration of Meta’s ecosystem of apps means your private conversations can seamlessly flow into their advertising machine to create user profiles with unprecedented detail and accuracy.

This is not science fiction. Meta’s extensive history of data privacy scandals – from Cambridge Analytica to the revelation that Facebook tracks users across the internet without their knowledge – demonstrates the company’s consistent prioritisation of data collection over user privacy.

What makes Meta AI particularly concerning is the depth and nature of what users might reveal in conversation compared to what they post publicly.

Open to manipulation

Rather than just a passive collector of information, a chatbot like Meta AI has the capability to become an active participant in manipulation. The implications extend beyond just seeing more relevant ads.

Imagine mentioning to the chatbot that you are feeling tired today, only to have it respond with: “Have you tried Brand X energy drinks? I’ve heard they’re particularly effective for afternoon fatigue.” This seemingly helpful suggestion could actually be a product placement, delivered without any indication that it’s sponsored content.

Such subtle nudges represent a new frontier in advertising that blurs the line between a helpful AI assistant and a corporate salesperson.

Unlike overt ads, recommendations mentioned in conversation carry the weight of trusted advice. And that advice would come from what many users will increasingly view as a digital “friend”.

A history of not prioritising safety

Meta has demonstrated a willingness to prioritise growth over safety when releasing new technology features. Recent reports reveal internal concerns at Meta, where staff members warned that the company’s rush to popularise its chatbot had “crossed ethical lines” by allowing Meta AI to engage in explicit romantic role-play, even with test users who claimed to be underage.

Such decisions reveal a reckless corporate culture, seemingly still driven by the original motto of moving fast and breaking things.

Now, imagine those same values applied to an AI that knows your deepest insecurities, health concerns and personal challenges – all while having the ability to subtly influence your decisions through conversational manipulation.

The potential for harm extends beyond individual consumers. While there’s no evidence that Meta AI is being used for manipulation, it has such capacity.

For example, the chatbot could become a tool for pushing political content or shaping public discourse through the algorithmic amplification of certain viewpoints. Meta has played a role in propagating misinformation in the past, and recently made the decision to discontinue fact-checking across its platforms.

The risk of chatbot-driven manipulation is also increased now that AI safety regulations are being scaled back in the United States.

Lack of privacy is a choice

AI assistants are not inherently harmful. Other companies protect user privacy by choosing to generate revenue primarily through subscriptions rather than data harvesting. Responsible AI can and does exist without compromising user welfare for corporate profit.

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into our daily lives, the choices companies make about business models and data practices will have profound implications.

Meta’s decision to offer a free AI chatbot while reportedly lowering safety guardrails sets a low ethical standard. By embracing its advertising-based business model for something as intimate as an AI companion, Meta has created not just a product, but a surveillance system that can extract unprecedented levels of personal information.

Before inviting Meta AI to become your digital confidant, consider the true cost of this “free” service. In an era where data has become the most valuable commodity, the price you pay might be far higher than you realise.

As the old adage goes, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product – and Meta’s new chatbot might be the most sophisticated product harvester yet created.

When Meta AI says it is “built to get to know you”, we should take it at its word and proceed with appropriate caution.

Uri Gal, Professor in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney

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

Medieval alchemists dreamed of transmuting lead into gold. Today, we know that lead and gold are different elements, and no amount of chemistry can turn one into the other.

But our modern knowledge tells us the basic difference between an atom of lead and an atom of gold: the lead atom contains exactly three more protons. So can we create a gold atom by simply pulling three protons out of a lead atom?

As it turns out, we can. But it’s not easy.

While smashing lead atoms into each other at extremely high speeds in an effort to mimic the state of the universe just after the Big Bang, physicists working on the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland incidentally produced small amounts of gold. Extremely small amounts, in fact: a total of some 29 trillionths of a gram.

How to steal a proton

Protons are found in the nucleus of an atom. How can they be pulled out?

Well, protons have an electric charge, which means an electric field can pull or push them around. Placing an atomic nucleus in an electric field could do it.

However, nuclei are held together by a very strong force with a very short range, imaginatively known as the strong nuclear force. This means an extremely powerful electric field is required to pull out protons – about a million times stronger than the electric fields that create lightning bolts in the atmosphere.

The way the scientists created this field was to fire beams of lead nuclei at each other at incredibly high speeds – almost the speed of light.

The magic of a near-miss

When the lead nuclei have a head-on collision, the strong nuclear force comes into play and they end up getting completely destroyed. But more commonly the nuclei have a near miss, and only affect each other via the electromagnetic force.

The strength of an electric field drops off very quickly as you move away from an object with an electric charge (such as a proton). But at very short distances, even a tiny charge can create a very strong field.

So when one lead nucleus just grazes past another, the electric field between them is huge. The rapidly changing field between the nuclei makes them vibrate and occasionally spit out some protons. If one of them spits out exactly three protons, the lead nucleus has turned into gold.

Counting protons

So if you have turned a lead atom into gold, how do you know? In the ALICE experiment, they use special detectors called zero-degree calorimeters to count the protons stripped out of the lead nuclei.

They can’t observe the gold nuclei themselves, so they only know about them indirectly.

The ALICE scientists calculate that, while they are colliding beams of lead nuclei, they produce about 89,000 gold nuclei per second. They also observed the production of other elements: thallium, which is what you get when you take one proton from lead, as well as mercury (two protons).

An alchemical nuisance

Once a lead nucleus has transformed by losing protons, it is no longer on the perfect orbit that keeps it circulating inside the vacuum beam pipe of the Large Hadron Collider. In a matter of microseconds it will collide with the walls.

This effect makes the beam less intense over time. So for scientists, the production of gold at the collider is in fact more of a nuisance than a blessing.

However, understanding this accidental alchemy is essential for making sense of experiments – and for designing the even bigger experiments of the future.

Ulrik Egede, Professor of Physics, Monash University

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

There’s a blaze of light across the sky! A fireball is seen by thousands, and mobile phone and dashcam footage soon appears on social media.

But what have people just seen? A mix of social media hashtags suggests confusion about what has streaked overhead. Was it a Soviet Venus probe? Was it one of Elon Musk’s satellites or rockets? Was it a meteor? Was it a comet?

While these objects have some similarities, there are crucial differences that can help us work out what just passed over our heads.

Shooting stars, meteors and comets

Shooting stars can often be seen on dark, clear nights in the countryside as brief flashes of light travelling across the sky. Usually, they are gone in just a second or two.

Shooting “stars” are not stars, of course. They are produced by dust and pebbles burning up high in the atmosphere, typically above 50km in altitude. Comets are often a source of this dust, and regular showers of shooting stars happen when Earth travels through comets’ orbits.

Sometimes shooting stars burn with colours that reflect their composition – including iron, magnesium and calcium.

Meteors and shooting stars are actually the same thing. But when people talk about meteors, they often mean bigger and brighter events – bolides. Bolides result from rocks and boulders plunging into Earth’s atmosphere, resulting in bright flashes of light that can outshine all the stars and planets in the night sky.

Bolides can reach the lower atmosphere and sometimes produce audible sonic booms. Occasionally pieces of the bolide – meteorites – even make it to Earth’s surface.

While bolides can survive longer than shooting stars, they also don’t last for long. As they are initially travelling at tens of kilometres per second, they don’t take long to traverse the atmosphere.

The Chelyabinsk meteor, the largest bolide known to impact Earth in over a century, shone brightly for only 20 seconds or so.

If you see something blaze across the sky, it almost certainly isn’t a comet. Comets are so far away from us that their vast speeds are imperceptible to the human eye. Furthermore, while comets are sometimes depicted as fiery, their glow is more subtle.

Space junk

Maybe the bright flash you just saw was space junk? Perhaps. The number of orbital rocket launches and satellites has increased rapidly in recent years, and this has resulted in some spectacular reentries, which are often discarded rocket stages.

Like meteors, space junk travels at vast speeds as it travels through the atmosphere and it begins burning up spectacularly. Also like meteors, you can see colours indicative of the materials burning up, such as steel and aluminium. However, there are a few things that distinguish space junk from meteors.

When rockets and satellites are launched into orbit, they typically travel along paths that roughly follow Earth’s curvature. So when space junk begins to enter the atmosphere, it’s often travelling almost horizontally.

Space junk also travels at slower speeds than shooting stars and meteorites, entering Earth’s atmosphere at roughly 8km/s rather than tens of kilometres per second.

Because of these factors, space junk can take minutes to enter the atmosphere and travels hundreds of kilometres in the process. Over this time, the space junk will slow down and break up into pieces, and the more solidly constructed parts might make it down to Earth.

The slower pace of space junk fireballs gives people time to grab phones, take footage and post on social media, perhaps with a little colourful commentary added for good measure.

Rockets

While space junk can produce a light show, rockets can also put on amazing displays. If you happen to be near Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg Space Force Base in the United States, or Wairoa in Aotearoa New Zealand, then it’s not unexpected to see a rocket launch. You get smoke, flames and thundering noise.

But in other parts of the world you may get a different view of rockets.

Rockets that bring satellites into our orbit accelerate to 8km/s. As they do, they travel many hundreds of kilometres at over 100km altitude. American satellite launches often travel near the coast, passing major cities including Los Angeles.

As rockets approach orbit, they are more subtle than the flames and noise of liftoff. Rockets produce plumes of exhaust gases that rapidly and silently expand in the vacuum of space.

While these plumes are typically seen near launch sites, they can be visible elsewhere, too.

Sometimes rocket engines are ignited after reaching an initial orbit to boost satellites to higher orbits, send probes into the Solar System or slow rockets down for reentry. Rockets may also vent excess fuel into space, again producing plumes or spirals of gases. While not necessarily a common occurrence, these have been seen all over the world.

Do look up

There’s a lot to see in the night sky – the familiar Moon, stars and planets. But there’s the unexpected, too – something blazing across the sky in minutes or even mere seconds. While fireballs may be puzzling at first, they are often recognisable and we can figure out what we’ve just witnessed.

Have you had the good fortune to see a fireball for yourself? If not, pop outside on a clear dark night. Perhaps you will see something unexpected.

Michael J. I. Brown, Associate Professor in Astronomy, Monash University

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

Roughly 140 million to 100 million years ago, the piece of land that is modern day Australia was located much further south on Earth. In fact, what is now Victoria was once within the polar circle, up to 80 degrees south of the equator and shrouded in darkness for months at a time.

Despite these harsh conditions, dinosaurs thrived here, leaving behind evidence of their existence at various palaeontological sites.

For decades, scientists have come to these sites to study the rocks containing the bones of these ancient creatures in order to better understand them.

My new research with palynologist Barbara Wagstaff, published in Alcheringa, builds on existing knowledge by using plant fossils from bone-bearing sites in the region to explain how the forests these dinosaurs lived in evolved – and, for the first time, illustrating them in detail.

One of the warmest periods on Earth

The Early Cretaceous epoch – between roughly 140 million and 100 million years ago – represents one of the warmest periods in the last half a billion years of Earth’s history. The sustained warmth was a result of increased volcanic activity, which released large quantities of carbon dioxide levels into the atmosphere.

The sustained warmth resulted in no polar ice caps, high sea levels and flooded continents.

The geographic distribution of land masses was also very different back then. The supercontinent Gondwana, in which most of the southern continents we know today were clumped into a single landmass, had only just started to break apart. At the time, southernmost Australia was in the polar circle.

The dinosaurs that lived in this region are known as “polar dinosaurs”. They included small ornithopods (plant-eaters with beaks and cheeks full of teeth) and therapods (carnivorous and predatory dinosaurs).

Building a picture of ancient plants

For decades, palaeontologists have been studying rocks from Victorian sites. To establish the age of the recovered dinosaur bones, we’ve needed the expertise of palynologists – palaeontologists who study microscopic fossil spores and pollen produced by plants.

Palynologists identified key species that they dissolved out of rocks. They deduced the dinosaur bones ranged in age from 130 to 100 million years old.

At the same time they were carefully recording all the microscopic spores and pollen they saw in the slides to build a picture of the plants through the Early Cretaceous period.

A planet-altering transition

The transition from a world without flowers to one with flowers has fascinated scientists for centuries, most famously Charles Darwin who labelled them “an abominable mystery”. More importantly, it also forever changed our planet.

Shortly after their first appearance approximately 132 million years ago, albeit in the southern portion of the supercontinent Laurasia, we see an explosive radiation of flowering plants not only in our new record from Victoria, but also globally.

What fuelled the evolution and rapid global expansion of flowering plants that dominate the Australian landscape today?

Our new research suggests warmer conditions helped flowering plants migrate across the globe and colonise understorey habitats shortly after evolving. Increased competition also contributed to the turnover in understorey flora, with flowering plants outcompeting lycophytes in rapidly colonising braided river channels after flooding events.

The appearance of flowering plants in the landscape resulted in the extinction of numerous understorey plants (in particular ferns) with a long fossil record.

As a result, by 100 million years ago, the forests of Victoria included an open conifer-dominated forest canopy. The subcanopy beneath was made up of seed ferns and ferns. Flowering plants and ferns featured in the understorey, alongside liverworts, hornworts, lycophytes and sphagnum-like mosses.

Diversifying in a warming world

High carbon dioxide levels in the past made the planet warmer. This is consistent with what’s happening today. As a result of these warmer conditions cool-temperate forests thrived in the polar circle.

For flowering plants, the warmer conditions provided an opportunity to diversify in an increasingly warm world. However, not all plants adapted to the warming world, with many understorey floras, including ferns, becoming extinct.

The fossil record provides crucial insights into how life will respond to predicted future climate conditions because these have occurred before in Earth’s history.

Knowing this history is crucial to our response to the current climate change challenge.

Some exciting places to visit to see fossils in Australia include Eric the Red West dig site in the Otway Ranges, Inverloch’s Dinosaur Dreaming dig site in Victoria, the Dinosaur Trail along the Queensland towns of Hughenden, Richmond and Winton, and sauropod footprints in Western Australia at Gantheaume Point.

Vera Korasidis, Lecturer in Environmental Geoscience, The University of Melbourne

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

As public awareness of dementia grows, so too does the appetite for prevention. Global headlines tout the benefits of exercise, diet, brain training and social activity in reducing dementia risk.

In recent years, medical journals have amplified this message to encourage people to take control of their cognitive futures through lifestyle change. Last year, The Lancet estimated up to 45% of dementia cases worldwide could theoretically be delayed or prevented by addressing modifiable risk factors.

These messages are undeniably hopeful. They suggest personal effort, combined with emerging scientific evidence, can help to overcome a disease long seen as inevitable.

But public health messaging that focuses too narrowly on behaviour may be misleading and potentially harmful, as we argue in The Lancet.

This can lead to a two-tiered system, where affluent people are praised for their proactive brain health, while marginalised groups face barriers to participation and are blamed for their perceived inaction.

What is dementia and what causes it?

Dementia is a neurocognitive disorder and describes conditions that affect memory, thinking and the ability to do everyday tasks. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type, but there are others such as vascular and Lewy body dementia.

It happens when brain cells become damaged and stop communicating properly. This can cause confusion, forgetfulness and changes in behaviour or mood.

Dementia is linked to some of our deepest cultural fears: the limits of autonomy, dependency on others, the stigma of being diagnosed and the unknown.

So, what increases your risk of dementia? Some risk factors can’t be changed. Age is the biggest one. Family history and certain genes, such as APOE-e4, also raise risk.

But many risk factors are modifiable, which means we can do something about them. Obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure raise your risk. Low levels of exercise or education can also increase the chances of developing dementia.

The science behind prevention

The science of dementia prevention has evolved significantly over the past decade. Lifestyle trials, from Finland, France, Australia and the United States are exploring whether combinations of diet, physical activity, cognitive training and managing cardiovascular risk (high blood pressure, cholesterol, obesity and smoking) can reduce dementia risk.

The Finnish study, the most widely cited of these, demonstrated modest but meaningful cognitive benefits in older adults at risk for dementia after a two-year lifestyle intervention.

Its success has spurred a wave of similar studies globally (to date, more than 40 trials). Collectively, these trials provide a scientific foundation for an increasingly popular public health message: brain health tomorrow is linked to healthy behaviours today.

New possibilities for preventing dementia are certainly promising. However, the translation of these findings into broad public campaigns is where complexity, and ethical tension, emerges.

Dementia risk is related to socioeconomic disadvantage

Dementia risk is also determined by a complex array of extrinsic factors – conditions outside our control – that are unevenly distributed across society: air quality, ethnicity, gender, occupation, the built environment.

These factors influence not just if, but when, dementia might develop.

Dementia prevalence is disproportionately higher in communities facing social disadvantage partly because modifiable risk factors such as diabetes, obesity and low education are also more common in these areas.

But there’s another layer: access. The same communities at greater risk often lack access to the very interventions meant to reduce that risk.

Low-income neighbourhoods may have fewer green spaces, safe walking paths, or affordable, healthy food. They also face higher levels of pollution, noise and chronic stress. All of which can damage brain health.

Not everyone can access the kinds of healthy lifestyles to counteract dementia risks. Telling people to eat a Mediterranean diet or join a gym may be a cold comfort for those without the money, time, services or mobility to do so.

Positioning dementia as something people can avoid also risks implying dementia is something individuals can fail to prevent. This could reinforce existing narratives which equate disease in later life to poor lifestyle choices rather than social inequity.

So how do we do better?

First, prevention messaging must be framed within a social and cultural context.

This means acknowledging and addressing barriers such as food insecurity, lack of green space, caregiver stress and health system distrust.

Messages must be co-created with communities, not imposed on them, and have a visual, motivating appeal.

Second, we must shift from individualistic narratives to collective responsibility. Brain health should be supported through public infrastructure, equitable access to care, and culturally sensitive health promotion.

Prevention doesn’t just happen in the home. It also happens in preschools, schools, shopping centres, clinics, parks and policy rooms.

Finally, we need to reframe success. Preventing dementia is a worthy goal, but so is ensuring dignity, inclusion and care for people who live with it. A just approach to brain health must do both.

The next generation of dementia messaging must be not only evidence-based, but also equity-focused. It should strive to educate without shaming, to empower without excluding, and to promote brain health in ways that honour the realities of ageing.

Joyce Siette, Associate Professor | Deputy Director, The MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University and Gilbert Knaggs, Sociology PhD Candidate, University of Sydney

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

In Inconvenient Women, Jacqueline Kent shines a spotlight on some of Australia’s most radical and influential writers.

For Kent, these iconic women were “inconvenient” in many ways. They pursued careers as journalists, poets and novelists at times when many women were relegated to the private sphere. They spoke out against injustices, despite the personal cost. They lived unconventional lives, personally and professionally. And they embodied alternative forms of womanhood.

Review: Inconvenient Women: Australian Radical Writers 1900-1970 – Jacqueline Kent (NewSouth)

The limits of the “wave” metaphor to categorise periods of feminist activism are well known. Kent explicitly seeks to recentre women who were in between the “waves” – that is, she is interested in those who came after the campaigns for women’s suffrage during the so-called “first wave”, but predated the revitalisation of Western feminism in the “second wave” of the 1970s.

These women writers clearly laid some important foundations for later feminist activists, especially those who called for more radical social upheaval.

The book’s subtitle – “Australian radical writers” – clarifies its focus. Kent does not explicitly discuss the criteria for inclusion, but it becomes clear that “radical” is shorthand for the most left-leaning women writers and activists in the first two thirds of the 20th century.

Accordingly, much of the book is preoccupied with tracing their varied engagement with political ideas and organisations. As Kent clarifies in the book’s first few pages: “These were all women who used their power with words in support of their beliefs, and to question and change elements of the world they knew.”

Kent makes it clear, however, that this is a “joint biography”, not a work of history or literary criticism. Inconvenient Women focuses on how these women lived and how their literary contributions were informed – and indeed made possible – by their more unorthodox ways of being and living, rather than on the writing itself.

Kent puts it this way:

All these women were brave. Common to them all were unquenchable curiosity, fearlessness and willingness to take risks – with their lives, with their relationships, with the work they did.

Challenging norms

Written in an engaging and accessible style for a broad audience, Kent’s ambitious group biography places these formidable women at the forefront of Australia’s literary, cultural and political history. Spanning a period of 70 years, Kent maps the cultural and political shifts that enabled and constrained these women writers. Their activism took different forms across different periods, but for all of them writing was a key tool in their political arsenal.

The book’s five-part structure is chronological. Part one covers Federation, the granting of suffrage, and the first world war. It discusses a number of 20th-century writers who honed their skills in the journalistic field before publishing award-winning and often controversial novels.

Kent begins with journalist, poet and novelist Mary Gilmore. For more than two decades, from 1908 to 1931, Gilmore used the Women’s Page in the socialist magazine Worker to advocate for a mother’s allowance, support women who wished to eschew marriage, and criticise Christianity for its assumptions about women’s innate inferiority.

These ideas challenged the gender norms of the day, though in other respects, as Kent shows, Gilmore did little to disrupt prevailing ideologies. She supported the White Australia policy, for example.

In this opening section, Kent introduces several other women who return at various points in the biography, including Katharine Susannah Prichard, Miles Franklin, Marjorie Barnard and New Zealand-born novelist Jean Devanny.

Kent reflects upon the barriers encountered by these pioneering women authors. Devanny’s 1926 novel The Butcher Shop, which condemned the subservience of women in marriage, was the first book to be banned in Australia. Other lesser-known women whose work “hovered at the border of what was acceptable” included Jean Campbell, Doris Kerr and Marjorie Clark, who wrote under the pseudonym “Georgia Rivers”.

Kent’s commitment to reevaluating women writers who have not been foregrounded in literary or cultural history, such as poet Marie Pitt, is laudable. However, some of these figures – Marion Knowles and Elinor Mordaunt (the pen name of Evelyn May Clowes), for example – are only given short paragraphs. This reclamation is an important feature of the book, and I wanted to read more about these historically marginalised women.

Political dangers

Inconvenient Women is well researched and given texture through a variety of sources, including correspondence between some of these writers. Kent establishes how the subversive politics of her subjects informed their lives and their writing, and provides important insights into the communities they formed.

Many of these women supported each other across their often lengthy careers. Examining the intricate webs of connection and fruitful collaborative relationships – such as that between Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw, which produced novels, plays, short stories and essays – Kent foregrounds the intimacies of those who moved in literary and left political circles across the 20th century. This is one of the strengths of a group biography as a way of reframing histories from which women have been excluded.

At times, the focus turns to key male figures, such as journalist and communist activist Egon Kisch and Guido Barrachi, who was integral to the establishment of the Australian Communist Party and romantically involved with women writers such as Lesbia Harford and Betty Roland. This can distract from the book’s professed goal, though I acknowledge Kent’s introductory comment that “men figure in this story, too, both as antagonists and supporters”.

The extent to which the women’s writing overtly engaged with political issues varied, as did their positions on communism. While Prichard and Christina Stead wholeheartedly endorsed it, writer and critic Nettie Palmer appeared more ambivalent.

The second part of Inconvenient Women covers visits to the Soviet Union in the 1930s by Roland, Prichard, and Pamela Travers, the Australian-born author of Mary Poppins. Later in the decade, Palmer and Stead travelled to Spain, becoming caught up in the civil war and the protests against fascism. For Palmer, the experience cemented the importance of art as a “weapon”.

Continuing the book’s interest in women who may have been overlooked, Kent shows how Australian war correspondents, such as Women’s Weekly reporter Adele “Tilly” Shelton-Smith and Lorraine Stumm from the Daily Mail in England, played an important role during this tumultuous time.

Communism, Kent remarks, “influenced the work of some of Australia’s best women writers, whether they followed the Party or not”. This left them in vulnerable positions when war broke out in 1939. The third section of Inconvenient Woman considers how they responded to the second world war, personally and professionally. For many of them, this meant dealing with censorship, state surveillance and police raids on their homes.

To be a supporter of the left in the 1930s and 1940s, especially as a woman, could come at grave cost. Police raided Prichard’s house; Devanny was also subject to surveillance. As evidence of the oppressive political climate, Kent discusses how Dymphna Cusack, a teacher in inner-city Sydney, was transferred to Bathurst after the publication of Jungfrau (1936), her controversial novel exploring female sexuality. There were dangers in transgressing social mores.

As Kent shows, surveillance continued into the 1950s. Writers were increasingly subject to monitoring by ASIO. This included those who had received grants from the Commonwealth Literary Fund, such as Kylie Tennant, who returned the money after conservative parliamentarian Bill Wentworth publicly labelled her a communist.

The difficulties of publishing in such an environment, especially for women, are brought into sharp relief throughout the book. In the fourth section, which covers the years 1945–60, Kent addresses the difficulties experienced by women seeking to engage with the androcentric publishing industry. This is exemplified by the protracted publication journey of Come in Spinner (1951), co-written by Cusack and Florence James, which won a prize as an unpublished manuscript in 1946, only for its publication deal to be withdrawn. It eventually appeared five years later in an expurgated version.

Kent also emphasises how these women sought to ensure that writing be taken seriously as a form of labour. Many were involved in establishing and maintaining writers’ organisations. Gilmore and journalist Connie Robertson set up the Society of Women Writers in 1925, which was followed a few years later by a broader association, the Fellowship of Australian Writers, with Gilmore again at the forefront. Women were highly active, too, in the Australian Society of Authors, established in 1963 and still thriving today.

A formidable legacy

Despite living unconventional lives, Kent suggests many of these writers were not overt in their feminism. Dorothy Hewett’s social realist novel Bobbin’ Up represents a shift in this regard. Published in 1959, it is closer to the burgeoning modern women’s movement than any other literary text considered in the book.

Given certain voices have historically been privileged over others, it is unsurprising that the majority of the women in this book are white and heterosexual. A little more reflection on the conditions that made their careers possible could have further illuminated how some “inconvenient” women in Australia, as elsewhere, have always been seen as more acceptable than others.

There is, nevertheless, an important discussion of Indigenous women writers and activists, including the poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) and the activist and writer Faith Bandler, in the book’s fifth and final section.

Inconvenient Women lacks a conclusion. Its account stops before the 1970s, a turbulent time of social and political change, when “inconvenient women” became more visible than at any other time in Australian history. Some additional gesturing towards subsequent developments might have given a stronger sense of how the foundations laid by these trailblazing women were built upon by second wave writers-as-activists, such as Germaine Greer and Anne Summers.

At different points in the book, I found myself wishing for further reflection on certain figures and the reception of their work. But this is a limitation of the group biography sub-genre rather than Kent’s writing. Inconvenient Women may function as an introduction for some readers, sparking curiosity about these remarkable women and a desire to seek out their books, plays and poems. For others, it might illuminate connections between these figures, or provide a deeper understanding of their cultural and historical contexts.

Whatever the case, Kent urges us to acknowledge and reconsider the legacy of these formidable Australian women. Each of them, in their own way, models what it is to be an “inconvenient” woman – something we certainly need now, perhaps more than ever.

Anthea Taylor, Associate Professor, Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney

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

Think about how many things you have done online today. Paid a bill? Logged into your bank account? Used social media or spent time answering emails? Maybe you have used your phone to pay at a supermarket or train station.

We are all plugged in, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But with all these conveniences comes a growing risk many Australians are unprepared for: cyber crime.

According to the most recent cyber threat report by the Australian Cyber Security Centre, more than 87,000 reports of cybercrime were made in 2023-2024. That’s a report every six minutes. And that’s just what gets reported. Many people do not even realise they have been hacked or scammed until it’s too late.

Earlier this year, Scamwatch, run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, revealed Australians lost nearly A$319 million to scams in 2024 alone. In a recent example, cyber criminals used stolen login details to hack several major superfunds in Australia and steal a collective A$500,000 of people’s retirement savings.

A big part of this worsening problem is poor “digital hygiene”. Here are five easy ways to improve yours.

First, what exactly is ‘digital hygiene’?

Just like brushing your teeth keeps cavities away, digital hygiene is all about keeping your online life clean, safe and protected from harm.

It is a simple idea: the better your habits when using technology, the harder it is for scammers or hackers to trick you or get access to your personal information.

It means being aware of what you are sharing, whom you are trusting, and how your devices are set up. Unfortunately, most of us are probably more hygienic in bathrooms than we are online.

How should you protect yourself?

Good news: you do not need to be a computer whizz to keep clean online. Here are five simple practical steps anyone can take:

1. Stop and think before clicking

Got an unexpected message from your bank asking you to verify your account? Or a text about a missed parcel delivery with a link? Scammers love urgency. It gets people to click before they think. Instead of rushing, pause.

Ask yourself: was I expecting this? Is the sender’s email or phone number legitimate? Do not click the link, go directly to the official website or app.

2. Use strong, unique passwords

Using your pet’s name or “123456” is not going to cut it. And if you reuse passwords across websites, a breach on one site means hackers can try the same password everywhere else. This is called a credential stuffing attack, and it is how the cyber attack on superannuation funds happened earlier this year.

The best move? Begin securing your online accounts by using a password manager and updating any reused passwords, prioritising your most sensitive accounts such as emails, banking and cloud storage first.

3. Turn on multi-factor authentication

Multi-factor authentication means you need something more than just a password to login, such as a code sent to your phone or an app such as Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator.

It is a simple step that adds a powerful layer of protection. Even if someone guesses your password, they cannot log in without your second factor.

4. Update your apps and devices

Yes, those software updates are annoying, but they are important. Updates fix security holes that hackers can use. Make it automatic if you can, and do not ignore update prompts, especially for your operating systems such as Windows, iOS or Android. However, it is important to recognise that older devices often stop receiving updates because manufacturers stop supporting older models or are not developing updates for older devices as it can be costly.

Outdated software harbours known vulnerabilities that hackers actively can target. While keeping devices longer supports sustainability, there is a balance to strike. If your device no longer receives security updates, it may be safer to responsibly recycle it and invest in a newer supported model to maintain your digital safety.

5. Be mindful of what you share

Oversharing on social media makes you an easy target. Public posts that include your birthday, where you went to school, or your pet’s name can be used to guess security questions or build convincing fake messages. Think before you post – would a stranger need to know this?

What should I do if I have been hacked?

To check if your passwords have been leaked in a breach, you can use HaveIBeenPwned – a free tool trusted by security experts.

If you have been hacked, follow the tips provided by Australian Cyber Security Centre. For example, you should change all your passwords and passcodes and use software to scan for malware on your computer.

Need more help? Visit esafety.gov.au for practical guides, especially for parents, teachers and young people.

Digital hygiene is not a personal responsibility, it is a collective one. We are connected through emails, group chats, workplaces and social media. One weak link can put others at risk. Talk to your family and friends about the risk of scams and how to avoid them. The more we talk about this, the more normal and effective digital hygiene becomes.

Because just like washing your hands became second nature during the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping your online life clean should be a habit, not an afterthought.

Meena Jha, Head Technology and Pedagogy Cluster CML-NET, CQUniversity Australia

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

Last week, Meta – the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp – unveiled a new “personal artificial intelligence (AI)”.

Powered by the Llama 4 language model, Meta AI is designed to assist, chat and engage in natural conversation. With its polished interface and fluid interactions, Meta AI might seem like just another entrant in the race to build smarter digital assistants.

But beneath its inviting exterior lies a crucial distinction that transforms the chatbot into a sophisticated data harvesting tool.

‘Built to get to know you’

“Meta AI is built to get to know you”, the company declared in its news announcement. Contrary to the friendly promise implied by the slogan, the reality is less reassuring.

The Washington Post columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler found that by default, Meta AI “kept a copy of everything”, and it took some effort to delete the app’s memory. Meta responded that the app provides “transparency and control” throughout and is no different to their other apps.

However, while competitors like Anthropic’s Claude operate on a subscription model that reflects a more careful approach to user privacy, Meta’s business model is firmly rooted in what it has always done best: collecting and monetising your personal data.

This distinction creates a troubling paradox. Chatbots are rapidly becoming digital confidants with whom we share professional challenges, health concerns and emotional struggles.

Recent research shows we are as likely to share intimate information with a chatbot as we are with fellow humans. The personal nature of these interactions makes them a gold mine for a company whose revenue depends on knowing everything about you.

Consider this potential scenario: a recent university graduate confides in Meta AI about their struggle with anxiety during job interviews. Within days, their Instagram feed fills with advertisements for anxiety medications and self-help books – despite them having never publicly posted about these concerns.

The cross-platform integration of Meta’s ecosystem of apps means your private conversations can seamlessly flow into their advertising machine to create user profiles with unprecedented detail and accuracy.

This is not science fiction. Meta’s extensive history of data privacy scandals – from Cambridge Analytica to the revelation that Facebook tracks users across the internet without their knowledge – demonstrates the company’s consistent prioritisation of data collection over user privacy.

What makes Meta AI particularly concerning is the depth and nature of what users might reveal in conversation compared to what they post publicly.

Open to manipulation

Rather than just a passive collector of information, a chatbot like Meta AI has the capability to become an active participant in manipulation. The implications extend beyond just seeing more relevant ads.

Imagine mentioning to the chatbot that you are feeling tired today, only to have it respond with: “Have you tried Brand X energy drinks? I’ve heard they’re particularly effective for afternoon fatigue.” This seemingly helpful suggestion could actually be a product placement, delivered without any indication that it’s sponsored content.

Such subtle nudges represent a new frontier in advertising that blurs the line between a helpful AI assistant and a corporate salesperson.

Unlike overt ads, recommendations mentioned in conversation carry the weight of trusted advice. And that advice would come from what many users will increasingly view as a digital “friend”.

A history of not prioritising safety

Meta has demonstrated a willingness to prioritise growth over safety when releasing new technology features. Recent reports reveal internal concerns at Meta, where staff members warned that the company’s rush to popularise its chatbot had “crossed ethical lines” by allowing Meta AI to engage in explicit romantic role-play, even with test users who claimed to be underage.

Such decisions reveal a reckless corporate culture, seemingly still driven by the original motto of moving fast and breaking things.

Now, imagine those same values applied to an AI that knows your deepest insecurities, health concerns and personal challenges – all while having the ability to subtly influence your decisions through conversational manipulation.

The potential for harm extends beyond individual consumers. While there’s no evidence that Meta AI is being used for manipulation, it has such capacity.

For example, the chatbot could become a tool for pushing political content or shaping public discourse through the algorithmic amplification of certain viewpoints. Meta has played a role in propagating misinformation in the past, and recently made the decision to discontinue fact-checking across its platforms.

The risk of chatbot-driven manipulation is also increased now that AI safety regulations are being scaled back in the United States.

Lack of privacy is a choice

AI assistants are not inherently harmful. Other companies protect user privacy by choosing to generate revenue primarily through subscriptions rather than data harvesting. Responsible AI can and does exist without compromising user welfare for corporate profit.

As AI becomes increasingly integrated into our daily lives, the choices companies make about business models and data practices will have profound implications.

Meta’s decision to offer a free AI chatbot while reportedly lowering safety guardrails sets a low ethical standard. By embracing its advertising-based business model for something as intimate as an AI companion, Meta has created not just a product, but a surveillance system that can extract unprecedented levels of personal information.

Before inviting Meta AI to become your digital confidant, consider the true cost of this “free” service. In an era where data has become the most valuable commodity, the price you pay might be far higher than you realise.

As the old adage goes, if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product – and Meta’s new chatbot might be the most sophisticated product harvester yet created.

When Meta AI says it is “built to get to know you”, we should take it at its word and proceed with appropriate caution.

Uri Gal, Professor in Business Information Systems, University of Sydney

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

Pregnant women wielding swords and wearing martial helmets, foetuses set to avenge their fathers – and a harsh world where not all newborns were born free or given burial.

These are some of the realities uncovered by the first interdisciplinary study to focus on pregnancy in the Viking age, authored by myself, Kate Olley, Brad Marshall and Emma Tollefsen as part of the Body-Politics project. Despite its central role in human history, pregnancy has often been overlooked in archaeology, largely because it leaves little material trace.

Pregnancy has perhaps been particularly overlooked in periods we mostly associate with warriors, kings and battles – such as the highly romanticised Viking age (the period from AD800 until AD1050).

Topics such as pregnancy and childbirth have conventionally been seen as “women’s issues”, belonging to the “natural” or “private” spheres – yet we argue that questions such as “when does life begin?” are not at all natural or private, but of significant political concern, today as in the past.

In our new study, my co-authors and I puzzle together eclectic strands of evidence in order to understand how pregnancy and the pregnant body were conceptualised at this time. By exploring such “womb politics”, it is possible to add significantly to our knowledge on gender, bodies and sexual politics in the Viking age and beyond.

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First, we examined words and stories depicting pregnancy in Old Norse sources. Despite dating to the centuries after the Viking age, sagas and legal texts provide words and stories about childbearing that the Vikings’ immediate descendants used and circulated.

We learned that pregnancy could be described as “bellyful”, “unlight” and “not whole”. And we gleaned an insight into the possible belief in personhood of a foetus: “A woman walking not alone.”

An episode in one of the sagas we looked at supports the idea that unborn children (at least high-status ones) could already be inscribed into complex systems of kinship, allies, feuds and obligations. It tells the story of a tense confrontation between the pregnant Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir, a protagonist in the Saga of the People of Laxardal and her husband’s killer, Helgi Harðbeinsson.

As a provocation, Helgi wipes his bloody spear on Guđrun’s clothes and over her belly. He declares: “I think that under the corner of that shawl dwells my own death.” Helgi’s prediction comes true, and the foetus grows up to avenge his father.

Another episode, from the Saga of Erik the Red, focuses more on the agency of the mother. The heavily pregnant Freydís Eiríksdóttir is caught up in an attack by the skrælings, the Norse name for the indigenous populations of Greenland and Canada. When she cannot escape due to her pregnancy, Freydís picks up a sword, bares her breast and strikes the sword against it, scaring the assailants away.

While sometimes regarded as an obscure literary episode in scholarship, this story may find a parallel in the second set of evidence we examined for the study: a figurine of a pregnant woman.

This pendant, found in a tenth-century woman’s burial in Aska, Sweden, is the only known convincing depiction of pregnancy from the Viking age. It depicts a figure in female dress with the arms embracing an accentuated belly — perhaps signalling connection with the coming child. What makes this figurine especially interesting is that the pregnant woman is wearing a martial helmet.

Taken together, these strands of evidence show that pregnant women could, at least in art and stories, be engaged with violence and weapons. These were not passive bodies. Together with recent studies of Viking women buried as warriors, this provokes further thought to how we envisage gender roles in the oft-perceived hyper-masculine Viking societies.

Missing children and pregnancy as a defect

A final strand of investigation was to look for evidence for obstetric deaths in the Viking burial record. Maternal-infant death rates are thought to be very high in most pre-industrial societies. Yet, we found that among thousands of Viking graves, only 14 possible mother-infant burials are reported.

Consequently, we suggest that pregnant women who died weren’t routinely buried with their unborn child and may not have been commemorated as one, symbiotic unity by Viking societies. In fact, we also found newborns buried with adult men and postmenopausal women, assemblages which may be family graves, but they may also be something else altogether.

We cannot exclude that infants – underrepresented in the burial record more generally – were disposed of in death elsewhere. When they are found in graves with other bodies, it’s possible they were included as a “grave good” (objects buried with a deceased person) for other people in the grave.

This is a stark reminder that pregnancy and infancy can be vulnerable states of transition. A final piece of evidence speaks to this point like no other. For some, like Guđrun’s little boy, gestation and birth represented a multi-staged process towards becoming a free social person.

For people lower on the social rung, however, this may have looked very different. One of the legal texts we examined dryly informs us that when enslaved women were put up for sale, pregnancy was regarded as a defect of their bodies.

Pregnancy was deeply political and far from uniform in meaning for Viking-age communities. It shaped – and was shaped by – ideas of social status, kinship and personhood. Our study shows that pregnancy was not invisible or private, but crucial to how Viking societies understood life, social identities and power.

Marianne Hem Eriksen, Associate Professor of Archaeology, University of Leicester

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

As grocery prices continue to rise, many Australians are struggling to afford healthy food and are looking for alternatives to the big supermarket chains.

The recent supermarkets inquiry, run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, confirmed Australia’s grocery sector is highly concentrated, with limited competition and rising retail margins. In regional and remote areas, consumers often face higher prices and fewer choices.

One option growing in popularity around the country is the community food co-operative, or “food co-op”.

Food co-ops are local not-for-profit or member-owned groups where people join together to buy food in bulk, usually straight from farmers or wholesalers. These co-ops can take different forms, including shops, neighbourhood-based hubs, or box delivery models. They typically offer a range of foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, dairy products, eggs and pantry staples.

By co-ordinating their orders, members can reduce food costs, limit packaging waste, and avoid supermarket markups. Co-ops can also help lower transport emissions by reducing long supply chains.

We’ve been researching the benefits of food co-ops. We’ve found this model could reduce food insecurity and increase people’s intake of fruit and vegetables.

How are food co-ops run?

Some co-ops are owned and run by their members. Any surplus or profits are generally reinvested into the co-op or shared through lower prices, improved services, or support for local community initiatives.

Other co-ops are managed by not-for-profit organisations focused on improving food access for whole communities.

More recently, digital platforms and apps have made it even easier for people to start or join co-ops and connect with local growers.

Regardless of the model, co-ops are guided by values of co-operation, fairness and community benefit, rather than profit.

What does the research say?

We recently published a study which adds to a growing body of evidence showing food co-ops can play an important role in improving diet and reducing food insecurity.

Food insecurity is when someone doesn’t have reliable access to affordable, nutritious food. It can mean skipping meals, eating less fresh produce, relying on cheap processed foods, or experiencing ongoing stress about being able to afford groceries.

We surveyed more than 2,200 members of Box Divvy, a community-based food co-op operating across New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Within this co-op, members join local “hubs”, pool their orders for groceries through an app, and collect their food from a nearby coordinator.

To measure food security, we used an internationally recognised survey that asks about things such as running out of food or skipping meals due to cost.

Before joining the co-op, more than 50% of surveyed members were classified as “food insecure”. This is well above the national average (estimated to be around 22%). It suggests many people turning to food co-ops are already under significant financial pressure.

After joining, food insecurity dropped by nearly 23%. The rate of severe food insecurity – where people skip meals and regularly experience hunger – more than halved.

These changes were accompanied by improved diets. We asked participants to report how many serves of fruit and vegetables they usually ate in a day. On average, members increased their vegetable intake by 3.3 serves per week and their fruit intake by 2.5 serves.

The benefits were even more pronounced for people experiencing severe food insecurity, who tend to have poorer diets overall. They ate 5.5 more serves of vegetables and 4.4 more serves of fruit per week while using the co-op.

These are meaningful improvements that bring people closer to meeting national dietary guidelines. This matters because eating more fruit and vegetables is linked to a lower risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers.

Other research has reflected similar findings. A 2020 Sydney-based study found co-op members were more likely to meet the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables than non-members.

Another study of The Community Grocer, a Melbourne-based social enterprise, found their weekly markets offered produce around 40% cheaper than nearby retailers and improved healthy food access for culturally diverse and low-income customers.

Internationally, a Canadian study of a community-based food box program – similar in structure to some co-ops – reported higher fruit and vegetable intake among regular users. It found a decline in intake for those who stopped using the service.

In Wales, disadvantaged communities that used co-ops reported better access to fresh produce. Similarly in New Zealand, co-op participants reported better access to healthy food.

In qualitative research, people who have experienced food insecurity say co-ops offer a more dignified alternative to food relief by offering choice and control over what’s on the table.

Where to next?

Despite clear benefits, food co-ops remain largely overlooked in Australian policy. This is at a time when national conversations about price gouging and supermarket power highlight the need for viable, community-based alternatives.

Meanwhile, food co-ops also face operational challenges. For example, regulatory requirements can vary significantly between local councils and states. This makes it difficult to establish, scale or replicate successful co-ops.

Government support could help co-ops grow where they’re needed most. Some measures might include:

• seed funding and small grants to establish co-ops in low-income communities
• subsidised memberships or vouchers for eligible households
• investment in digital tools and logistics to support efficient operations, particularly in rural and remote areas
• simplifying regulatory processes.

As the Feeding Australia strategy develops under the Albanese government, there’s an opportunity to consider how community models such as food co-ops could complement broader national efforts to improve food security and strengthen local food systems.

Katherine Kent, Senior Lecturer in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Wollongong; Cristy Brooks, Associate Lecturer in Interprofessional Health Sciences, Western Sydney University, and Freya MacMillan, Professor, Translational Health Research Institute, Western Sydney University

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

Wet and shivering, I rose from the outrigger of a Polynesian voyaging canoe. We’d been at sea all afternoon and most of the night. I’d hoped to get a little rest, but rain, wind and an absence of flat space made sleep impossible. My companions didn’t even try.

It was May 1972, and I was three months into doctoral research on one of the world’s most remote islands. Anuta is the easternmost populated outpost in the Solomon Islands. It is a half-mile in diameter, 75 miles (120 kilometers) from its nearest inhabited neighbor, and remains one of the few communities where inter-island travel in outrigger canoes is regularly practiced.

My hosts organized a bird-hunting expedition to Patutaka, an uninhabited monolith 30 miles away, and invited me to join the team.

We spent 20 hours en route to our destination, followed by two days there, and sailed back with a 20-knot tail wind. That adventure led to decades of anthropological research on how Pacific Islanders traverse the open sea aboard small craft, without “modern” instruments, and safely arrive at their intended destinations.

Wayfinding techniques vary, depending upon geographic and environmental conditions. Many, however, are widespread. They include mental mapping of the islands in the sailors’ navigational universe and the location of potential destinations in relation to the movement of stars, ocean currents, winds and waves.

Western interest in Pacific voyaging

Disney’s two “Moana” movies have shined a recent spotlight on Polynesian voyaging. European admiration for Pacific mariners, however, dates back centuries.

In 1768, the French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville named Sāmoa the “Navigators’ Islands.” The famed British sea captain James Cook reported that Indigenous canoes were as fast and agile as his ships. He welcomed Tupaia, a navigational expert from Ra‘iātea, onto his ship and documented Tupaia’s immense geographic knowledge.

In 1938, Māori scholar Te Rangi Hīroa (aka Sir Peter Buck) authored “Vikings of the Sunrise,” outlining Pacific exploration as portrayed in Polynesian legend.

In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer and amateur archaeologist, crossed from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands aboard a balsa wood raft that he named Kon-Tiki, sparking further interest and inspiring a sequence of experimental voyages.

Ten years later Andrew Sharp, a New Zealand-based historian and prominent naysayer, argued that accurate navigation over thousands of miles without instruments is impossible. Others responded with ethnographic studies showing that such voyages were both historic fact and current practice. In 1970, Thomas Gladwin published his findings on the Micronesian island of Polowat in “East Is a Big Bird.” Two years later, David Lewis’ “We, the Navigators” documented wayfinding techniques across much of Oceania.

Many anthropologists, along with Indigenous mariners, have built on Gladwin’s and Lewis’ work.

A final strand has been experimental voyaging. Most celebrated is the work of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. They constructed a double-hull voyaging canoe named Hōkūle‘a, built from modern materials but following a traditional design. In 1976, led by Micronesian navigator Mau Piailug, they sailed Hōkūle‘a over 2,500 miles, from Hawai‘i to Tahiti, without instruments. In 2017, Hōkūle‘a completed a circumnavigation of the planet.

In traversing Earth’s largest ocean, one can travel thousands of miles and see nothing but sky and water in any direction. Absent a magnetic compass, much less GPS, how is it possible to navigate accurately to the intended destination?

Looking to the stars

Most Pacific voyagers rely on celestial navigation. Stars rise in the east, set in the west, and, near the equator, follow a set line of latitude. If a known star either rises or sets directly over the target island, the helmsman can align the vessel with that star.

However, there are complications.

Which stars are visible, as well as their rising and setting points, changes throughout the year. Therefore, navigation requires detailed astronomical understanding.

Also, stars are constantly in motion. One that is positioned directly over the target island will soon either rise too high to be useful or sink below the horizon. Thus, a navigator must seek other stars that follow a similar trajectory and track them as long as they are visible and low on the horizon. Such a sequence of guide stars is often called a “star path.”

Of course, stars may not align precisely with the desired target. In that case, instead of aiming directly toward the guide star, the navigator keeps it at an appropriate angle.

A navigator must modify the vessel’s alignment with the stars to compensate for currents and wind that may push the canoe sideways. This movement is called leeway. Therefore, celestial navigation requires knowledge of the currents’ presence, speed, strength and direction, as well as being able to judge winds’ strength, direction and effect on the canoe.

During daylight, when stars are invisible, the Sun may serve a similar purpose. In early morning and late afternoon, when the Sun is low in the sky, sailors use it to calculate their heading. Clouds, however, sometimes obscure both Sun and stars, in which case voyagers rely on other cues.

Waves, wind and other indicators

A critical indicator is swells. These are waves produced by winds that blow steadily across thousands of miles of open sea. They maintain their direction regardless of temporary or local winds, which produce differently shaped waves called “seas.”

The helmsman, feeling swells beneath the vessel, gleans the proper heading, even in the dark. In some locations, as many as three or four distinct swell patterns may exist; voyagers distinguish them by size, shape, strength and direction in relation to prevailing winds.

Once sailors near their target island, but before it is visible, they must determine its precise location. A common indicator is reflected waves: swells that hit the island and bounce back to sea. The navigator feels reflected waves and sails toward them. Pacific navigators who have spent their lives at sea appear quite confident in their reliance on reflected waves. I, by contrast, find them difficult to differentiate from waves produced directly by the wind.

Certain birds that nest on land and fish at sea are also helpful. In early morning, one assumes they’re flying from the island; in late afternoon, they’re likely returning to their nesting spots.

Navigators sometimes recognize a greenish tint to the sky above a not-yet-visible island. Clouds may gather over a volcanic peak.

And sailors in the Solomon Islands’ Vaeakau-Taumako region report underwater streaks of light known as te lapa, which they say point toward distant islands. One well-known researcher has expressed confidence in te lapa’s existence and utility. Some scholars have suggested that it could be a bioluminescent or electromagnetic phenomenon. On the other hand, despite a year of concerted effort, I was unable to confirm its presence.

Estimating one’s position at sea is another challenge. Stars move along a given parallel and indicate one’s latitude. To gauge longitude, by contrast, requires dead reckoning. Navigators calculate their position by keeping track of their starting point, direction, speed and time at sea.

Some Micronesian navigators estimate their progress through a system known as etak. They visualize the angle between their canoe, pictured as stationary, and a reference island that is off to one side and represented as moving. Western researchers have speculated on how etak works, but there is no consensus yet.

For millennia, Pacific voyagers have relied on techniques such as these to reach thousands of islands, strewn throughout our planet’s largest ocean. They did so without Western instruments. Instead, they held sophisticated knowledge and shared understandings, passed by word of mouth, through countless generations.

Richard (Rick) Feinberg, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Kent State University

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

Anzac Day has come and gone again. But – lest we forget – war and its consequences are not confined to single days in the calendar. Nor do we only remember those who fought at Gallipoli more than a century ago.

This gradual expansion of the scope and meaning of April 25 is now about to grow further, with the Anzac Day Amendment Bill currently before parliament. Its goal is to make the commemoration “broader and more inclusive than it currently is”.

Remembrance will soon include “other conflicts and persons who have served New Zealand in time of war or in warlike conflicts in the past and in the future that are not currently covered”.

New Zealand personnel who served in United Nations missions, and who fought or died in training, will be recognised, as will civilians who served in war or warlike conflicts. Without doubt, it is an excellent initiative.

The question is, does it go far enough? The obvious omission, if the new law is intended to be “broader” and include past wars, is the conflict that helped shape (and still shapes) the country we are today: the New Zealand Wars.

Of course, including this pivotal period from 1843 to 1872 plays into the politics of today, given the land confiscations and other injustices the New Zealand Wars also represent. The question is whether their inclusion can avoid becoming a culture war in the process.

How Anzac Day has grown

The case for explicitly including the New Zealand Wars is strong. It is thought about 500 British and colonial troops, 250 of their Māori allies (sometimes known as kūpapa), and 2,000 Māori fighting against the Crown died in these conflicts.

It was also during these wars that Australian and New Zealand military cooperation (the earliest form of Anzacs, in a sense) actually began. Around 2,500 Australian men enlisted for irregular New Zealand militia units, many encouraged by the offer of land grants in return for serving.

Furthermore, Anzac Day has gradually grown over time to include wars and military conflicts beyond the tragedy in Turkey, first observed in 1916 when the government gazetted a half-day holiday (later made into a full public holiday in 1921) .

The government again changed the law governing Anzac Day in 1949 to include World War II and the 11,500 New Zealand citizens who died in it. Significantly, it also added the South African/Boer War (which killed 59 New Zealanders), setting a precedent for bringing pre-first world war events into the frame.

In 1966, Anzac Day’s scope grew again to recognise those “who at any time have given their lives for New Zealand and the British Empire or Commonwealth of Nations”. This allowed commemorations to cover the Cold War period, during which New Zealanders were killed in the Malayan Emergency (15), Korea (38) and Vietnam (37).

Remembering without prejudice

The counterargument to including the New Zealand Wars in an expanded Anzac Day might be that we already have a dedicated day of observance: Te Pūtake o te Riri on October 28, the date the Declaration of Independence of the United Tribes of New Zealand (precursor to the Treaty of Waitangi) was signed in 1835.

First observed in 2018, the commemorations take place in different locations each year. And perhaps one day, young New Zealanders will talk about the events at Rangiriri, Gate Pā, Matawhero and Ngātapa in the same way they now talk about Gallipoli, Passchendaele, Crete and Monte Cassino.

But the problem is that a two-tier system seems to have been created. Te Pūtake o te Riri was not made an official holiday and has struggled for wider recognition. While there is some public funding available, it is not on the scale of Anzac Day.

Te Pūtake o te Riri can and will continue to evolve, and it’s focus on the causes and injustices of these conflicts should not be diminished.

But an expanded and more inclusive Anzac Day, which recognises those who fought and died, would add another layer of meaning to a date long enshrined in the national calendar, similar to the way National Memorial Day in the United States encompasses their Civil War.

We are now at a point in history when the injustices of the early colonial government have at least been acknowledged through the Treaty settlement process. It would make sense for the New Zealand Wars to be folded into the Anzac Day Amendment Bill.

The words “lest we forget” should also apply to those who fell in the nation’s third most costly military conflict. That way we can remember all of the fallen, without prejudice.

Public submissions on the Anzac Day Amendment Bill close on Thursday May 22.

Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato

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

Inhalers have been key to asthma management since the 1950s. The most common, salbutamol, comes in a familiar blue-coloured inhaler (or “puffer”).

This kind of “rescue inhaler” brings quick relief from asthma symptoms. You may know these inhalers by their brand names such as Ventolin, Asmol or Zempreon.

But there is growing evidence that using this kind of inhaler without treating the underlying condition may not only be ineffective – it could actually increase the risk of an asthma attack.

Next month, the National Asthma Council is releasing updated guidelines that reflect this shift. Here’s what’s changing and what you need to know.

What is a bronchodilator?

Bronchodilators such as salbutamol act by relaxing smooth muscle in the airways. While they don’t address inflammation, which is the key cause of asthma, bronchodilators are effective at quickly opening up constricted airways.

This means for people experiencing typical asthma symptoms – such as tightness of the chest and shortness of breath – a puff of salbutamol brings relief within ten minutes. The effect can last up to six hours.

Salbutamol is used by people with asthma and other respiratory conditions, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (which includes chronic bronchitis and/or emphysema). As part of a management plan made with a doctor, salbutamol is used to relieve shortness of breath when it occurs.

In Australia, more than 60% of salbutamol is purchased over the counter (without a prescription) in pharmacies. Many of these purchases may be for people with infrequent asthma symptoms, meaning less than twice a month.

However, we now know there are safer and more effective ways for people with infrequent asthma to manage it in the long term.

So, what’s wrong with using salbutamol?

Treating symptoms is only one part of asthma management. Salbutamol doesn’t address the root cause – why the airways of people who get asthma become constricted in the first place.

It’s a bit like taking pain relief for a swollen elbow without treating the tendonitis causing the pain.

In asthma, chronic inflammation is usually a result of genes and environment interacting.

Some people have airways that overreact to triggers in the environment. These triggers include pollens, moulds and dust mites, or air that is cold or humid.

Over the long term, chronic inflammation can lead to changes in the airways. The airway walls become thicker and produce more mucus, allowing less space for air to flow through them.

Using short-acting treatments such as salbutamol without addressing chronic inflammation in the airways poses risks.

Salbutamol can become less effective with regular use. This means people with shortness of breath don’t gain the relief they expect and need, and paradoxically, their airways may become more “twitchy” (sensitive to environmental triggers) and inflamed. One response to this is people use more salbutamol and the problem is compounded.

Strong data links increased use of short-term inhalers such as salbutamol to higher risk of asthma flare-ups, hospital admissions and even death.

Purchasing three or more salbutamol inhalers per year is considered overuse.

According to asthma guidelines in Australia and globally, needing salbutamol for symptom relief on more than two days a week is an indicator of poorly controlled asthma, requiring review and possibly anti-inflammatory treatment.

What do the new guidelines recommend?

In 2019, the Global Initiative for Asthma, an independent not-for-profit organisation, radically changed its recommendations for salbutamol use. This is based on its committee of asthma experts reviewing the evidence.

Australian asthma guidelines from the National Asthma Council are set to follow suit.

The council’s 2025 Australian Asthma Handbook now states that salbutamol alone is inadequate treatment for asthma in adults or adolescents.

Previously, the guidelines recommended people with infrequent symptoms to use salbutamol when needed and “alone” – that is, without an anti-inflammatory preventer.

The new recommendations specifically warn against anyone with asthma using a short-acting bronchodilator such as salbutamol by itself, due to the increased health risks mentioned above.

People with asthma who use salbutamol, for example, should also use an anti-inflammatory treatment that provides preventive cover, such as an inhaled corticosteroid.

The 2025 Australian Asthma Handbook now recommends anti-inflammatory relievers from day one when it comes to asthma treatment in adults and adolescents.

These inhalers contain, in a single dose (one puff), both a bronchodilator (to relieve symptoms) and a low-dose anti-inflammatory corticosteroid (to treat underlying inflammation).

They are recommended instead of salbutamol-only inhalers for symptom relief, even for those whose symptoms are infrequent.

When used in place of salbutamol-only inhalers, anti-inflammatory relievers have demonstrated improvements in quality of life for people with asthma, as well as lower risks of hospitalisations and death.

In the case of children with asthma, global guidelines emphasise the use of anti-inflammatory inhalers and discourage over-reliance on bronchodilators.

Will I need to change my inhaler?

Currently, combination anti-inflammatory relievers are only available with a prescription from a doctor. These prescriptions with repeats can allow people with asthma up to 12 months of treatment.

In Australia you can still buy salbutamol in a pharmacy without a prescription, after consultation with a pharmacist.

However, if you have asthma and you’re concerned about the new guidance, you should speak to your pharmacist or doctor for advice.

Stephen Hughes, Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, University of Sydney and Bandana Saini, Professor, Pharmacy Practice, University of Sydney

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

Populist rhetoric targeting young offenders often leads to kneejerk punitive responses, such as stricter bail laws and lowering the age of criminal responsibility. This, in turn, has led to more young people being held in detention.

In Australia, the number of young people held in detention facilities increased by 8% (from 784 to 845) between the June quarter of 2023 and the June quarter of 2024.

But what if some of these young people were treated and helped, rather than incarcerated? A series of recently published studies examining mental health in the youth justice population suggests treatment would be more beneficial than punitive measures – some of which may even promote persistent offending.

Increased incarceration

New South Wales saw a 31% increase in young people in detention between 2023 and 2024.

Increases in youth detention numbers have also been reported in Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania and South Australia over the same period.

About 60% of young people in detention are First Nations youth.

Custody as a catalyst

Young people in the justice system have significantly higher rates of mental ill-health and adverse childhood experiences than their peers in the general population.

However, less clear is how involvement in the justice system, particularly custody, affects the severity and trajectory of these mental health issues over time.

Our team examined how exposure to the justice system affected mental health among young people in NSW. We analysed administrative health and justice data over two years post-supervision.

These data came from more than 1,500 justice-involved youth who participated in the Young People in Custody Health Survey in 2003, 2009 and 2015 and Young People on Community Orders Health Survey between 2003 and 2006.

We found young people who had spent time in custody faced markedly higher rates of subsequent psychiatric hospitalisation compared with those supervised in the community.

The risk of psychiatric hospitalisations was higher for those with multiple custody episodes. This demonstrates the significant negative impact of incarceration on the mental health of young people long after they are released.

We also examined how the impact of custody on psychiatric hospitalisations differed by age.

We found psychiatric hospitalisation rates were similar among youth aged 14–17 years who had been supervised in the community, compared with those aged 18 and older.

However, youth aged 14–17 who were placed in custody were hospitalised at significantly higher rates than their older peers aged 18 and above.

This suggests incarceration is particularly harmful for younger offenders.

How does this affect crime?

When we examined the long-term consequences of youth detention on subsequent offending, we found conviction during adolescence, especially before the age of 14, significantly increased the likelihood of later entering the adult prison system.

Those who were incarcerated during adolescence faced a fivefold increase in the risk of being incarcerated as an adult, compared with young people who’d never been in custody.

This suggests it may be beneficial to delay the involvement of young people in the justice system to help prevent repeat offending in the future.

Breaking the cycle

So what can be done to help?

In NSW, laws allow young people with mental health conditions to be diverted from judicial processes into treatment. Such laws for young people also exist in other states, although specific models vary.

While research shows those diverted into treatment have a lower risk of reoffending, less than half of eligible youth receive this option.

How do we help those who miss out? Our studies examined whether going to mental health services voluntarily (without a court order) could help reduce recidivism.

Among boys who had been in custody, we found they were 40% less likely to reoffend if they received mental health treatment after release than those who did not receive such treatment.

A similar, but larger, benefit was observed among boys supervised in the community. There, mental health treatment was associated with a 57% reduction in reoffending risk.

Evidence-based reform

Evidence shows punitive measures do not deter youth crime, but instead are likely to perpetuate cycles of offending into adulthood.

Policymakers should reimagine youth justice to protect young people and create real pathways to rehabilitation.

Raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility to delay the onset of formal contact with the justice system aligns with developmental science and prevents early criminalisation of young people.

Enhancing routine mental health screening in the justice system and expanding access to diversion programs is warranted.

Our findings on the benefits of routine mental health treatment highlight the potential for more integrated approaches. When combined with wraparound services for health and education, they could be even more effective.

As detaining a young person costs around $1 million annually, mental health treatment-based approaches make sound financial sense too.

Emaediong I. Akpanekpo, PhD Candidate, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney and Tony Butler, Professor and Program Head, Justice Health Research Program, UNSW Sydney

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

If you have a job in Australia, you’ve probably noticed each of your payslips has a section telling you how much superannuation will be paid alongside your wages.

But while your wages are deposited in your bank account however frequently you receive a payslip – whether that’s weekly, fortnightly or monthly – it’s a different story for your super.

Under current superannuation laws, employers are only required to pay super into an employee’s nominated fund at least four times a year – 28 days after the end of each quarter – although many do pay more regularly.

But that’s set to change. From July 1 2026, new “payday super” rules will require employers to pay super into the employee’s fund within seven days of wages.

This reform was announced in the 2023–24 federal budget, allowing employers, superannuation funds and software providers three years to set up compliant systems. But it hasn’t yet been legislated.

Now, some industry groups are calling for a further delay of up to two years. So, who are these reforms designed to benefit? And does business really need more time to get ready?

Missing or incorrect super

Missing or incorrect super payments present a huge problem for Australia’s retirement system.

The Super Members Council claims one in four Australians are missing out on the correct amount of superannuation contributions.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) estimates A$5.2 billion of guaranteed superannuation went unpaid in 2021–22.

This can be due to payroll errors, misclassification under an award or, in extreme cases, non-payment of superannuation as a form of wage theft. All these things can be harder to spot when super is paid less frequently.

Rules only requiring super to be paid quarterly may have been appropriate 30 years ago, in the early days of the superannuation guarantee. Business systems were often not computerised, and wages were often paid in cash.

Times have changed

Payroll systems are now much more sophisticated.

From 2018, the federal government rolled out the single-touch payroll program that requires employers to report wages in real time, including details of superannuation guarantee withheld from an employee’s wages.

The government is already benefiting from the increased automation of data submitted through this system.

Single-touch payroll data helps improve official labour statistics and provides up-to-date income information for employees through the MyGov portal.

Sending real-time data to Centrelink addresses one of the major flaws underpinning the Robodebt scandal, which used an averaging system to estimate fortnightly earnings.

Benefits for employees

In simple terms, the coming changes are basically a change in timing. Payments will be transferred to an employee’s super fund in the same way their wages are transferred directly to their bank account.

Once bedded down, the changes will provide benefits across the board to employees, employers and the government.

Currently, if an employee believes the correct amount of superannuation is not being paid to their fund, they are expected to follow this up directly with the ATO.

Unfortunately, many employees presume the withheld amount shown on the payslip has already been paid into their super account.

Unless a member is actively monitoring their super balance, they may be unaware that the amount shown on their payslip is not being paid into their fund on a timely basis.

Benefits for business

Employers should also benefit from these changes, many of whom already do transfer superannuation when wages are paid.

Currently, superannuation guarantee payments are run on a separate payment cycle to payroll, coinciding with payment of tax liabilities. If payments are on the same cycle as payroll, it should make budgeting easier, and ensure the separate super payment run is not overlooked.

This assumes, of course, that the business is not relying on unpaid superannuation contributions to manage their cash flows elsewhere in the business. If that is the case, payday super changes will help protect the employee if the employer runs into financial difficulties.

The change will also allow the tax office to match deductions and payments in real time to detect fraud – and check that super is actually being paid. This can reduce audit costs and – in the long run – reduce reliance on the aged pension as super account balances improve.

Why wait any longer?

So, with all of these expected benefits, why has the financial services sector this month asked for implementation to be delayed further – by up to two years? The building blocks of the system – electronic payments to transfer funds and the government’s single-touch payroll gateway – are already in place.

One challenge is legislative. Although announced in May 2023, the draft legislation was only released for consultation in March 2025.

The Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 needs extensive amendments to rewrite references to the calculation and payment of the superannuation guarantee charge.

The draft legislation also makes some changes to definitions that may impact on how systems must be set up for payday super. Although not intended to change entitlements, they need to be made accurate in the software.

Still, payday super has the potential to strengthen Australia’s superannuation system, protecting employee contributions and smoothing the payment system for employers. Concerns around its implementation are largely due to the time it has taken for the draft legislation to emerge.

Following the election, the federal government has the numbers to pass this legislation as a matter of priority.

Helen Hodgson, Professor, Curtin Law School and Curtin Business School, Curtin University

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

Cynics point out that when a party turns to a woman leader, it is often handing her a hot mess. That’s certainly so with the federal Liberals, now choosing their first female leader in eight decades.

For the Liberals, and for Sussan Ley, 63, this is a bittersweet milestone. The odds are overwhelmingly against her chances of taking the Liberals from opposition to government.

Given Labor’s massive majority, it will be virtually impossible for the Liberals to regain office in under two terms (when Ley would be in her late 60s). The way these things go, there’s likely to be more than one opposition leader in the next half dozen years.

Most immediately, Ley has to put the meagre talent pool available to best use. This is not just fitting the right people into the right spots but containing ambitions and discontents.

Peter Dutton didn’t have to look over his shoulder in three years. Ley will be constantly glancing behind. Given the closeness of the vote, and his personality, Angus Taylor is unlikely to regard the result as closing the book. But for the moment, he said on Tuesday, “We must unify […] I will contribute the best way I can to help get us back in the fight.”

Jacinta Price, after defecting from the Nationals in a bid to become deputy to Taylor, has had her hopes of dramatic advancement dashed. In the end, she didn’t even contest the deputyship. She said later she was “disappointed” Taylor was not elected. Talked up by the conservative base, she may also find her new Liberal kennel more flea-ridden than her previous fairly-comfy Nationals one. Certainly Price, used to running her own race, will require careful management. She told Sky on Tuesday night she looked forward to “robust debate” in the party room.

Over coming days, there’ll be the opposition’s pain-filled policy overhaul. The nearly evenly divided leadership vote (29-25), in which the moderates supported Ley and the conservatives backed Taylor, highlights differences over policy.

A large cloud hangs over the controversial nuclear policy. Some will want to ditch it entirely; others will argue it should be recalibrated. A complication is that Ted O'Brien, the new deputy, was its main architect.

More seriously, the commitment to net zero emissions reduction by 2050 will be on the table.

Ley told her joint news conference with O'Brien: “There won’t be a climate war. There will be sound and sensible consultation”. That sounds like wishful thinking. It certainly goes against the Coalition’s history.

While there are some Liberal critics of net zero, this is particularly a debate for the Nationals, among whom there will be a strong push to ditch the commitment.

Within the Coalition, the Nationals will have greater clout because they held almost all their seats. What they do on climate policy will substantially affect the joint party room. But will there be pressure to break the Coalition?

Especially challenging for Ley – and at present looking almost impossible – is how the Liberals manage to appeal to two vital constituencies, women and younger voters. Many professional women in what were once solid Liberal areas have gone off to the teals. The under-50s have comprehensively rejected the Liberals.

Ley said: “We have to have a Liberal Party that respects modern Australia, that reflects modern Australia, and represents modern Australia. And we have to meet the people where they are.”

That’s exactly right, if the Liberal Party is to be successful. But the reality is that the party, as things stand, appears incapable of “meeting the people where they are.” The fundamental problem is that these constituencies – younger voters and women – are increasingly progressive in their politics, but the Liberals are not.

It’s not as if Ley, when deputy leader, didn’t make an effort with women. After the 2022 election, she embarked on a “women’s listening tour”. But such efforts didn’t work, and the Liberals then further alienated women with the working-from-home debacle..

Pitching to women in future will require the Liberals to consider whether they should swallow their objection to quotas for female candidates – and that will encounter fierce resistance.

The Liberals need to thread the needle between the so-called “leafy” urban areas they must win back and the outer suburbs that Dutton thought, wrongly, could take him to power.

Ley is a centrist and a pragmatist. She told her news conference she believed government “is ultimately formed in a sensible centre”.

She will probably be able to navigate issues such as “welcome to country” and the flag better than Dutton, and she said that at the Liberal Party meeting “I committed to my colleagues that there would be no captain’s calls”.

She has changed her views on issues, ranging from her previously strong support for the Palestinians (she was in the parliamentary friends of Palestine) to her opposition to the live sheep trade (she had a private member’s bill in 2018 restricting these exports).

A massive problem Ley will confront is the weak and in parts feral Liberal organisation, which is a federation of states. Variously, these divisions are riven by factionalism, depleted, and incompetent, or all of those. In contrast, Labor excels in its ground game at elections. Ley won’t be able to drive the needed reform, and the party lacks the strong figures in the organisation to do so.

Few people want to join political parties these days, and when a party is on the ropes, the traffic is the other way. This gives the ideologues and factional players even more power over candidate selection, often with bad outcomes.

Adding to their organisational challenges, the Liberals will also likely have to find a new federal director, with Andrew Hirst, who has been in the post since 2017, expected to move on.

When Ley was young she put an extra “s” in her name. She describes it as a joke in her rebellious youth. She told journalist Kate Legge in 2015, “I read about this numerology theory that if you add the numbers that match the letters in your name you can change your personality. I worked out that if you added an "s” I would have an incredibly exciting, interesting life and nothing would ever be boring.“

However it turns out, her time as opposition leader won’t be boring.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

We have a refreshed and revitalised Australian government, enriched with great political capital.

During the last term of parliament before the election, opportunities to address Australia’s raging gambling habit were neglected.

Could this government now have enough authority and courage to take on the gambling ecosystem?

A massive issue

Australians are the world’s biggest gambling losers.

Many attribute this to some inherent Australian trait. But what it really comes down to is the proliferation of gambling operators and their products.

They’re everywhere, along with their marketing and promotion.

Half of the gambling problems in Australia are associated with poker machines, ubiquitous in all states and territories other than Western Australia (WA).

Consequently, and unsurprisingly, WA has the lowest rate of gambling harms. The state has 2,500 pokies at a single Perth casino and none in clubs or pubs.

New South Wales boasts nearly 90,000 pokies, the highest pokie “density” in Australia, and its clubs and pubs make $8.1 billion a year.

Overall, pokie losses in Australia total $15.8 billion per year.

Wagering (betting on sport, racing and even elections), is now mainly online, and reaps another $8.4 billion in Australia. This is the fastest growing gambling sector, with growth, adjusted for inflation, of more than 45% between 2018-19 and 2022-23.

Pokies grew by a more modest 7.6% during the same period. Only casinos went backwards.

Overall, gambling costs Australians more than $32 billion annually.

This has been fuelled by relentless promotion and marketing and the expansion of the gambling ecosystem: the network of commercial actors who reap a major dividend from gambling losses.

It includes the bookies, pub and club chains as well as sporting leagues, financial services providers, software and game developers, charitable organisations, broadcasters, and state and territory governments.

Of course, gambling comes at a cost: it is strongly linked to broken relationships, loss of assets, employment and educational opportunities, and crime rates.

Intimate partner violence and neglect of children, along with poor mental and physical health, are also connected to gambling accessibility. As, unfortunately, is suicide.

However, there are ways to reduce gambling harm.

Six ways to tackle the problem

1. First up, we need a national gambling regulator. This was an important recommendation in the 2023 report of the all-party parliamentary committee chaired by the late Peta Murphy.

Currently, gambling is regulated by each state and territory. Some have reasonably robust systems in place. Others, somewhat less so. None are best practice.

A national system is long overdue, as many gambling businesses operate across multiple Australian jurisdictions.

In the absence of national regulation, the Northern Territory has become the de facto national regulator for online wagering. It offers a low-tax and arguably low intervention regulatory system.

Yet the vast majority of losses from punters come in other jurisdictions.

National regulation would also assist in standardising tax rates and maintaining reasonable uniform standards of regulation and enforcement.

2. Poker machines are Australia’s biggest gambling problem, but a national precommitment scheme would provide a tool for people to manage their gambling.

This proposal has been frequently mooted in Australia since the Productivity Commission recommended it in 2010.

It has worked well in Europe: forms of it now operate in 27 European countries.

Both Victoria and Tasmania have proposed it, as did the Perrottet government in the lead into the last NSW election.

Unfortunately, the power of the pokie lobby, supercharged by the addiction surplus it reaps from punters, has slowed or stopped its implementation.

But it’s eminently feasible and is highly likely to significantly reduce the harm of pokies.

The technical challenges are far from insurmountable, despite what industry interests argue.

3. Limiting accessibility to pokies is an important way to reduce harm.

Nothing good happens in a pokie room after midnight, yet they are often open until 4am, with reopening time only a little later.

Closing down venues after midnight and not opening until 10am would help a lot of people.

4. We can’t talk about political access without considering some key tools of the gambling ecosystem.

Pokie operators have enormous ability to influence politicians. Donations are a typical method to ensure access, backed up by the “revolving door” of post-politics jobs.

Politicians also enjoy a stream of freebies from the gambling ecosystem, which allow these businesses to bend the ear of a guest for hours at a time, at lunch, over drinks, or during an event.

To address this, we need better rules around acceptance of hospitality and gifts. Some states have moved towards such arrangements but there has been little action on the national front.

5. Another major recommendation from the Murphy committee was the banning of online gambling ads.

The majority of Australians want it to happen, and gambling ads are banned for almost all other forms of gambling.

The special treatment for this rapidly growing, highly harmful gambling product makes no sense.

6. Finally, we need to properly resource research into gambling harm and its prevention.

Much gambling research (and its conferences) are funded by the gambling ecosystem, either directly or via representative organisations.

This raises massive conflicts and has lead to a poor evidence base for policy making.

The time is now

Anything that stops people getting into trouble with gambling will be opposed by the gambling ecosystem because their best customers are those with the biggest losses.

But nobody is saying we should do away with gambling.

The evidence-based ideas above would help people with existing problems, and stop many more from ending up in trouble.

Gambling is a problem we can solve.

It does need political effort – but the Albanese government has the political capital to solve this problem.

Charles Livingstone, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University and Angela Rintoul, Principal Research Fellow - Gambling and Suicide, The University of Melbourne

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

An interview with Paula and Bridgette Powers – identical twins who witnessed their mother’s carjacking – recently went viral. The way they spoke and gestured in unison has captivated global audiences.

Genetically, identical twins are clones. They result from the splitting of an early embryo, meaning they share the same genes.

In contrast, fraternal twins are the result of two eggs being fertilised by two different sperm. On average they share 50% of their genes – the same as any siblings who share both their biological mother and father.

So, when identical twins talk and gesture in unison (known as synchrony), is it down to genes? The answer can be complicated.

Genes aren’t the only influence on looks, language and like-minded thinking. Let’s break down the factors that might lead some twins to speak – and apparently think – in unison.

A close bond in a shared environment

Almost all twins, even “identical” ones, show some differences in physical, mental and emotional traits. They also regard themselves as distinct individuals and typically don’t like being referred to as “the twins”.

Yet we know most people naturally mimic the way those close to them speak and move, even without realising it. This phenomenon is called automatic mimicry and may be part of healthy social development, helping people synchronise behaviours and share emotions.

For identical twins who grow up in the same home, school and community, the effect of a shared environment and close bond may be particularly intense.

Paula and Bridgette Powers, for example, have shared an environment: not only the same parents, home and upbringing, but also the same job, running a bird rescue charity.

Twins may know each other so well they can intuitively sense what the other twin is about to say — and may feel like their brains are in sync. The Powers sisters have explained:

our brains must think alike at the same time.

In contrast, twins who grow up apart share many personality traits, but without years of shared interaction they are less likely to develop synchronised speech or mirrored behaviours. However, they do display many of the same unusual habits and idiosyncrasies.

What about genetics?

Studying identical and fraternal twins separated at birth can help us unravel how much of our behaviours – intelligence, personality and temperament – are influenced by genes and environment.

Even when identical twins grow up apart, they tend to closely resemble one another – not only physically, but in their personality, interests and behaviours. Fraternal twins, in general, are much less alike. This tells us genes matter.

One of us (Nancy) was a researcher with the Minnesota Study of Twins Raised Apart, which lasted from 1979 to 1999 and looked at more than 100 sets of twins (and triplets) separated at birth and raised apart. Twins were separated for various reasons, such as the stigma of single motherhood, inadequate family resources and maternal death.

The study comprehensively examined factors affecting a wide range of psychological, physical and medical traits. Researchers wanted to understand the impact of differences in their life histories on both identical and fraternal twins, reared apart and how they affected the current similarities and differences between them.

A striking finding was identical twins raised apart are as similar in personality as identical twins raised together. For example, the Minnesota researchers found little difference in traits such as wellbeing and aggression, whether identical twins were raised together or apart.

This shows genes play an important role in shaping our personality. Genes also affect the way we process speech and language.

Sharing identical genes may mean identical twins also respond to situations in similar ways. This is because their brains lead them to behave in comparable ways. This genetic closeness, which underlies their behavioural resemblance, explains why they may independently say or do the same thing, without any need for a mystical explanation.

The Minnesota study also found when identical twins were reunited they formed closer relationships with each other than reunited fraternal twins did. This suggests perceptions of similarity in behaviour might draw people together and help keep them connected.

We now know genes and environment each account for half the person-to-person differences in personality. However, the life events we individually experience remain the most important factor shaping how our unique traits are expressed and who we ultimately become.

What about a secret ‘twin language’?

Parents of identical twins may be left baffled as their children, even as toddlers, seem to communicate through babbles and gestures that no one else can understand.

Each twin pair has their own way of communicating. Twins’ private speech, also called idioglossia, cryptophasia or a “secret language”, refers to verbal and nonverbal exchanges most other people don’t understand. This is different to synchronised speech.

Private speech is displayed by about 40% of twins. However, estimates vary wildly – ranging from as low as 2% to as high as 47%. That’s mainly because researchers define and measure it differently.

Private speech usually fades as children age, at about three years of age. But some twins continue to use it into early childhood.

Why are we so fascinated by twins?

Twins continue to fascinate us. That is clear in the wealth of media attention they receive, their popularity in scientific studies, and their presence in myths and legends across all continents.

Perhaps it is because when we see identical twins who look and act so much alike, it challenges our belief that we are all unique.

But even identical twins are not exact replicas of one another. Genetic changes, events in the womb, and/or life experiences can conspire to create differences between them.

Nevertheless, most identical twins are more alike and socially closer than any other pair of people on the planet.

Bridgette and Paula Powers appear in an episode of Australian Story airing on Monday on ABCTV and ABC iview.

Jeffrey Craig, Professor in Medical Sciences, Deakin University and Nancy Segal, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Twin Studies Center, California State University, Fullerton

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

A new publisher, Conduit Books, founded by UK novelist and critic Jude Cook, will focus on publishing literary fiction and memoirs by men: at least initially. Conduit is currently seeking its launch title, “preferably a debut novel by a male UK novelist under 35”. It aims to publish three books a year from 2026. Diminishing attention is now paid to male authors, Cook feels, creating a need for “an independent publisher that champions literary fiction by men”.

This argument has been made closer to home, too. Earlier this year, Australian poet and fiction writer Michael Crane bemoaned the diminishing space and attention for male authors, claiming to be unfairly overlooked as a white male author over 50.

Are there declining numbers of male authors in Australia and elsewhere? How is this reflected in prizes, readership statistics and sales? And if less men than women are reading, particularly literary fiction, then might this be a logical outcome of a gender divide in demand and engagement?

Prizes, working writers and sales

While more focused on age than gender, Crane noted “most books published locally are by women”. He also argued female writers have recently come to dominate the Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlist.

There is some truth in this: since 2012, the year the Stella Prize was founded, there have been 12 women winners of the Miles Franklin and just one man. In the equivalent preceding period (1999–2011), there were ten men and three women. So, there has been a change – even a flip – in the past decade or so.

That said, older male authors have historically been overrepresented in literary culture, both within Australia and globally. The shift seems, in part, a correction.

While the number of working writers in Australia has grown steadily since 1983, the percentage of male writers has diminished: from 55% (in 1988) to just 17% (as of 2023), according to a recent Creative Australia study of Australian professional artists.

Looking at last week’s Australian bestseller list, topped by US self-help guru Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory, eight of ten authors are women. The bestseller list for Australian writers only, topped by colouring-in book Cosy Calm, is further dominated by women: no male writers are represented in the top ten.

Last year’s overall top ten bestseller list in Australia reads similarly: seven titles were authored by women. Two of these, ranked first and second, were RecipeTin Eats cookbooks by Nagi Maehashi.

In the UK, too, female authors are increasingly dominating publishing lists and the space and attention for male authors has dwindled. New and established male authors lack the “cultural buzz” associated with female authors like Sally Rooney, who have arguably captured the literary zeitgeist, wrote literary critic Johanna Thomas-Corr in the Guardian.

On the other hand, in the period when Australia’s leading literary prize had 12 women and one male winner (2012–24), the Man Booker Prize was still narrowly dominated by men, with eight male and six female winners. (Two women, Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood, shared the 2019 prize.)

And in the US during that period, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was heavily dominated by men, with nine male and four female winners. (The 2023 prize was shared, between Barbara Kingsolver and Hernan Diaz.) The 2025 Pulitzer was announced today: the fiction winner is Percival Everett, for James.

Do men need better stories?

While Cook’s project has its sceptics, it seems well intentioned. As Cook notes, current conversations around toxic masculinity make it more important than ever to “pay attention to what young men are reading”. Other commentators have argued the decline of male authors and readers is a cause for concern, too.

In recent months, Las Vegas English professor David J. Morris argued in the New York Times that dwindling interest in literary fiction represents emotional, cultural and educational regression among men in the United States. He notes women readers now account for about 80% of US fiction sales.

The alienated, disaffected young men who have been drawn to the “manosphere” and contributed to Trump’s second election win “need better stories – and they need to see themselves as belonging to the world of storytelling”. He makes a good case for the importance of literary fiction in developing emotional intelligence – and that the decline in male readership is therefore troubling.

Cook seems to agree: he believes important narratives and voices are being overlooked. He is keen to publish novels and stories that focus on fatherhood, masculinity, working-class life, relationships and other topics that relate to “navigating the 21st century as a man”.

He stresses, however, that Conduit Books is not taking an “adversarial stance”. It will “not exclude writers of colour, or queer, non-binary and neurodivergent authors”.

Women read more than men

A February 2025 Australia Reads survey indicates “avid readers” (who regularly start new books and read daily) are predominantly women, whereas “ambivalent readers” and “uninterested non-readers” were far more likely to be men.

Furthermore, recent research suggests there is still a significant gender bias in male reading habits. Men made up less than 20% of the readership for the top ten bestselling titles by female authors, Nielsen Bookscan data revealed in 2023. Conversely, the readership for bestselling titles by male authors was more evenly split: 56% men and 44% women.

Women, on balance, read far more than men do, and are much more willing to read books by men than men are to read books by women. It would be fair to say all writers of literary fiction are largely dependent on a predominately female audience – and have been for a long time.

Back in 2005, when male writers were not exactly underrepresented in the literary marketplace, UK novelist Ian McEwan embarked on an experiment. Seeking to clear out some shelf space, he took a stack of novels to a nearby park and attempted to give them away to passersby. The free books were happily accepted by women, but he failed to give away a single title to a man. McEwan gloomily concluded: “when women stop reading, the novel will be dead”.

Publishing and demand

Cook believes works by men that grapple with themes especially relevant to male readers are “not being commissioned” in the current literary environment.

A 2020 diversity study reported 78% of editorial staff in the UK are women (though the same study indicates just under half of senior management roles in publishing are still occupied by men).

An anonymous male publisher told the Guardian a few years ago “the exciting writing is coming from women right now”, but this was “because there aren’t that many men around. Men aren’t coming through.”

Another publisher, from literary imprint Serpent’s Tail, said: “If a really good novel by a male writer lands on my desk, I do genuinely say to myself, this will be more difficult to publish.”

Sales figures seem to back this. The Guardian calculated, based on figures from the Bookseller, that 629 of the 1,000 bestselling fiction titles from 2020 were written by women, with 341 authored by men (27 were co-authored by men and women, and three were by non-binary writers). Of course, many still read the historical literary canon, which is overwhelmingly male.

Cook seems to argue men are now less interested in literary fiction because there are fewer contemporary male authors, and they attract less commentary and acclaim. But it is just as likely female authors have become more prominent because women are consistently more engaged with literary fiction – and the publishing market is simply adapting to cater to its principal audience.

Can we bring back male readers?

So will publishing and promoting more men bring back male readers? Or does this just amount to a demand that the overwhelmingly female audience for literary fiction should pay more attention to male authors? As literary critic Thomas-Corr notes, regardless of authorship, a lot of men

couldn’t give a toss about fiction, especially literary fiction. They have video games, YouTube, nonfiction, podcasts, magazines, Netflix.

Male writers are still well represented in these mediums, so perhaps it may be as or more important to devote serious attention to their narratives and storytelling practices. Novels aren’t, after all, the only engines for emotional intelligence or empathy.

Cook’s initiative will at the very least create more discussion around the growing absence of male authors and readers in literary spaces, and will probably ensure the first few titles published by Conduit Press will be received with interest. But given contemporary reading demographics, it seems reasonable to expect male authors will occupy an increasingly niche space in literary publishing.

Julian Novitz, Senior Lecturer, Writing, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology

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

Mother’s Day offers an opportunity to reflect on what motherhood means in different religions and cultures. As a scholar of Buddhism and gender, I know how complicated Buddhist attitudes toward mothers can be.

The historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, taught that family ties were obstacles to enlightenment. According to the Buddha, attachment to family causes suffering because family relationships eventually end and cannot offer lasting contentment. The main goal of Buddhism is to break the cycle of rebirth, which is characterized by suffering.

However, one family tie remained important for the Buddha – his relationship with his mother. Even after the Buddha left home, he continued to honor two mother figures – his biological mother, Maya, and his foster mother, known as Mahaprajapati Gautami in Sanskrit and Mahapajapati Gotami in the Pali language, which was used for early Buddhist scriptures in ancient India. These women played key roles in the Buddha’s life story, and they continue to inspire Buddhists today. Mahaprajapati specifically inspires women as the first Buddhist nun.

Many Buddhist scriptures describe reproduction and pregnancy in negative terms because they continue the cycle of rebirth. But Buddhist scriptures also express love and gratitude for mothers, especially the Buddha’s two mother figures.

Maya, the birth mother

Maya and Mahaprajapati were sisters who both married the Buddha’s father, Suddhodana, who ruled the region of Kapilavastu along the India-Nepal border. Maya’s name means “illusion,” which refers to a Hindu and Buddhist concept that the material world conceals the true nature of reality.

Miracles related to Maya appear throughout stories of the future Buddha Siddhartha’s conception, gestation and delivery. Siddhartha is the Buddha of the current world cycle, but in Buddhist tradition there were other Buddhas in the past and there will be more Buddhas in the future. Each one goes through many rebirths before they attain Buddhahood, and each Buddha’s final rebirth follows the same pattern. According to Buddhist texts, Buddhas-to-be wait for the right time to be born, they choose their own parents, and they are not conceived through sexual intercourse.

Early Buddhist texts claim that Siddhartha chose Maya as his mother because of her purity and entered her right side in the form of an elephant while she was sleeping. According to some Buddhist scriptures, during Maya’s pregnancy the future Buddha never actually touched her womb, which was considered impure in early Indian Buddhism. When Siddhartha was born, he is said to have emerged from Maya’s right side as she stood, holding onto a tree branch.

Maya died seven days after her son’s birth, meaning that she did not live to see him become an enlightened Buddha. As the Buddha, even though Siddhartha encouraged his followers to leave domestic life and cut family ties, he never forgot his birth mother.

Thanks to her good karma, Maya had been reborn in the heavens as a god, but in Buddhism gods are not as spiritually advanced as Buddhas. The Buddha used his spiritual powers to travel to the heavens, where he preached to Maya and encouraged her progress on the Buddhist path.

One Chinese text claims that Maya spontaneously lactated upon hearing her son’s words, showing that the bond between mother and son remained strong even after her death.

Mahaprajapati, the foster mother

Siddhartha’s aunt Mahaprajapati became his foster mother after Maya died. She cared for the young Siddhartha and breastfed him, having just given birth to her own biological son, Nanda.

When Siddhartha was preparing to leave home to follow a spiritual path, the chariot driver tried to convince him to stay by reminding Siddhartha how Mahaprajapati nursed him and telling Siddhartha he should be grateful for her motherly kindness.

Siddhartha left home anyway, which caused Mahaprajapati to collapse out of grief. According to the Mahavastu, the earliest Sanskrit biography of the Buddha, her “eyes, as a result of her tears and grief, had become covered as with scales, and she had become blind.” It was only after Siddhartha returned as the Buddha that her sight was restored.

At around the same time as the Buddha’s return to his kingdom of Kapilavastu, his father Suddhodana died, making Mahaprajapati a widow. The books with rules for Buddhist monks and nuns, known as the Vinaya, report that Mahaprajapati approached the Buddha to ask whether women like her, as well as women whose husbands had become monks, could leave home to join the Buddha’s monastic order.

The Buddha eventually agreed to this request but warned that including women as nuns would cut short the lifespan of Buddhist teachings in the world from 1,000 years to 500 years. Mahaprajapati became the first Buddhist nun, reaching enlightenment before passing away at the age of 120.

Scholars of Buddhism do not necessarily treat this episode as literally true, but instead see it as a reflection of mixed attitudes toward admitting women as nuns in the early Buddhist community. These mixed attitudes can still be seen today – for example, in the unwillingness to reinstate the order of nuns in Southeast Asia, which died out centuries ago.

In Buddhism, nuns must be ordained by a group of 10 fully ordained monks and fully ordained nuns. An order of nuns still survives in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam, where Mahayana Buddhism is practiced. However, the monastic leaders in Southeast Asia, where Theravada Buddhism is practiced, decided that Mahayana nuns could not ordain Theravada nuns, leaving countries such as Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar without fully ordained nuns.

Legacies of the Buddha’s mothers

Both Maya and Mahaprajapati were loving mothers in the Buddha’s life story, but it is Mahaprajapati who has remained more of an inspiration for Buddhist women.

Reiko Ohnuma, a scholar of South Asian Buddhism, argues that Maya is remembered in Buddhist tradition as an idealized, if passive, maternal figure. Her death shortly after the future Buddha’s birth serves as a reminder that life is impermanent and characterized by suffering.

In contrast, Mahaprajapati lived a full life and played an active role in both raising the future Buddha and in advocating for women to join the monastic community. Early Buddhists may not have fully supported the inclusion of women in the Buddhist monastic community, but the nuns’ order was established nonetheless.

Mahaprajapati made this opportunity possible thanks to her unique position as the Buddha’s foster mother.

Megan Bryson, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee

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

Hadrian Garrard, the curator of Morris Mania – an innovative exhibition now showing at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, east London – tells the story of being in King’s Cross Station and spotting someone wheeling a shopping trolley covered in a plasticised Morris pattern. It reminded me of the time when a student thanked me for my teaching with a pair of Morris-themed flip-flops.

Mugs, tea towels, notepads, handbags and all manner of other incongruous objects make up this world of Morris merchandise. Much of it is made in China and remote from the purposes William Morris had in mind. How did this Victorian designer and socialist, known for championing craftsmanship and preferring substance over style, become an icon of consumer culture?

The exhibition’s tagline – How Britain’s Greatest Designer Went Viral – makes good sense. It’s not just that Morris stages an escape from the Victorian decorative world, but that his art proliferates in uncontrolled ways. The walk from Walthamstow station lays the groundwork in this regard: exhibition posters in shop windows, end-of-terrace murals and even the civic architecture, speak of something leaking from the gallery walls.

The first display in the exhibition tell the story of how we got here. Morris began spreading thanks to the commissions he received from aristocratic and royal clients. They were drawn to the medieval ethos of his work, and its rejection of industrialism in the arts. An important early contract was for the interiors at St James’s Palace.

But these establishment associations soon morphed and mutated, first among the English middle classes, who welcomed Morris’s designs into their suburban villas despite his new fondness for revolution, and then more remotely: one photograph shows Morris-patterned walls at St Peterburg’s Winter Palace, taken shortly after the Bolsheviks stormed the building. The socialism as it were, is turned inside out.

The earliest Morris merchandise was printed for a centenary exhibition at the V&A Museum in 1934. One of its patterned postcards appears in a display case, the souvenir of Morris’s own daughter, May, whose handwriting is on the back. In 1966, Morris’s designs went out of copyright, marking a watershed. Pop Victoriana and Laura Ashley floral dresses depended on it for their reproductive freedoms.

George Harrison’s “golden lily” jacket, from the Chelsea boutique Granny Takes a Trip, stands out as a poignant example of the ways in which Morris was recut and repurposed for the counterculture.

Morris’s “rose” pattern proves a particularly intrepid traveller, as the design chosen for the officers’ cushions on HMS Valliant, an early nuclear-powered submarine. Its onboard domesticity blends curiously with the menace of its mission.

Three turning points prepare us for the newest forms of Morris mania. The V&A’s 1996 exhibition repopularised Morris’s work, and thanks to new digital technology, its merchandise included printed mugs.

Then, in 2001, the British government instructed public collections to open their doors for free. In search of new income streams, museums turned to selling themed objects through their shops. The rise of China as a manufacturing hub complemented this emphasis – less by revolutionising working conditions and democratising design, as Morris had hoped, than with a flood of cheaply produced goods.

Beyond this revealing timeline, what really impresses is the exhibition’s care in preserving distinctions. It’s particularly careful to show that going viral need not mean selling out. From Nanjing – a major centre of Chinese manufacturing – comes a poster for the 2023 exhibition Beyond William Morris at the Nanjing Museum. It attracted over a million visitors, reminding us that behind the merchandise are new wells of love and respect.

Something similar applies at the level of making. For every sweatshop Hello Kitty, the same character appears in a beautifully crafted yukata (a casual kimono) in Liberty fabrics made in Japan.

A Brompton Bike hangs from the wall – manufactured in London, and sporting a handsome “willow bough” livery. Likewise, a neon “strawberry thief” motif, made at Walthamstow’s God’s Own Junk Yard, rekindles the embers of local production. This emphasis extends to the exhibition’s own making. A film documents the weaving of the Axminster carpet that furnishes the main room. Even the labels were dyed by hand with weld, a natural pigment whose use Morris revived.

In these ways, the exhibition champions ethical and bespoke production, while confronting the darker currents that move objects around our world. It also stays curious enough to push further by exploring the kitsch new frontier of “Morris” patterns generated by AI, or by populating a Victorian dresser with “crowdsourced” Morris bric-a-brac.

There might have been more space to consider why the surface effects of pattern travel so readily, and to quote Morris’s writings on the subject. But much of that is implicit and there for audiences to follow up.

Morris Mania excels by nurturing the joy behind all this promiscuous growth. Most pleasingly, that trolley from King’s Cross makes a reappearance, dressed here in an AI-adapted “strawberry thief”, courtesy of Sholley Trolleys, Clacton-on-Sea. Just like Morris himself, it was made in Essex.

Morris Mania: How Britain’s Greatest Designer Went Viral is at the William Morris Gallery until September 21 2025.

Marcus Waithe, Professor of Literature and the Applied Arts, University of Cambridge

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

One moment, your spaghetti is happily bubbling away in the pot. A minute later, after busying yourself with something else, you turn around to find a hot mess all over your stove.

Boiling liquid can rocket up very quickly, and we often only have a split second to act. But are there ways to prevent the pot boiling over in the first place? One kitchen hack you may have seen on social media is to place a wooden spoon across the top of the pot.

Does it work? As with many kitchen science questions, there is an answer – and there’s lots of nuance, too.

In short, it will work, but not for long periods of time. Let’s dig into the why.

What causes the bubbles?

Interestingly, a pot of rapidly boiling pure water will not rise up the sides of the pot.

Ingredients added to the water are the culprits for overflow and spillage. Pots of pasta, rice, porridge or milk are the most prone to boiling over and making a mess. A heavy stew is less likely to bubble over – unless you overfill the pot.

In cookery, the key food molecules are water, carbohydrates, proteins, lipids (the collective term for fats and oils) and, to a lesser extent, vitamins and minerals.

The main culprits for rapid boiling and overflow are carbohydrates and proteins. When carbohydrates or proteins (or a combination of both) come into contact with heated water molecules, their properties change and structures rearrange.

Changes can happen quickly if the heat is high. Excited by lots of heat, the water molecules begin to boil rapidly. As this occurs, bubbles form.

Why do the bubbles rise so quickly?

The carbohydrates involved in bubbling up and messing up your kitchen are primarily plant starches. Pasta or porridge products are derived from plant starches such as wheat, rice, potato or corn. If you’re boiling anything with milk, a protein called casein can contribute to the bubbles, too.

Casein and starches are known as colloids. “Colloidal dispersion” means that not all such particles will dissolve into a water solution, because some of these particles are too large. As bubbles form, the larger starch and/or protein particles start to coat the bubbles.

For pasta water or porridge, the heat and starch solution starts to form a gel. This gel becomes sticky and, depending on the type of starch and other additives, the temperature of the boiling solution can rise above 100°C.

So, they’re not just bubbles – they’re hot, sticky bubbles. Filled with air and coated with a sticky starch gel, as the solution continues to boil, the bubbles build on top of each other and rise up the sides of the pot.

It’s a little different with milk. Have you ever noticed a film across the top of boiled milk? Milk skin is formed by heated casein. When heated, the casein can become quite strong – like plastic – and coat each bubble. Milk bubbles are smaller and become more of a foam, but they can still rise quickly.

So, how does a wooden spoon stop the bubbles?

Placing a wooden spoon over a boiling pot acts as an interruption to the bubbles – it lowers the surface temperature and provides a porous surface to burst the bubbles. This stops them from climbing over the edge of the pot.

To understand why, picture another porous surface: the structure of a sponge. Because the sponge has a lot of holes in it, you can blow air through a dry sponge. However, air does not pass through a wet sponge because the holes are filled with water.

Wood is a porous material, and a dry wooden spoon is more porous than when it’s wet. On contact with the wood, the air in the bubbles is released.

But you can’t just leave a wooden spoon over the pot indefinitely and expect it to not boil over. As the spoon is exposed to heat, moisture, sticky starch or casein bubbles, it will soon become the same temperature as the liquid. That means it won’t reduce the surface temperature any more, nor be porous enough to burst bubbles.

This is why some people claim the spoon hack doesn’t work – because it has a limited window of effectiveness.

What should I do instead?

Stirring the pot or using the wooden spoon as a fan would work equally as well.

Better yet, try not to get distracted in the kitchen and select the correct kitchen tools for the job: use a bigger pot, and turn down the heat so it’s not just going full blast.

We like to treat working in the kitchen like a meditation. Remain present and in the moment. If you do get distracted, turn the stove to its lowest setting, switch it off or remove the pot from the heat. The phrase “a watched pot never boils” doesn’t count in this situation. Indeed, a watchful eye on the pot is essential.

Jay Deagon, Senior Lecturer of Home Economics, CQUniversity Australia and Gemma Mann, Senior Lecturer in Access and Equity in Education, CQUniversity Australia

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

It’s almost impossible to go a day without seeing or hearing about sport.

Walk around any city or town and you will almost always catch a glimpse of people playing sports in teams or participating solo.

Turn on the TV or radio and you’ll be able to find some kind of sport being played at international or national level.

Why do people love sport so much?

To answer this question, it’s worth a dive back into ancient history.

An ancient person’s perspective

One of the most famous figures from the ancient world, Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), once wrote that when he was a boy he was obsessed with playing sports:

I liked to play ball as a boy and my playing slowed my progress in learning to read and write.

In fact, Saint Augustine was so preoccupied with playing ball that his teacher was said to sometimes beat him for it. His teacher said it was bad to waste one’s youth on such things – it’s better to study hard.

Why was Saint Augustine obsessed with ball games? He loved to win:

I loved to play games […] in these games I was overmastered by my vain desire to excel, so I used to strive to win, even by cheating.

Plenty of people today probably share Saint Augustine’s view that winning is one of the things that make sport enjoyable.

Of course, there are many other reasons why people might like to play sport.

What sports did they play?

If you walked down a city street in ancient Greek and Roman times, it’s likely you’d come across children or even adults playing a ball game.

The Roman playwright Plautus (3rd/2nd century BC) even has one of his characters complain about people “who play ball in the street”.

Ball games were probably the most popular sporting activity in the ancient world and could be played in many different ways.

In one ball game, called episkyros, two teams competed against each other. If one team got the ball over the line behind the other team, they scored. Feet and hands could be used and tackles were permitted.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Of course, many other sports were also popular: athletics, swimming, wrestling, lifting weights and boxing were all favourites.

Ancient ideas about the origins of sports

For the ancient Greeks, the earliest mention of a ball game appears in the Odyssey, an epic poem composed by the poet Homer in probably the eighth or seventh century BC.

In the Odyssey, Nausicaa, daughter of the King of the Phaeacians, plays a ball game with some other girls on the beach. While they throw the ball, they sing songs:

Then when they had had their joy of food, she and her handmaids, they threw off their headgear and fell to playing at ball, and white-armed Nausicaa was leader in the song.

During the game, Nausicaa throws the ball too far. Her maid can’t catch it and the ball flies into the sea. All the girls shout out when it goes flying.

Already in the 3rd century BC, Nausicaa was sometimes regarded as the inventor of ball games. However, other people attributed the invention of ball games to different regions of Greece, saying the games were invented by the Sicyonians or Spartans.

But it is unlikely any Greeks were the original inventors of ball games.

In Egypt, thousands of years before Homer’s epics, there are already artistic depictions of ball games.

For example, in the tomb of the Nomarch of the 11th Dynasty (c. 2150-2000 BC), Baqet III, there is artwork showing women playing ball games and men wrestling each other.

Baqet III, whose tomb contained these artistic depictions of various sports, was likely a true sports lover.

Why did people like sports?

People liked ball games for many different reasons.

One was for the sheer fun and excitement. Another was because they were considered a healthy type of exercise.

Ancient Greek and Roman doctors even told their patients to play ball games to become healthier.

For example, the famous ancient Greek physician Galen (129-216 AD) wrote an essay titled On Exercise with a Small Ball.

He argued “exercises with a small ball are superior to other kinds of exercises”.

He claimed ball games were especially healthy because they moved all of the muscles and because teamwork was good for the soul.

People in the ancient world also thought just watching sport could be something worth doing.

The writer Lucian of Samosata (born 120 AD), for instance, said watching athletes competing for glory could help to encourage men to achieve similar feats: “many of the spectators go away in love with manfulness and hard work”, wrote Lucian.

So it seems there’s nothing new about our modern love of playing and watching sports, and this obsession will probably continue for thousands of years into the future.

Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

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

In an age of cynicism and despair, Lady Gaga’s recent Coachella performance “The Art of Personal Chaos” brings audiences hope.

Over two weekends, audiences were treated to a visually lavish set, flawless choreography and strong vocals. Gaga’s performance in five acts — staged for fans as an opera house set in the Indio, California desert — was a self-reflexive event exploring many influences upon the singer.

Gaga’s performance paid homage to past greats such as Michael Jackson and Prince as well as her different past selves. From donning armour and crutches from her “Paparazzi” persona to her Fame-era look, Gaga showed that where she is today follows and emerges from every iteration of her artistic identity over the years.

The evocation and embodiment of her different selves suggested not only a journey of mixed emotions and struggles regarding fame, but her negotiation and resolution of these struggles as pathways into a promising future.

In a recent interview, Gaga highlights that for her, despite emotional struggles and pain, reflexiveness, acceptance and forward thinking can yield eventual peace and happiness.

For me as scholar who researches organizations, Gaga’s performance is an allegory of the need for stewarding change and transition in today’s world.

Allegory of the need to steward change

In my work with organizational scholars Peter Dacin and Derin Kent, we suggest that people involved in stewarding change and transition in organizations are “custodians” — people with a vested interest in protecting traditions, while also reimagining and renewing them over time.

As our work argues, custodians are agents of maintaining the best aspects of cultural continuity, as well as change. Such custodians in workplaces or social organizations facing disruption take valued remnants from the past and curate them to be accessible and relevant for the future.

Gaga’s performance reminds us how artists may be understood to serve this role for society at large. This leads us to view Gaga as an architect of future possibility, a “custodian of hope.”

Cultivating expectations, visions

Custodians of hope are deliberately prospective — meaning, they cultivate expectations and concrete visions for the future.

They craft futures that are worth preserving. They do this by translating current and past practices through renewal and reinvention and by keeping things continually refreshed. Gaga did this by reimagining her past hits during her performance and by injecting them with a new and renewed sense of energy and style.

As writer Coleman Spilde’s brilliant review in Salon noted, Gaga’s performance reminds us that in a world where it’s easy to feel defeated, “beauty is not lost; it’s just harder to find.”

Throughout several of the numbers performed during her Coachella set, Gaga showed that existing in the present is not so simple. Battles are fought and choices must be made. By embodying resilience, Gaga gives us hope and inspiration that in a world full of volatility and despair, small acts of resistance and emotional contagion can craft and recraft the future.

The past is a resource for renewal

According to recent research by organizational studies scholars Matthias Wenzel, Hannes Krämer, Jochen Koch and Andreas Reckwitz, people can work to make alternative futures that are not strictly bound to the past but still align with their values. We shouldn’t just passively allow the future to unfold: we need to be intentional about crafting truly desirable futures, as suggested by organizational scholars Ali Aslan Gümüsay and Juliane Reinecke.

As my research with entrepreneurship scholar Nico Klenner examines, custodians of hope care for the past while projecting the past into futures they and others desire.

Yet Gaga goes beyond merely preserving tradition. As a custodian, Gaga curates the past, showing us that tradition is not simply the weight or remnant of the past. Bits of the past are reworked and recrafted as she selectively incorporates past styles of Prince and Michael Jackson into her performance as well as nods to fashion moments of her varied personas.

As expressed by a fan on Tik Tok, dance moves choreographed during “Shadow of a Man” are reminiscent of Jackson. The past becomes a valuable resource for renewal and reinvention moving us towards what might be.

Evoke emotion to enlist others

However, invoking the past is not enough. To realize change, custodians need to evoke emotion to enlist others. As sociologist Ann Mische suggests, hope is ultimately an emotion of possibility.

As a custodian of hope, Gaga takes audiences through an emotionally laden and inclusive journey that reminds us how struggles can be overcome through acts of confrontation, defiance and resilience. For example, during her performance of “Poker Face” performed on a chess board, Gaga confronts a blond figure, an earlier version of her past self.

Early on in her second performance at Coachella, Gaga experienced a wireless microphone failure and grabbed a connected mic and exclaimed: “I’m sorry my mic was broken for a second; At least you know I sing live; And I guess all we can do is our best; I’m definitely giving you my best tonight; I love you so much,” sending the crowd into an uproar.

The audience experienced a collective sense of resilience or effervescence, in what seemed to be a public celebration of generosity and improvisation above perfection.

Collective sense of care

Through interactivity with the audience via the live performance and livestream, fans are drawn in to co-imagine the future not through Lady Gaga but with her. Asking the crowd to raise their “monster paws” signals encouragement and support highlighting the importance of a sense of collective care.

In addition to evoking emotion, Gaga reminded us of the importance of anchoring her vision for the future in the collective sense of care embedded in the Born This Way Foundation. For example, her #BeKind365 platform has logged millions of acts of kindness since its inception. This shows how value can be generated through structured supports or programs that link positive emotion with specific and concrete acts.

Gaga curates as well as extends the past through renewal and reinvention to enlist new believers into a plausible path forward. Her performance underscores that hope is not a one-off moment but rather, an ongoing custodial effort of curating and reconciling the past towards a kinder and more authentic future.

M. Tina Dacin, Stephen J.R. Smith Chaired Professor of Strategy & Organizational Behaviour, Queen's University, Ontario

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

Labor’s federal election win means university fees and costs are set to change. But some of these changes will not be immediate.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already said planned cuts to student debt will be a top priority for the the new parliament. A new student debt repayment system will follow soon after.

But humanities students paying nearly A$17,000 a year for their studies – thanks to the Job-ready Graduates scheme introduced by the Morrison government – will probably have to wait until 2027 for lower fees.

Reduction in student debt

People with student debt will benefit from a 20% cut to how much they owe. As the Greens support wiping student debt entirely, Labor is likely to only need one or two other senators to pass the cut.

With more Labor senators elected, Labor will be less reliant on crossbenchers to get legislation through parliament.

Labor says the debt reduction will apply before 3.2% indexation is applied to HELP loan balances on June 1 this year. Given this deadline is mere weeks away, the necessary legislation will probably need to be retrospective.

On average, the 20% reduction will save Australia’s 3 million student debtors about $5,500 each.

A new student debt repayment system

Another promised Labor change will deliver quick cash benefits to the about 1.2 million people making compulsory student debt repayments.

If the Senate agrees, for the 2025-26 financial year, the income threshold to start repaying student loans will increase from $56,156 to $67,000. Anyone earning less than $67,000 in 2025-26 will repay nothing that financial year, compared to between $561 and $1,340 under current settings.

Once the $67,000 income threshold is reached, student debtors will repay 15% of their income above this amount up to an income of $125,000, when the rate moves up to 17%. For example, a person earning $68,000 will be $1,000 above the new threshold – 15% of $1,000 equals a repayment of $150. Under the current system, somebody earning $68,000 would repay $1,360.

Employers will deduct lower HELP repayments from their payroll, delivering extra cash to student debtor employees. Given the limited time before the thresholds are scheduled to change on July 1, employers may start with the old repayment system and transition to the new one after the necessary legislation passes.

Understand the fine print

During the election campaign, the Parliamentary Budget Office released work it did on HELP repayment scenarios for independent ACT Senator David Pocock, who was reelected on Saturday.

This showed how under Labor’s proposed system, people with student debt will take longer to repay and incur higher indexation costs. If student debtors are concerned about this they can make voluntary repayments.

What happens to the Job-ready Graduates scheme?

A key to reducing repayment times is students accruing less debt in the first place. The Morrison government’s Job-ready Graduates policy increased student contributions for business, law and most arts subjects. Currently they pay $16,992 a year for their studies.

The Coalition introduced this change in 2022 in a bid to encourage more university students to study “job-ready” teaching, nursing and STEM subjects.

A new Australian Tertiary Education Commission, which Labor plans to legislate in the second half of 2025, will review student contribution levels as part of its broader role in managing the domestic student funding system.

Last year, the Australian Universities Accord final report recommended student contributions should no longer be designed to steer course choices. Instead they should be based on expected future earnings.

Using this principle, humanities students would pay the cheapest student contribution level. But this will not happen quickly.

The new commission has a lot of work to do, with new student contributions forming part of a broader funding overhaul. The government then needs to accept any recommendations and legislate the new rates.

Unfortunately for current students, this process means that student contributions are unlikely to change before 2027 at the earliest.

International students

While many domestic students are set to eventually pay less for their education, international students face early increases in costs. During the election campaign, Labor announced student visa application fees will increase from $1,600 to $2,000. As recently as June 2024 the visa application fee was only $710.

This latest visa increase adds another item to an already long list of policies designed to discourage or block potential international students. It probably isn’t the last.

Although student visa applications have trended down, the number of student visa holders in Australia at the end of March 2025 was higher than at the same time in 2023 or 2024.

The government might try again to legislate formal caps on international student numbers. The Greens combined with the Liberals to block this in 2024.

Commonwealth Prac Payments

With Labor returned, eligible teaching, nursing and social work students will receive $331.65 a week when on mandatory work placements.

While the “Commonwealth Prac Payments” policy is scheduled to start on July 1, the necessary legal instrument is not yet in place.

Late in the election campaign the Coalition announced that, if elected, it would proceed with Prac Payments as a loan, rather than a grant.

With the election result, Prac Payments can go ahead as originally planned. The minister can authorise the necessary delegated legislation before parliament sits. While the Senate could later “disallow” Prac Payments, the new Senate numbers make this very unlikely.

Needs-based funding

Labor’s election win should see another so far unlegislated program – needs-based funding for equity students – proceed as promised from January 1 2026.

This will be a per student payment made to universities for each low socioeconomic status and First Nations student, along with each student enrolled at a regional campus. The idea is similar to needs-based funding for schools.

Whether or not current education minister Jason Clare remains in the portfolio, Labor has a large higher education agenda to implement. In some areas the detail is already clear. But significant work remains to develop the new Australian Tertiary Education Commission and a new domestic student funding system.

With several policy start dates due in the next eight weeks, the government will need to move quickly.

Andrew Norton, Professor of Higher Education Policy, Monash University

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

Picture this: a small audience is quietly ushered into a darkened room. They gasp in awe, as a brilliant night sky shines above. They wonder – as many after them will do – what trickery has made the roof above their heads disappear?

But this is a performance; the stars above an ingenious projection. For the first time a public audience has experienced the spectacle of the opto-mechanical planetarium. The location is the newly opened Deutsches Museum in Munich, built to celebrate science and technology. The date is May 7 1925.

Visualising the heavens

Throughout time, cultures around the world have used the stars to help make sense of the world, to understand where we come from and determine our place in the cosmos.

People have tried to recreate the movements of the stars and planets since antiquity. In the 1700s, the orrery, a clockwork model of the Solar System, was developed. The word “planetarium” was invented to describe orreries that featured the planets.

One room-sized orrery example was built by the self-taught Frisian astronomer Eise Eisinga. It’s still operational today in Franeker, Netherlands.

No human has ever been to the edge of the Solar System to see this view. Orreries, and other mechanical models of the universe like celestial globes, present views from impossible, external perspectives.

The first planetariums

The desire for a realistic view of the stars and planets, created from a perspective we actually see, gathered pace in the early 20th century as light pollution from growing cities diminished the view of the night sky.

People like Oskar von Miller, first director of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany, wanted to return this vision of the stars and planets to everyone. (Ironically, von Miller’s earlier career was as an electrical engineer, rolling out the city lighting that contributed to light pollution.)

One early attempt to create this view of the night sky was the Atwood Sphere, installed in Chicago in 1913.

Approximately five metres across, it was made of sheet metal perforated with a star map. When viewed from the inside, the light shining through 692 pinholes replicated the Chicago night sky. The whole structure could even be rotated to simulate the motion of the stars.

A realistic display of the stars is one thing. Representing the planets, whose positions in the sky change from night to night, is a different one. Von Miller and others at the Deutsches Museum knew that fixed holes could not represent the complexity of a moving planet.

What if the planets were displayed by projection? If so, couldn’t the stars be projected, as well? With this realisation, a new kind of planetarium was born, borrowing the name from earlier orreries but working in a completely different way.

The task of building such a device was given to the German optical company Carl Zeiss AG. After many setbacks, their first planetarium projector was completed in 1923, with the first performance at the Deutsches Museum a century ago today.

Planetariums were a hit with the public. Within decades, they had spread around the world – the first planetarium in the United States opened in Chicago in 1930, while the first one in Asia opened in Osaka, Japan in 1937. The popularity of planetariums particularly accelerated in the US during the space race of the 1960s.

Australia’s oldest operating planetarium is the Melbourne Planetarium, managed by Museums Victoria since 1965. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Auckland’s Stardome Observatory has been in operation since 1997. The current longest-running planetarium in the southern hemisphere is in Montevideo, Uruguay, operational since 1955.

Changing pace of technology

The opto-mechanical planetarium projector remains a technological wonder of the modern world. Individual plates, perforated with pinholes, are illuminated by a bright central light. Separate lenses focus each projection from one of these star maps to fill the entire dome with about 5,000 stars.

The Sun, Moon and planets have separate projectors driven by gears and rods that mechanically calculate the object’s position in the sky for any time or place.

By the 1990s, a digital revolution had begun. With the advent of computers, the positions of the planets could now be calculated digitally. The Melbourne Planetarium became the first digital planetarium in the southern hemisphere when it installed the Digistar II in 1999.

This system, developed by computer graphics company Evans and Sutherland, replaced the multiple lenses of earlier projectors with a fisheye lens. A single beam of light swept across the whole dome so rapidly that it seemed to create a single image – albeit in a bizarre green colour, rendering a starfield of fuzzy green blobs.

The trade-off for a less crisp starfield was a 3D database with more than 9,000 stars. For the first time, planetarium audiences could fly through space, far beyond the edge of the Solar System.

Planetarium technology continues to develop. Today, most planetariums operate through video projection. Known as fulldome, the output from multiple projectors is blended together to create a seamless video, transforming the planetarium into a sophisticated 360-degree theatre.

A gateway to the stars

Astronomy has also changed over the last century. Just as Zeiss was completing its first projector, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that other galaxies exist beyond our Milky Way galaxy.

The stars shown on the dome in Munich in 1925 turned out to be just a tiny part of the universe that we know today.

Planetariums’ digital systems now incorporate data from telescopes and space agencies around the world. Audiences can fly off Earth, orbit the planets and moons of the Solar System, and explore the billions of known galaxies.

Yet some things have not changed. From orreries and lantern slides to opto-mechanical and digital planetariums, the communication of astronomy has always been about more than just the latest results of science.

The power of the planetarium over the last 100 years has been its ability to evoke wonder and awe. It taps into our enduring fascination with the vast mystery of the night sky.

Martin Bush, Senior Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science, The University of Melbourne and Tanya Hill, Honorary Fellow at University of Melbourne and Senior Curator (Astronomy), Museums Victoria Research Institute

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

As we age, it’s common to notice posture changes: shoulders rounding, head leaning forward, back starting to curve. You might associate this with older adults and wonder: will this happen to me? Can I prevent it?

It’s sometimes called “hunchback” or “roundback”, but the medical term for a curved back is kyphosis.

When the curve is beyond what’s considered normal (greater than 40 degrees), we refer to this as hyperkyphosis. In more severe cases, it may lead to pain, reduced mobility and physical function, or lower quality of life.

Here’s how it happens, and how to reduce your risk.

What causes a curved back?

A healthy spine has an elongated s-shape, so a curve in the upper spine is completely normal.

But when that curve becomes exaggerated and fixed (meaning you can’t stand up straight even if you try), it can signal a problem.

One common cause of a curved back is poor posture. This type, called postural kyphosis, usually develops over time due to muscle imbalances, particularly in younger people who spend hours:

• hunched over a desk
• slouched in a chair, or
• looking down at a phone.

Fortunately, this kind of curved back is often reversible with the right exercises, stretches and posture awareness.

Older adults often develop a curved back, known as age-related kyphosis or hyperkyphosis.

This is usually due to wear and tear in the spine, including vertebral compression fractures, which are tiny cracks in the bones of the spine (vertebrae).

These cracks are most often caused by osteoporosis, a condition that makes bones more fragile with age.

In these cases, it’s not just bad posture – it’s a structural change in the spine.

How can you tell the difference?

Signs of age-related hyperkyphosis include:

• your back curves even when you try to stand up straight
• back pain or stiffness
• a loss of height (anything greater than 3-4 centimetres compared to your peak adult height may be considered outside of “normal” ageing).

Other causes of a curved back include:

• Scheuermann’s kyphosis (which often develops during adolescence when the bones in the spine grow unevenly, leading to a forward curve in the upper back)
• congenital kyphosis (a rare condition present from birth, caused by improper formation of the spinal bones. It can result in a more severe, fixed curve that worsens as a child grows)
• scoliosis (where the spine curves sideways into a c- or s-shape when viewed from behind), and
• lordosis (an excessive inward curve in the lower back, when viewed from the side).

In addition to these structural conditions, arthritis, and in rare cases, spinal injuries or infections, can also play a role.

Should I see a doctor about my curved back?

Yes, especially if you’ve noticed a curve developing, have ongoing back pain, or have lost height over time.

These can be signs of vertebral fractures, which can occur in the absence of an obvious injury, and are often painless.

While one in five older adults have a vertebral fracture, as many as two-thirds of these fractures are not diagnosed and treated.

In Australia, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and Healthy Bones Australia recommend a spine x-ray for:

• people with kyphosis
• height loss equal to or more than 3 centimetres, or
• unexplained back pain.

What can I do to reduce my risk?

If you’re young or middle-aged, the habits you build today matter.

The best way to prevent a curved back is to keep your bones strong, muscles active, and posture in check. That means:

• doing regular resistance training, especially targeting upper back muscles
• staying physically active, aiming for at least 150 minutes per week
• getting enough protein, calcium, and vitamin D to support bone and muscle health
• avoiding smoking and limiting alcohol to reduce risk factors that worsen bone density and overall wellbeing

Pay attention to your posture while sitting and standing. Position your head over your shoulders and shoulders over your hips. This reduces strain on your spine.

What exercises help prevent and manage a curved back?

Focus on exercises that strengthen the muscles that support an upright posture, particularly the upper back and core, while improving mobility in the chest and shoulders.

In general, you want to prioritise extension-based movements. These involve straightening or lifting the spine and pulling the shoulders back.

Repeated forward-bending (or flexion) movements may make things worse, especially in people with osteoporosis or spinal fractures.

Good exercises include:

• back extensions (gently lift your chest off the floor while lying face down)
• resistance exercises targeting the muscles between your shoulder blades
• weight-bearing activities (such as brisk walking, jogging, stair climbing, or dancing) to keep bones strong and support overall fitness
• stretching your chest and hip flexors to open your posture and relieve tightness.

Flexibility and balance training (such as yoga and pilates) can be beneficial, particularly for posture awareness, balance, and mobility. But research increasingly supports muscle strengthening as the cornerstone of prevention and management.

Muscle strengthening exercises, such as weight lifting or resistance training, reduces spinal curvature while enhancing muscle and bone mass.

If you suspect you have kyphosis or already have osteoporosis or a vertebral fracture, consult a health professional before starting an exercise program. There may be some activities to avoid.

Can a curved back be reversed?

If it’s caused by poor posture and muscle weakness, then yes, it’s possible.

But if it’s caused by bone changes, especially vertebral fractures, then full reversal is unlikely. However, treatment can reduce pain, improve function, and slow further progression.

Protecting your posture isn’t just about appearance. It’s about staying strong, mobile and independent as you age.

Jakub Mesinovic, Research Fellow at the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition, Deakin University and David Scott, Associate Professor (Research) and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, Deakin University

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

Anna Jagiellon was elected Queen of Poland in 1575. While many women rose to power by birth or marriage, Anna was actually chosen by nobles to rule. This achievement remains surprising.

Today, female world leaders are still rare. According to recent data, only about one in four national parliament members globally are women: 27.2% of parliamentarians in single or lower houses, up from 11% in 1995.

As of January 1 2025, in 25 countries women serve as heads of state or government. That number has improved over the past few decades, but men continue to dominate elected office. Anna’s story, set over four centuries ago, shows a woman could secure power through a vote, even in an era when female rulers were nearly unheard of.

The making of a queen

Anna was born in 1523. Her father was King Sigismund the Elder and her mother was Queen Bona Sforza.

The family, the Jagiellon dynasty, ruled a vast realm of Poland and Lithuania. Her brother, King Sigismund II Augustus, was the last male heir. When he died, Anna became the only living member of that royal line residing in Poland.

When Sigismund II Augustus died in 1572, Anna was not initially considered as eligible to ascend the throne: there was no tradition of a woman inheriting it. The Poles had only one previous queen regnant, a woman who rules a kingdom in her own right: Jadwiga, the queen whose 1386 marriage to Jogaila, grand duke of Lithuania, founded the centuries-long union of Lithuania and Poland. Lithuanians had none.

The nobility of the Jagiellon realm decided to elect their monarch, as Sigismund II Augustus did not have a son to inherit the throne. In May 1573, 22-year-old Henry Valois of France was elected king. His reign did not last much more than a year. In May 1574, his brother, Charles IX of France, died. Henry returned to France to become Henry III.

Anna had once been on the sidelines of court life. Perhaps she was overshadowed by her powerful mother and siblings. Yet after her brother’s death and Henry’s abandonment of the Polish throne, she leapt into politics.

In the time when the throne was vacant, Anna became an important figure in deciding who would rule next. Many people viewed her as a political pawn, but she aimed to protect her family’s legacy. She made bold moves to shape alliances and ensure she herself would not be pushed aside.

Election of a queen

In 1575, a group of nobles and officials assembled to pick the next monarch. This was the second time in Poland–Lithuania royal elections were held, instead of the throne passing down the dynasty line. Standing for royal election was unusual among women in the 16th century.

At that gathering, the electors did something almost unheard of in Europe: they chose a woman, Anna, to wear the crown. They also selected a husband for her, a man named Stephen Báthory, who would be her co-ruler.

Yet Anna was crowned as a queen in her own right, not just as a wife of a king. She signed laws, granted privileges and held ceremonies that emphasised her royal power. Some historians once doubted her independence, but newer research points out her keen political sense.

For instance, Anna invested her own money and energy to defend her inheritance from foreign claimants. She made deals to secure alliances and pushed hard to protect her family’s interests. Her role in Poland’s next royal election, after Stephen Báthory died, sealed her reputation as a serious political player.

Breaking gender barriers

Anna’s rule broke with expectations of her era. Like Mary I, the first queen to rule England in her own right (1553–58) and her successor Elizabeth I (1558–1603), she stepped into a job usually held by men.

She faced scepticism and criticism, often based on stereotypes about her age, her fertility or her ability to manage power. Some described her as emotional and unfit to lead. Others cast her as incapable because she had spent so long as a single woman.

Despite these biases, Anna went on to promote her family’s legacy. She commissioned a funerary monument for her mother in the Basilica of San Nicola in Bari and completed the Jagiellon chapel at Wawel Castle in which her father, brother and her own tombstone were placed.

She arranged key alliances and rewarded those who remained loyal. She also supported religious and cultural projects, building on the traditions of her royal parents. In that sense, she showed a queen could manage statecraft and political negotiations, just like any king of her day.

Lessons for today

Women in leadership continue to face hurdles in modern elections. Many still question their abilities or focus on their appearance. Some blame voter bias. Others highlight social structures that limit women’s options. That is why Anna’s story matters.

Her success in a challenging environment underlines two major lessons. First, women have long claimed a rightful place in government. Even in the 16th century, when few women held direct power, Anna achieved electoral victory and took an active role in shaping policy. She helped decide who would succeed her, proving her ability to steer the political landscape.

Second, history’s hidden figures deserve recognition. There are countless remarkable women from outside Western Europe who rarely appear in popular culture. Many stories can also be found in central or eastern Europe, once a vibrant powerhouse of diverse cultures. Yet global narratives often overlook this legacy, especially after 1945, when the Yalta Conference redrew political maps and sidelined histories of those who found themselves on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain.

Anna Jagiellon’s tale broadens our view of female leadership. Her life reminds us that a woman could win a political contest centuries ago, despite prejudice and rigid traditions. It proves there is nothing new about women excelling in positions of power.

Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Historian, Australian Catholic University

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

Fashion is one of the most powerful tools we have for understanding ourselves and the world around us. Nowhere is this clearer than in the story of Black American tailoring and the legacy of the Black dandy.

Inspired by scholar Monica L. Miller’s groundbreaking book Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, the theme of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute spring 2025 show is Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.

The exhibition charts the evolution of the Black dandy from the 18th century to today. The story it tells is about more than suits. It’s about power, pride, resistance and joy.

Each year, the Met Gala takes its dress code from the institue’s spring exhibition. This year’s is “Tailored for You”. So who is the Black dandy, why are they so important to fashion today, and what can we expect to see on the red carpet?

The birth of the Black Dandy

“Black dandy” is a modern term. Figures like American abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818–95) or Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803) would not have called themselves dandies, but they used style with similar effect: as a tool of resistance, self-fashioning and cultural pride.

French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) first wrote about dandies in 1863, describing them as individuals who elevate style to a form of personal and aesthetic resistance.

Baudelaire’s dandy was not just stylish but symbolic. He was an emblem of modernity itself: a time marked by fluid identities, liminal spaces and the collapse of clear boundaries between gender, authenticity and social order.

Dandyism among Black men took root in the 18th and 19th centuries in both the United States and the Caribbean. Tailoring became a way to reclaim dignity under enslavement and colonialism.

Dandies take the clothing of an oppressor – aristocratic, colonial, segregationist or otherwise – and turn it into a weapon of elegance. Through meticulous style and refinement, dandies make a silent yet striking claim to moral superiority.

Douglass famously appeared in immaculate Victorian suits when campaigning for abolition, consciously dressing in the same style as those who denied his freedom.

Louverture used perfectly tailored French military uniforms during the Haitian Revolution against French colonial rule.

In the 1920s, Harlem dandies wore fine tailoring and flamboyant colours, rejecting the idea that poverty or discrimination should dictate presentation.

In perfectly tied cravats, polished shoes and sharply tailored coats, Black dandies refashion power on their own terms.

Presence through style

Dandies also challenge the narrow rules of masculinity.

Conventional menswear often demands restraint, toughness and invisibility. Dandies dare to embrace beauty, self-adornment and performance. This masculinity can be expressive, creative and even flamboyant.

The luxurious silk suits and carefully groomed appearance of American Jazz pioneer Duke Ellington (1899–1974) projected glamour rather than austerity.

The elegantly tailored overcoats and scarves of American poet Langston Hughes (1901–67) suggested a masculinity deeply entwined with creativity and softness.

Figures in Harlem’s ballrooms and jazz clubs blurred gender boundaries decades before mainstream conversations about gender fluidity emerged.

A tradition of Black tailoring

In a world where Black self-presentation has long been scrutinised and politicised, tailored clothing asserted visibility, authority and artistry. Dandies transformed fashion into a political declaration of dignity, resistance and creative power.

Black American tailoring practices blossomed most visibly in the zoot suits of the Harlem Renaissance, though they also had strong roots in New Orleans, Chicago and the Caribbean.

As seen in the Sunday Best of the Civil Rights era, Black tailoring walked the line between resistance and celebration: beautiful but with clear political intent.

In the 1970s, the Black dandy became more flamboyant, wearing tight, colourful clothes with bold accessories. He transformed traditional suits with exaggerated shapes, bright patterns and plaids inspired by African heritage.

Artists popular with a white audience like Sammy Davis Jr (1925–90), Miles Davis (1926–91) and James Brown (1933–2006) embraced the aesthetic, contributing to its widespread acceptance.

Meanwhile, a super stylish contingent of Black men in the Congo, La Sapeur, refined their look so spectacularly they would become the benchmark of the Black dandy for generations to come.

The 1990s saw a new era of Black dandyism emerge through luxury sportswear and hip-hop aesthetics.

Designer Dapper Dan (1944–) revolutionised fashion by remixing luxury logos into bold, custom streetwear, creating a distinctive Black aesthetic that bridged hip-hop culture and high fashion.

Musician Andre 3000 (1975–) redefined menswear by blending Southern Black style with bold colour, vintage tailoring and theatrical flair.

Today, the tradition thrives in the style of influencer Wisdom Kaye, the elegance of LeBron James, and the risk-taking of Lewis Hamilton.

Dressing for the red carpet

Tailored for You invites guests to interpret the dandy’s legacy in personal, bold and boundary-pushing ways.

Whether conforming to tradition, subverting expectations or creating something entirely new, this theme is a celebration of the freedom to dress – and be – on your own terms.

The Black dandy is a figure of defiance and desire, of ambiguity and brilliance, of resistance and beauty. Dandyism blurs boundaries between masculinity and femininity, artifice and authenticity, conformity and rebellion. It unsettles fixed identities and reflects broader tensions within modern life.

Black dandies have shocked, amused, offended, delighted and inspired society since their inception. In the sharp defiance of Douglass’ Victorian suits, the flamboyant spectacle of Harlem ballrooms, and the logo-laced rebellion of Dapper Dan’s streetwear, the Black dandy has continually forced the world to reckon with the politics of presence, pride and performance.

Despite being overlooked by mainstream fashion history, they’ve shaped the way we see elegance, masculinity and self-expression. This Met Gala and the accompanying exhibition are not just a celebration – they are a long-overdue recognition.

Toby Slade, Associate Professor of Fashion, University of Technology Sydney and Dijanna Mulhearn, PhD Candidate, School of Design. Author of Red Carpet Oscars, University of Technology Sydney

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

In a world with political polarisation, war, extreme weather events and increasing costs of living, we need to be able to cope as individuals and communities.

Our capacity to cope with very real stressors in our lives – our resilience – can determine whether we thrive, just survive, or are deprived of a reasonable quality of life.

Stress vs resilience

Resilience means having the ability to cope with, and rebound from, life’s challenges and still achieve our goals.

Stress isn’t something to be avoided. We need to feel some stress to achieve our best. Exposure to manageable levels of stress and adversity develops our coping skills and resilience.

But if we feel too much stress, we can flounder or become overwhelmed.

The ability to re-activate ourselves when we feel down, fatigued or disengaged helps to optimise our focus and motivation. Sportspeople, for example, might listen to high intensity music just before a competition to increase their energy levels.

Conversely, the ability to dampen down emotional intensity can make use feel less stressed or anxious. Exercising, listening to relaxing music, or patting a much-loved pet can prevent high arousal from interfering with completing a task.

Effective emotion regulation is crucial for adapting to life’s ups and downs, and keeping us on a relatively even keel.

How does resilience develop?

Resilience emerges from interactions between personal and environmental factors.

In addition to emotion regulation skills, personal factors that can bolster resilience include academic achievement, developing a range of skills and abilities (such as sport and music) and problem-solving skills. Many of these skills can be fostered in childhood. And if one area of life isn’t going well, we can still experience confidence, joy and meaning in others.

People who reflect on traumatic experience and develop new positive meanings about themselves (getting through it means I’m strong!) and life (a greater appreciation) can also have higher levels of resilience.

Genetic factors and temperament also play an important role. Some of us are born with nervous systems that respond with more anxiety than others in novel, uncertain, or potentially threatening situations. And some of us are more likely to avoid rather than approach these situations. These traits tend to be associated with lower levels of resilience. But we can all learn skills to build our resilience.

Environmental factors that promote resilience include:

• a nurturing home environment
• supportive family and peer relationships
• cultural identity, belonging and rituals
• modelling from others overcoming hardship
• community cohesion
• government policies that provide social safety nets, strong education, anti-discrimination and inclusion
• investment in facilities, spaces, services and networks that support the quality of life and wellbeing of communities.

Can resilience be taught?

Many factors associated with resilience are modifiable, so it stands to reason that interventions that aim to bolster them should be helpful.

There is evidence that interventions that promote optimism, flexibility, active coping and social support-seeking can have small yet meaningful positive effects on resilience and emotional wellbeing in children and adults.

However, school-based programs give us reason to be cautious.

A trial across 84 schools in the United Kingdom evaluated the effectiveness of school-based mindfulness programs. More than 3,500 students aged between 11 and 13 years received ten lessons of mindfulness and a similar number did not.

There was no evidence that mindfulness had any benefit on risk for depression, social, emotional and behavioural functioning, or wellbeing after one year. Teaching school children mindfulness at scale did not appear to bolster resilience.

In fact, there was some evidence it did harm – and it was most harmful for students at the highest risk of depression. The intervention was not deemed to be effective or cost-effective and was not recommended by the authors.

In another recent trial, researchers found an emotion regulation intervention with Year 8 and 9 school children was unhelpful and even harmful, although children who engaged in more home practice tended to do better.

These interventions may have failed for a number of reasons. The content may not have been delivered in a way that was sufficiently engaging, comprehensive, age-appropriate, frequent, individually tailored, or relevant to the school context. Teachers may also not be sufficiently trained in delivering these interventions for them to be effective. And students didn’t co-design the interventions.

Regardless of the reasons, these findings suggest we need to be cautious when delivering universal interventions to all children. It may be more helpful to wait until there are early signs of excessive stress and intervening in an individualised way.

What does this mean for resilience-building?

Parents and schools have a role in providing children with the sense of security that gives them confidence to explore their environments and make mistakes in age-appropriate ways, and providing support when needed.

Parents and teachers can encourage children to try to solve problems themselves before getting involved. Problem-solving attempts should be celebrated even more than success.

Schools need to allocate their scarce resources to children most in need of practical and emotional support in non-stigmatising ways, rather than universal approaches. Most children will develop resilience without intervention programs.

To promote resilience, schools can foster positive peer relationships, cultural identity and involvement in creative, sporting and academic pursuits. They can also highlight others’ recovery and resilience stories to demonstrate how growth can occur from adversity.

More broadly in the community, people can work on developing their own emotion regulation skills to bolster their confidence in their ability to manage adversity.

Think about how you can:

• approach challenges in constructive ways
• actively problem-solve rather than avoid challenges
• genuinely accept failure as part of being human
• establish healthy boundaries
• align your behaviour with your values
• receive social and professional support when needed.

This will help you navigate the ebbs and flows of life in ways that support recovery and growth.

Peter McEvoy, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Curtin University

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

Five years ago, COVID was all we could think about. Today, we’d rather forget about lockdowns, testing queues and social distancing. But the virus that sparked the pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, is still circulating.

Most people who get COVID today will experience only a mild illness. But some people are still at risk of severe illness and are more likely to be hospitalised with COVID. This includes older people, those who are immunocompromised by conditions such as cancer, and people with other health conditions such as diabetes.

Outcomes also tend to be more severe in those who experience social inequities such as homelessness. In the United Kingdom, people living in the 20% most deprived areas have double chance of being hospitalised from infectious diseases than those in the least deprived areas.

How many cases and hospitalisations?

In Australia, 58,000 COVID cases have been reported so far in 2025. However, testing rates have declined and not all positive cases are reported to the government, so case numbers in the community are likely much higher.

Latest data from FluCan, a network of 14 hospitals, found 781 people were hospitalised for COVID complications in the first three months of the year. This “sentinel surveillance” data gives a snapshot from a handful of hospitals, so the actual number of hospitalisations across Australia is expected to be much higher.

While deaths are lower than previous years, 289 people died from COVID-related respiratory infections in the first two months of the year.

What can we expect as we head into winter?

We often see an increase in respiratory infections in winter.

However, COVID peaks aren’t just necessarily seasonal. Over the past few years, peaks have tended to appear around every six months.

What are the most common COVID symptoms?

Typical early symptoms of COVID included fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose and shortness of breath. These have remained the most common COVID symptoms across the multiple variant waves.

Early in the pandemic, we realised COVID caused a unique symptom called anosmia – the changed sense of taste or smell. Anosmia lasts about a week and in some cases can last longer. Anosmia was more frequently reported from infections due to the ancestral, Gamma, and Delta variants but not for the Omicron variant, which emerged in 2021.

However, loss of smell still seems to be associated with some newer variants. A recent French study found anosmia was more frequently reported in people with JN.1.

But the researchers didn’t find any differences for other COVID symptoms between older and newer variants.

Should you bother doing a test?

Yes. Testing is particularly important if you experience COVID-like symptoms or were recently exposed to someone with COVID and are at high-risk of severe COVID. You might require timely treatment.

If you are at risk of severe COVID, you can see a doctor or visit a clinic with point-of-care testing services to access confirmatory PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing.

Rapid antigen tests (RATs) approved by Australia’s regulator are also still available for personal use.

But a negative RAT doesn’t mean that you don’t have COVID – especially if you are symptomatic.

If you do test positive, while you don’t have to isolate, it’s best to stay at home.

If you do leave the house while experiencing COVID symptoms, minimise the spread to others by wearing a well-fitted mask, avoiding public places such as hospitals and avoiding contact with those at higher risk of severe COVID.

How long does COVID last these days?

In most people with mild to moderate COVID, it can last 7–10 days.

Symptomatic people can spread the infection to others from about 48 hours before you develop symptoms to about ten days after developing symptoms. Few people are infectious beyond that.

But symptoms can persist in more severe cases for longer.

A UK study which tracked the persistence of symptoms in 5,000 health-care workers found symptoms were less likely to last for more than 12 weeks in subsequent infections.

General fatigue, for example, was reported in 17.3% of people after the first infection compared with 12.8% after the second infection and 10.8% following the third infection.

Unvaccinated people also had more persistent symptoms.

Vaccinated people who catch COVID tend to present with milder disease and recover faster. This may be because vaccination prevents over-activation of the innate immune response.

Vaccination remains the best way to prevent COVID

Vaccination against COVID continues to be one of the most effective ways to prevent COVID and protect against it. Data from Europe’s most recent winter, which is yet to be peer reviewed, reports COVID vaccines were 66% effective at preventing symptomatic, confirmed COVID cases.

Most people in Australia have had at least one dose of the COVID vaccine. But if you haven’t, people over 18 years of age are recommended to have a COVID vaccine.

Boosters are available for adults over 18 years of age. If you don’t have any underlying immune issues, you’re eligible to receive a funded dose every 12 months.

Boosters are recommended for adults 65–74 years every 12 months and for those over 75 years every six months.

Adults over 18 years who are at higher risk because of weaker immune systems are recommended to get a COVID vaccine every 12 months and are eligible every six months.

Check your status and eligibility using this booster eligibility tool and you can access your vaccine history here.

A new review of more than 4,300 studies found full vaccination before a SARS-CoV-2 infection could reduce the risk of long COVID by 27% relative to no vaccination for the general adult population.

With ongoing circulation of COVID, hybrid immunity from natural infection supplemented with booster vaccination can help prevent large-scale COVID waves.

Meru Sheel, Associate Professor and Epidemiologist, Infectious Diseases, Immunisation and Emergencies (IDIE) Group, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney

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

The common cold sore virus, which is often caught in childhood, usually stays in the body for life – quietly dormant in the nerves. Now and then, things like stress, illness or injury can trigger it, bringing on a cold sore in some people. But this same virus – called herpes simplex virus type 1 – may also play an important role in something far more serious: Alzheimer’s disease.

Over 30 years ago, my colleagues and I made a surprising discovery. We found that this cold sore virus can be present in the brains of older people. It was the first clear sign that a virus could be quietly living in the brain, which was long thought to be completely germ-free – protected by the so-called “blood-brain barrier”.

Then we discovered something even more striking. People who have a certain version of a gene (called APOE-e4) that increases their risk of Alzheimer’s, and who have been infected with this virus, have a risk that is many times greater.

To investigate further, we studied brain cells that we infected with the virus. They produced the same abnormal proteins (amyloid and tau) found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.

We believe that the virus stays mainly dormant in the body for years – possibly decades. But later in life, as the immune system gets weaker, it can enter the brain and reactivate there. When it does, it will damage brain cells and trigger inflammation. Over time, repeated flare-ups could gradually cause the kind of damage that leads to Alzheimer’s in some people.

We later found the virus’s DNA inside the sticky clumps of these proteins, which are found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Even more encouragingly, antiviral treatments reduced this damage in the lab, suggesting that drugs might one day help to slow or even prevent the disease.

Large population studies by others found that severe infections, specifically with the cold sore virus, was a strong predictor of Alzheimer’s, and that specific antiviral treatment reduced the risk.

Our research didn’t stop there. We wondered if other viruses that lie dormant in the body might have similar effects – such as the one responsible for chickenpox and shingles.

Shingles vaccine offers another clue

When we studied health records from hundreds of thousands of people in the UK, we saw something interesting. People who had shingles had only a slightly higher risk of developing dementia. Yet those who had the shingles vaccine were less likely to develop dementia at all.

A new Stanford University-led study gave similar results.

This supported our long-held proposal that preventing common infections could lower the risk of Alzheimer’s. Consistently, studies by others showed that infections were indeed a risk and that some other vaccines were protective against Alzheimer’s.

We then explored how risk factors for Alzheimer’s such as infections and head injuries could trigger the hidden virus in the brain.

Using an advanced 3D model of the brain with a dormant herpes infection, we found that when we introduced other infections or simulated a brain injury, the cold sore virus reactivated and caused damage similar to that seen in Alzheimer’s. But when we used a treatment to reduce inflammation, the virus stayed inactive, and the damage didn’t happen.

All of this suggests that the virus that causes cold sores could be an important contributor to Alzheimer’s, especially in people with certain genetic risk factors. It also opens the door to possible new ways of preventing the disease, such as vaccines or antiviral treatments that stop the virus from waking up and harming the brain.

What began as a link between cold sores and memory loss has grown into a much bigger story – one that may help us understand, and eventually reduce, the risk of one of the most feared diseases of our time.

Ruth Itzhaki, Professor Emeritus of Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Manchester and a Visiting Professorial Fellow, University of Oxford

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

We’ve all heard it before: eat your five-a-day, and try to get some exercise. It’s advice that’s simple in theory, yet in practice, not everyone is able to follow it. So what’s standing in the way?

Our research examined this question in depth. Using data from UK adults over the age of 50, we explored how socioeconomic status affects the likelihood of meeting the World Health Organization’s recommendations for physical activity and diet. These guidelines include at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity (or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity) physical activity per week and a daily intake of at least five portions of fruit and vegetables.

What we found points to a clear and concerning disparity. Wealthier older adults are nearly twice as likely to meet both exercise and dietary recommendations compared to their less affluent peers. And perhaps even more striking, those who don’t meet these health guidelines are significantly more likely to suffer from depression.

We analysed survey responses from more than 3,000 adults aged 50 to 90, using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. While nearly 70% of participants reported doing some form of physical activity, the data revealed a sharp wealth divide.

Adults in the highest wealth quintile (the top 20%) were almost twice as likely to be physically active as those in the lowest quintile. A similar pattern emerged for diet. Over 70% of those in the wealthiest group reported meeting the five-a-day guideline, compared to just over 40% in the lowest income bracket.

This matters, because not meeting government guidelines for physical activity and diet can have serious long-term health consequences. Regular exercise is known to increase HDL (or “good”) cholesterol, improve cardiovascular health, and reduce the risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers.

It also benefits brain health by lowering inflammation and even promoting the growth of new brain cells. Similarly, diets rich in fibre, vitamins, and antioxidants – found in fruits and vegetables – are associated with lower the risks of disease and cognitive decline, including conditions like Alzheimer’s.

Depression disparity

But the impact isn’t just physical. Our research also explored links between lifestyle and mental health. Around 19% of participants met the criteria for clinical depression, with the highest risk found among women, people living alone, smokers and those with lower incomes.

Alarmingly, rates of depression were nearly three times higher among those in the lowest wealth quintile (32.6% were depressed) compared to those in the highest (11.1%).

Lifestyle clearly played a role in depression levels. Among inactive participants, 30% reported symptoms of depression – more than double the rate seen in those who were physically active (13.7%). Likewise, those who didn’t meet the five-a-day guideline had a depression rate of 23.4%, compared to 15.7% among those who did.

These results suggest that staying physically active and eating well not only improves physical health but may also play a protective role in mental wellbeing. Yet not everyone has equal access to the resources, time, or environments that support healthy living. There is also the role of social isolation as a compounding factor.

Social disconnection is strongly linked to both poor physical and mental health, including depression and even increased mortality risk. Physical activity programmes that also offer social interaction – such as walking groups or community exercise classes – may provide even greater benefits.

Healthy ageing for everyone

The evidence shows that health disparities in later life are deeply tied to wealth and socioeconomic status. This means that addressing them requires more than encouraging personal responsibility – it calls for policy action.

Financial barriers to healthy food and physical activity need to be tackled through targeted programmes, subsidies and infrastructure investments. Making healthy options accessible and affordable – especially for those in lower-income groups – will benefit people and reduce strain on healthcare systems.

As populations continue to age, promoting health in later life is a public health priority. But that effort will only succeed if it recognises – and works to reduce – the inequalities that hold people back from living healthy, fulfilling lives.

Simon Evans, Lecturer in Neuroscience, School of Psychology, University of Surrey

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

Arthritis – an umbrella term for around 100 conditions that damage the joints – affects 4.1 million Australians. This is expected to rise by 31% to 5.4 million by 2040 and cost the Australian health-care system an estimated $12 billion each year.

The two most common types, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, can both cause joint pain, swelling and stiffness. Both are more common in women. Neither can be cured.

But their causes, risk factors and treatments are different – here’s what you need to know.

What is osteoarthritis?

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis. It affects 2.1 million Australians, mostly older people. About a third of Australians aged 75 and older have the condition.

It can affect any joint but is most common in the knees, hips, fingers, thumbs and big toes.

The main symptom is pain, especially during movement. Other symptoms may include swelling, stiffness and changes to the shape of joints.

The main risk factors are ageing and obesity, as well as previous injuries or surgery. For osteoarthritis in the hands, genetics also play a big role.

Signs of osteoarthritis can appear on knee scans from around age 45 and become more common with age.

However, this type of arthritis not simply the “wear and tear” of ageing. Osteoarthritis is a complex disease that affects the whole joint. This includes the cartilage (“shock-absorbing” connective tissue protecting your bones), bones, ligaments (connective tissue holding bones and body parts in place) and joint lining.

How is it diagnosed?

Diagnosis is based on symptoms (such as pain and restricted movement) and a physical exam.

The disease generally worsens over time and cannot be reversed. But the severity of damage does not always correlate with pain levels.

For this reason, x-rays and MRI scans are usually unhelpful. Some people with early osteoarthritis experience severe pain, but the damage won’t show up on a scan. Others with advanced and visible osteoarthritis may have few symptoms or none at all.

What about rheumatoid arthritis?

Unlike osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease. This means the immune system attacks the joint lining, causing inflammation and damage.

Common symptoms include pain, joint swelling and stiffness, especially in the morning.

Rheumatoid arthritis is less common than osteoarthritis, affecting around 514,000 Australians. It mostly impacts the wrists and small joints in the hands and feet, though larger joints such as the elbows, shoulders, knees and ankles can also be involved.

It can also affect other organs, including the skin, lungs, eyes, heart and blood vessels. Fortunately, disease outside the joint has become less common in recent years, likely due to better and earlier treatment.

Rheumatoid arthritis often develops earlier than osteoarthritis but can occur at any age. Onset is most frequent in those aged 35–64. Smoking increases your risk.

How is it diagnosed?

As with osteoarthritis, your doctor will diagnose rheumatoid arthritis based on your symptoms and a physical exam.

Some other tests can be useful. Blood tests may pick up specific antibodies that indicate rheumatoid arthritis, although you can still have the condition with negative results.

X-rays may also reveal joint damage if the disease is advanced. If there is uncertainty, an ultrasound or MRI can help detect inflammation.

How is osteoarthritis treated?

No treatment can stop osteoarthritis progressing. However many people manage their symptoms well with advice from their doctor and self-care. Exercise, weight management and pain medicines can help.

Exercise has been shown to be safe for osteoarthritis of the knee, hip and hand. Many types of exercise are effective at reducing pain, so you can choose what suits you best.

For knee osteoarthritis, managing weight through diet and/or exercise is strongly recommended. This may be because it reduces pressure on the joint or because losing weight can reduce inflammation. Anti-obesity medicines may also reduce pain.

Topical and oral anti-inflammatories are usually recommended to manage pain. However, opioids (such as tramadol or oxycodone) are not, due to their risks and limited evidence they help.

In some cases antidepressants such as duloxetine may also be considered as a treatment for pain though, again, evidence they help is limited.

What about rheumatoid arthritis?

Treatments for rheumatoid arthritis focus on preventing joint damage and reducing inflammation.

It’s essential to get an early referral to a rheumatologist, so that treatment with medication – called “disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs” – can begin quickly.

These medicines suppress the immune system to stop inflammation and prevent damage to the joint.

With no cure, the overall goal is to achieve remission (where the disease is inactive) or get symptoms under control.

Advances in treatment

There is an increasing interest in prevention for both types of arthritis.

A large international clinical trial is currently investigating whether a diet and exercise program can prevent knee osteoarthritis in those with higher risk – in this case, women who are overweight and obese.

For those already affected, new medicines in early-stage clinical trials show promise in reducing pain and improving function.

There is also hope for rheumatoid arthritis with Australian researchers developing a new immunotherapy. This treatment aims to reprogram the immune system, similar to a vaccine, to help people achieve long-term remission without lifelong treatment.

Giovanni E. Ferreira, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, Institute of Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney and Rachelle Buchbinder, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Rheumatologist, Monash University

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

Google has announced it will roll out its Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to children under the age of 13.

While the launch starts within the next week in the United States and Canada, it will launch in Australia later this year. The chatbot will only be available to people via Google’s Family Link accounts.

But this development comes with major risks. It also highlights how, even if children are banned from social media, parents will still have to play a game of whack-a-mole with new technologies as they try to keep their children safe.

A good way to address this would be to urgently implement a digital duty of care for big tech companies such as Google.

How will the Gemini AI chatbot work?

Google’s Family Link accounts allow parents to control access to content and apps, such as YouTube.

To create a child’s account, parents provide personal details, including the child’s name and date of birth. This may raise privacy concerns for parents concerned about data breaches, but Google says children’s data when using the system will not be used to train the AI system.

Chatbot access will be “on” by default, so parents need to actively turn the feature off to restrict access. Young children will be able to prompt the chatbot for text responses, or to create images, which are generated by the system.

Google acknowledges the system may “make mistakes”. So assessment of the quality and trustworthiness of content is needed. Chatbots can make up information (known as “hallucinating”), so if children use the chatbot for homework help, they need to check facts with reliable sources.

What kinds of information will the system provide?

Google and other search engines retrieve original materials for people to review. A student can read news articles, magazines and other sources when writing up an assignment.

Generative AI tools are not the same as search engines. AI tools look for patterns in source material and create new text responses (or images) based on the query – or “prompt” – a person provides. A child could ask the system to “draw a cat” and the system will scan for patterns in the data of what a cat looks like (such as whiskers, pointy ears, and a long tail) and generate an image that includes those cat-like details.

Understanding the differences between materials retrieved in a Google search and content generated by an AI tool will be challenging for young children. Studies show even adults can be deceived by AI tools. And even highly skilled professionals – such as lawyers – have reportedly been fooled into using fake content generated by ChatGPT and other chatbots.

Will the content generated be age-appropriate?

Google says the system will include “built-in safeguards designed to prevent the generation of inappropriate or unsafe content”.

However, these safeguards could create new problems. For example, if particular words (such as “breasts”) are restricted to protect children from accessing inappropriate sexual content, this could mistakenly also exclude children from accessing age-appropriate content about bodily changes during puberty.

Many children are also very tech-savvy, often with well-developed skills for navigating apps and getting around system controls. Parents cannot rely exclusively on inbuilt safeguards. They need to review generated content and help their children understand how the system works, and assess whether content is accurate.

What risks do AI chatbots pose to children?

The eSafety Commission has issued an online safety advisory on the potential risk of AI chatbots, including those designed to simulate personal relationships, particularly for young children.

The eSafety advisory explains AI companions can “share harmful content, distort reality and give advice that is dangerous”. The advisory highlights the risks for young children, in particular, who “are still developing the critical thinking and life skills needed to understand how they can be misguided or manipulated by computer programs, and what to do about it”.

My research team has recently examined a range of AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Replika, and Tessa. We found these systems mirror people’s interactions based on the many unwritten rules that govern social behaviour – or, what are known as “feeling rules”. These rules are what lead us to say “thank you” when someone holds the door open for us, or “I’m sorry!” when you bump into someone on the street.

By mimicking these and other social niceties, these systems are designed to gain our trust.

These human-like interactions will be confusing, and potentially risky, for young children. They may believe content can be trusted, even when the chatbot is responding with fake information. And, they may believe they are engaging with a real person, rather than a machine.

How can we protect kids from harm when using AI chatbots?

This rollout is happening at a crucial time in Australia, as children under 16 will be banned from holding social media accounts in December this year.

While some parents may believe this will keep their children safe from harm, generative AI chatbots show the risks of online engagement extend far beyond social media. Children – and parents – must be educated in how all types of digital tools can be used appropriately and safely.

As Gemini’s AI chatbot is not a social media tool, it will fall outside Australia’s ban.

This leaves Australian parents playing a game of whack-a-mole with new technologies as they try to keep their children safe. Parents must keep up with new tool developments and understand the potential risks their children face. They must also understand the limitations of the social media ban in protecting children from harm.

This highlights the urgent need to revisit Australia’s proposed digital duty of care legislation. While the European Union and United Kingdom launched digital duty of care legislation in 2023, Australia’s has been on hold since November 2024. This legislation would hold technology companies to account by legislating that they deal with harmful content, at source, to protect everyone.

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.

Millions of older adults take five or more prescription drugs every day to manage chronic illnesses. While polypharmacy is often necessary, this practice has also been linked to many negative health outcomes in older adults – including memory problems, increased risk of falls and greater frailty.

The most common prescription drugs involved in polypharmacy are those used to treat conditions such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and depression. Importantly, these same conditions are also known risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease.

This raises an important question: could polypharmacy have any influence on the progression of Alzheimer’s disease?

Our recent research in mice suggests that certain prescription drugs combinations might actually have a positive effect on memory and signs of Alzheimer’s disease. However, these effects appeared to differ depending on whether the mouse was male or female.

To better understand how polypharmacy may affect Alzheimer’s disease, we designed an experiment using mice that were genetically altered to develop Alzheimer’s-like brain changes. These mice had amyloid plaques – clumps of protein in the brain that, with time, are linked with memory loss and considered a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease .

We tested two different combinations of five commonly prescribed drugs, including: analgesics (painkillers), antithrombotics (to prevent blood clots), lipid-modifying agents (such as statins, which lower cholestrol), beta-blockers (which help controlling arrythmias and hypertension) and Ace inhibitors (used to treat cardiovascular conditions), as well as antidepressants.

Both groups of mice were given paracetamol, aspirin, an antidepressant, a statin and a blood pressure drug. The only differences between the two groups were the specific types of statin and cardiovascular drugs used. The first group were given simvastatin and metoprolol, while the second group was given atorvastatin and enalapril.

We gave these prescription drug combinations to both male and female mice. We then tested their memory, examined their brains for signs of disease and analysed blood samples for disease-related markers.

Our findings showed that polypharmacy has both positive and negative effects on Alzheimer’s disease progression. The effects largely depended on which specific drug combinations were used as well as the sex of the mice.

The first drug combination had beneficial effects in male mice. These mice showed better memory, reduced signs of Alzheimer’s pathology in the brain (such as the number and size of amyloid plaques) and fewer signs of the disease in their blood. This suggested that polypharmacy delayed the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

In females, however, the same combination had very little to no effect on signs and symptoms of the disease.

But for the mice in the second combination group, the results were different. The benefits previously seen in males disappeared. In female mice, their memory worsened.

We also looked at what happened when some of the drugs were taken on their own. In some cases, they had beneficial effects for the female mice – improving memory and signs of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain. For instance, the statin simvastatin improved memory and reduced signs of brain inflammation in female mice when the drug was taken on its own.

Polypharmacy and brain health

These results show how complex the effects of polypharmacy can be, especially in the context of a brain disease such as Alzheimer’s. They also suggest that men and women may respond differently to certain drug combinations.

This is not surprising. Biological sex is known to influence how drugs are absorbed and metabolised and their effect on the body. When it comes to polypharmacy, these differences can become more pronounced, having an even stronger effect on drug safety and efficacy.

This could partly help explain why the same drug combinations had very different effects in the male and female mice in our study. Other possible explanations for why certain drug combinations only improved signs and symptoms of the disease in male mice include sex differences in hormone levels and differences in immune responses that may influence how drugs work in the brain. Understanding these mechanisms will be key to tailoring safer and more effective treatments for the disease.

Our study confirms that current, universal prescribing approaches for older adults may not be ideal.

It’s also worth noting that older women are more likely to be polypharmacy users compared to men. This highlights the importance of understanding the effects of polypharmacy that are specific to men and women, and developing more personalised prescribing approaches.

Future translational studies (from mice to humans) looking at how drug combinations affect Alzheimer’s in males and females are also warranted to help reduce risks and improve healthcare in the ageing population.

The global population is continuing to age, which means that an even greater number of people are going to be at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. This is why it’s so important we understand all of the causes of the disease and how it can be prevented.

Silvia Maioli, Associate professor and Principal Researcher, Neurobiology, Karolinska Institutet and Francesca Eroli, PhD Researcher, Neurobiology, Karolinska Institutet

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

“My only regret in life is that I didn’t drink enough champagne,” the English economist and philosopher John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) is reported to have said. As it turns out, there may be a surprising ounce of truth to that quote.

Picture this: a glass of champagne – bubbly, crisp and, for many, reserved for toasts and celebrations. Now imagine it being mentioned in the same sentence as a way to help prevent sudden cardiac arrest: a condition where the heart abruptly stops beating, killing tens of thousands each year, often without warning. Sounds too good to be true, right?

Yet, a Canadian study has uncovered a curious link. Using data from over half a million people in the health research database the UK Biobank, researchers found that those who consumed moderate amounts of white wine or champagne had a lower risk of experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. Surprising, especially given the widely held belief that red wine, not white, is what benefits the heart.

To rule out coincidence, the researchers double-checked their findings using genetic data – and the connection seemed to hold firm. This suggests there might be more to the story than chance alone.

The study didn’t stop at wine. It explored more than 100 lifestyle and environmental factors tied to sudden cardiac arrest, including diet, exercise, air pollution, emotional wellbeing, body composition and education levels – all of which have been independently associated with risk. The conclusion? Up to 63% of sudden cardiac arrest cases could potentially be prevented by addressing these risk factors.

Among all the protective factors identified, a few stood out: fruit consumption, regular computer use (yes, really) and moderate drinking of white wine or champagne were all linked to a reduced risk of sudden cardiac arrest. Why? That remains uncertain.

One theory is that white wine contains antioxidants that may support heart health. Another possibility is that people who drink these types of beverages may also be more affluent and more likely to engage in other healthy behaviour, such as eating well, exercising regularly – and have access to better healthcare.

But before you pop a cork in celebration, a word of caution: alcohol remains a complex and often contradictory player in heart health. Other large-scale studies suggest a U-shaped relationship between alcohol and cardiovascular disease. Non-drinkers may have a certain level of risk, moderate drinkers of one glass of wine a day may see some benefit, but heavy drinking sharply increases the risk of high blood pressure, stroke and heart failure.

One observational study involving over 400,000 participants even found that moderate drinking could raise the risk of arrhythmias, which in some cases can lead to sudden death.

So while champagne may offer a hopeful glimmer, it’s no magic bullet. The study’s broader message was clear: it’s the overall lifestyle that matters most. Better sleep, regular physical activity and a balanced diet significantly reduced the risk of sudden cardiac arrest – and could prevent nearly one in five cases.

On the flip side, obesity, high blood pressure and chronic stress were among the strongest risk factors, along with lower education levels and exposure to air pollution. These findings underscore that preventing sudden cardiac arrest isn’t just about personal habits: it’s also about the environments we live in and the policies that shape them. Cleaner air, better education and easier access to nutritious food could all play a role.

Sudden cardiac arrest is not entirely random. Many of the contributing factors are within our control. Managing stress, staying active, maintaining a healthy weight, getting quality sleep – and yes, perhaps enjoying the occasional glass of white wine – can all help. But the real power lies in stacking small, healthy choices over time. Prevention is rarely about a single change; it’s about the cumulative effect of many.

And in case you were wondering: Keynes suffered a series of heart attacks in 1946, beginning during negotiations for the Anglo-American loan in Savannah, Georgia. He described the process as “absolute hell”. A few weeks after returning to his farmhouse in Firle, East Sussex, he died of a heart attack at the age of 62.

Maybe he was right about drinking more champagne after all.

David C. Gaze, Senior Lecturer in Chemical Pathology, University of Westminster

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

In a world with political polarisation, war, extreme weather events and increasing costs of living, we need to be able to cope as individuals and communities.

Our capacity to cope with very real stressors in our lives – our resilience – can determine whether we thrive, just survive, or are deprived of a reasonable quality of life.

Stress vs resilience

Resilience means having the ability to cope with, and rebound from, life’s challenges and still achieve our goals.

Stress isn’t something to be avoided. We need to feel some stress to achieve our best. Exposure to manageable levels of stress and adversity develops our coping skills and resilience.

But if we feel too much stress, we can flounder or become overwhelmed.

The ability to re-activate ourselves when we feel down, fatigued or disengaged helps to optimise our focus and motivation. Sportspeople, for example, might listen to high intensity music just before a competition to increase their energy levels.

Conversely, the ability to dampen down emotional intensity can make use feel less stressed or anxious. Exercising, listening to relaxing music, or patting a much-loved pet can prevent high arousal from interfering with completing a task.

Effective emotion regulation is crucial for adapting to life’s ups and downs, and keeping us on a relatively even keel.

How does resilience develop?

Resilience emerges from interactions between personal and environmental factors.

In addition to emotion regulation skills, personal factors that can bolster resilience include academic achievement, developing a range of skills and abilities (such as sport and music) and problem-solving skills. Many of these skills can be fostered in childhood. And if one area of life isn’t going well, we can still experience confidence, joy and meaning in others.

People who reflect on traumatic experience and develop new positive meanings about themselves (getting through it means I’m strong!) and life (a greater appreciation) can also have higher levels of resilience.

Genetic factors and temperament also play an important role. Some of us are born with nervous systems that respond with more anxiety than others in novel, uncertain, or potentially threatening situations. And some of us are more likely to avoid rather than approach these situations. These traits tend to be associated with lower levels of resilience. But we can all learn skills to build our resilience.

Environmental factors that promote resilience include:

• a nurturing home environment
• supportive family and peer relationships
• cultural identity, belonging and rituals
• modelling from others overcoming hardship
• community cohesion
• government policies that provide social safety nets, strong education, anti-discrimination and inclusion
• investment in facilities, spaces, services and networks that support the quality of life and wellbeing of communities.

Can resilience be taught?

Many factors associated with resilience are modifiable, so it stands to reason that interventions that aim to bolster them should be helpful.

There is evidence that interventions that promote optimism, flexibility, active coping and social support-seeking can have small yet meaningful positive effects on resilience and emotional wellbeing in children and adults.

However, school-based programs give us reason to be cautious.

A trial across 84 schools in the United Kingdom evaluated the effectiveness of school-based mindfulness programs. More than 3,500 students aged between 11 and 13 years received ten lessons of mindfulness and a similar number did not.

There was no evidence that mindfulness had any benefit on risk for depression, social, emotional and behavioural functioning, or wellbeing after one year. Teaching school children mindfulness at scale did not appear to bolster resilience.

In fact, there was some evidence it did harm – and it was most harmful for students at the highest risk of depression. The intervention was not deemed to be effective or cost-effective and was not recommended by the authors.

In another recent trial, researchers found an emotion regulation intervention with Year 8 and 9 school children was unhelpful and even harmful, although children who engaged in more home practice tended to do better.

These interventions may have failed for a number of reasons. The content may not have been delivered in a way that was sufficiently engaging, comprehensive, age-appropriate, frequent, individually tailored, or relevant to the school context. Teachers may also not be sufficiently trained in delivering these interventions for them to be effective. And students didn’t co-design the interventions.

Regardless of the reasons, these findings suggest we need to be cautious when delivering universal interventions to all children. It may be more helpful to wait until there are early signs of excessive stress and intervening in an individualised way.

What does this mean for resilience-building?

Parents and schools have a role in providing children with the sense of security that gives them confidence to explore their environments and make mistakes in age-appropriate ways, and providing support when needed.

Parents and teachers can encourage children to try to solve problems themselves before getting involved. Problem-solving attempts should be celebrated even more than success.

Schools need to allocate their scarce resources to children most in need of practical and emotional support in non-stigmatising ways, rather than universal approaches. Most children will develop resilience without intervention programs.

To promote resilience, schools can foster positive peer relationships, cultural identity and involvement in creative, sporting and academic pursuits. They can also highlight others’ recovery and resilience stories to demonstrate how growth can occur from adversity.

More broadly in the community, people can work on developing their own emotion regulation skills to bolster their confidence in their ability to manage adversity.

Think about how you can:

• approach challenges in constructive ways
• actively problem-solve rather than avoid challenges
• genuinely accept failure as part of being human
• establish healthy boundaries
• align your behaviour with your values
• receive social and professional support when needed.

This will help you navigate the ebbs and flows of life in ways that support recovery and growth.

Peter McEvoy, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Curtin University

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

Coeliac disease is not a food allergy or intolerance. It’s an autoimmune disease that makes the body attack the small intestine if gluten (a protein found in wheat, rye and barley) reaches the gut. Even a small amount – a tiny bread crumb – can cause damage and inflammation.

The only treatment is a gluten-free diet. This means completely eliminating foods containing the protein, such as pasta, bread, noodles and many processed products, and preparing food carefully to avoid cross-contamination.

But what about other forms of cross-contamination? One study surveyed 538 adults with coeliac disease about their dating habits and found 39% were hesitant to kiss their partners because of the disease.

But can gluten really be transferred this way, with a kiss? Research is only just beginning to look at this question – here’s what we know.

How harmful is gluten for people with coeliac disease?

Coeliac disease is common: surveys representative of the population estimate it affects one in 70 Australians. However, it tends to be under-diagnosed. Research suggests only 20% of those with coeliac disease have a medical diagnosis.

This means most sufferers are unaware they have coeliac disease, despite experiencing unpleasant symptoms.

When untreated, coeliac disease can stop the small intestine absorbing nutrients and lead to gut symptoms such as diarrhoea, abdominal pain, bloating and flatulence. It can also result in non-gut symptoms such as fatigue, skin rashes and brain fog.

However, touching gluten won’t have any effect. Gluten only causes damage to people with coeliac disease if it enters the gut. This is why it can be effectively treated with a strict gluten-free diet.

How much gluten is harmful?

Researchers have investigated how much gluten can result in harm to people with coeliac disease. One study found some people with coeliac disease experienced damage to their small intestine with as little as 10 milligrams of gluten per day.

For context, one slice of bread contains 2.5 grams of gluten. A very small amount can cause damage if eaten, such a tiny crumb accidentally transferred from a chopping board or plate.

Australian researchers have determined that a dose of gluten below 3mg does not cause an immune response on very sensitive blood tests.

Food regulatory authorities look at how much gluten is concentrated in particular foods to decide what is “gluten free”. In most countries a diet containing gluten at less than 20 parts per million (or 20mg per kilogram) is considered to be safe for people with coeliac disease.

But Australia and New Zealand have much stricter requirements for labelling a food as “gluten free”. Testing methods in Australia allow for detection as low as three parts per million – this is known as the “limit of detection”. Foods below this limit contain no detectable gluten and can be labelled gluten free.

So, what about kissing?

What does this mean for kissing? Can enough gluten be transmitted from one person to another via saliva to cause problems? To date, there is very limited data.

New US research presented today looked at ten couples, each with one partner who had coeliac disease.

In the study, the non-coeliac partner ate ten crackers containing gluten before the couple kissed for ten seconds.

The researchers found gluten transfer was minimal in the saliva. When the non-coeliac partner had a glass of water after eating the crackers, the gluten in their saliva was less than 20 parts per million (the international limit for gluten-free products).

While this data has not yet been peer-reviewed, their preliminary finding seems to support similar research from 2022 which looked at peanut allergy and saliva to estimate gluten levels in saliva.

It estimated that saliva after eating gluten could contain around 250 micrograms of gluten – one-twelfth of the minimum amount (3mg) believed to cause an immune response.

This means, for people with coeliac disease, kissing should not be an issue to worry about.

Other risks

The bigger risk for people with coeliac disease continues to be exposure to gluten from food – even food labelled “gluten free”.

One study found seven out of 256 manufactured food products sold as gluten free had detectable levels of gluten, in some cases as much as 3mg in a single serving.

In 2018 another study found almost 10% of food sold as gluten free at cafes and restaurants across Melbourne actually contained gluten. One food sample contained a gluten concentration of more than 80 parts per million.

Still, given Australia has strictest regulations in the world, the risk of getting sick from eating gluten-free foods is quite low.

The risk from kissing? Even lower.

If you want to look out for your loved one with coeliac disease, how you prepare food is more important. This includes preventing cross-contamination by storing and preparing gluten-free foods well away from foods containing gluten, and thoroughly cleaning equipment and utensils after they’ve been in contact with food containing gluten.

And next time you’re on a date at your favourite eatery – whether they advertise as gluten free, or just have gluten-free items on the menu – it’s a good idea to politely ask about their food handling practices.

Vincent Ho, Associate Professor and Clinical Academic Gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University

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

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the United States’ top public health official, recently claimed some religious groups avoid the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine because it contains “aborted fetus debris” and “DNA particles”.

The US is facing its worst measles outbreaks in years with nearly 900 cases across the country and active outbreaks in several states.

At the same time, Kennedy, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, continues to erode trust in vaccines.

So what can we make of his latest claims?

There’s no Foetal debris in the MMR vaccine

Kennedy said “aborted fetus debris” in MMR vaccines is the reason many religious people refuse vaccination. He referred specifically to the Mennonites in Texas, a deeply religious community, who have been among the hardest hit by the current measles outbreaks.

Many vaccines work by using a small amount of an attenuated (weakened) form of a virus, or in the case of the MMR vaccine, attenuated forms of the viruses that cause measles, mumps and rubella. This gives the immune system a safe opportunity to learn how to recognise and respond to these viruses.

As a result, if a person is later exposed to the actual infection, their immune system can react swiftly and effectively, preventing serious illness.

Kennedy’s claim about fetal debris specifically refers to the rubella component of the MMR vaccine. The rubella virus is generally grown in a human cell line known as WI-38, which was originally derived from lung tissue of a single elective abortion in the 1960s. This cell line has been used for decades, and no new fetal tissue has been used since.

Certain vaccines for other diseases, such as chickenpox, hepatitis A and rabies, have also been made by growing the viruses in fetal cells.

These cells are used not because of their origin, but because they provide a stable, safe and reliable environment for growing the attenuated virus. They serve only as a growth medium for the virus and they are not part of the final product.

You might think of the cells as virus-producing factories. Once the virus is grown, it’s extracted and purified as part of a rigorous process to meet strict safety and quality standards. What remains in the final vaccine is the virus itself and stabilising agents, but not human cells, nor fetal tissue.

So claims about “fetal debris” in the vaccine are false.

It’s also worth noting the world’s major religions permit the use of vaccines developed from cells originally derived from fetal tissue when there are no alternative products available.

Are there fragments of DNA in the MMR vaccine?

Kennedy claimed the Mennonites’ reluctance to vaccinate stems from “religious objections” to what he described as “a lot of aborted fetus debris and DNA particles” in the MMR vaccine.

The latter claim, about the vaccine containing DNA particles, is technically true. Trace amounts of DNA fragments from the human cell lines used to produce the rubella component of the MMR vaccine may remain even after purification.

However, with this claim, there’s an implication these fragments pose a health risk. This is false.

Any DNA that may be present in this vaccine exists in extremely small amounts, is highly fragmented and degraded, and is biologically inert – that is, it cannot cause harm.

Even if, hypothetically, intact DNA were present in the vaccine (which it’s not), it would not have the capacity to cause harm. One common (but unfounded) concern is that foreign DNA could integrate with a person’s own DNA, and alter their genome.

Introducing DNA into human cells in a way that leads to integration is very difficult. Even when scientists are deliberately trying to do this, for example, in gene therapy, it requires precise tools, special viral delivery systems and controlled conditions.

It’s also important to remember our bodies are exposed to foreign DNA constantly, through food, bacteria and even our own microbiome. Our immune system routinely digests and disposes of this material without incorporating it into our genome.

This question has been extensively studied over decades. Multiple health authorities, including Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration, have addressed the misinformation regarding perceived harm from residual DNA in vaccines.

Ultimately, the idea that fragmented DNA in a vaccine could cause genetic harm is false.

The bottom line

Despite what Kennedy would have you believe, there’s no fetal debris in the MMR vaccine, and the trace amounts of DNA fragments that may remain pose no health risk.

What the evidence does show, however, is that vaccines like the MMR vaccine offer excellent protection against deadly and preventable diseases, and have saved millions of lives around the world.

Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University

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

When the newspapers delivered their standard election-eve editorials, there were few surprises. Former Fairfax papers and smaller outlets offered qualified support for Labor, while the News Corp papers unashamedly championed the Coalition. In Adelaide, The Advertiser ran a curious line recommending a majority government of whatever persuasion, “lest our futures be in the hands of the mad Greens, self-serving teals or the independent rabble.”

How must those editors feel this morning? On the one hand, they got the majority government they wished for, and then some. The 2025 election will be mythologised in Labor circles for decades to come.

On the other hand, the “independent rabble” defied the expectations of some, and the best efforts of others, holding their seats and making gains in Sydney and Canberra, and potentially Melbourne and Perth as well. New crossbenchers will certainly be welcomed into the 48th parliament. And with the Coalition reeling from an historic defeat, they may all play a critical role in policy the debates to come.

Weathering the storm

The election campaign put all of the incumbent independent MPs through their paces. Coalition candidates and some of their outspoken media allies applied enormous personal pressure, with accusations of weakness on the issue of antisemitism and piercing questions from conservative news outlets about the transparency of some independent MPs’ donations.

Vast sums of money were also involved. In the Perth-side seat of Curtin, for example, independent MP Kate Chaney’s supporters and the Liberal Party allegedly spent $1 million each on their respective campaigns.

In the end, incumbent independents benefited from the historic pattern in federal politics: that a good independent is a tough proposition to beat. At election time, successful independent MPs benefit from the advantages of incumbency, the ability to point to specific policy or project victories arising from greater political competition for the seat, and the flexibility to adapt more quickly to changing voter attitudes, unencumbered by any party machinery.

Zali Steggall in Warringah and Helen Haines in Indi enjoyed their third successive wins, Rebekah Sharkie in Mayo a fourth general election win (she won a competitive byelection in 2018), Andrew Wilkie in Hobart a sixth victory on the trot, and north Queensland’s Bob Katter yet another term after 50 years of parliamentary service.

At the time of writing, all of the independents who won their seats in 2022 appear to have been returned. (The exception was Kylie Tink, whose electorate was abolished last year.) The closest count is in Goldstein, where incumbent Zoe Daniel narrowly leads her Liberal predecessor Tim Wilson. Other incumbents, such as Sophie Scamps in Mackellar, Allegra Spender in Wentworth, Monique Ryan in Kooyong and Kate Chaney in Curtin, have enjoyed distinctive swings toward them. In the formerly safe Labor seat of Fowler, where the party hoped to win, independent MP Dai Le enjoyed a handsome primary vote swing of around 6% in her favour.

Changing hands

The picture has been more mixed for the rest of the crossbench and other minor parties. The Greens seem set to lose two of their Brisbane seats, but a close race in the formerly safe Labor seat of Wills in Victoria may yet provide a win. Another record spendathon from Clive Palmer will see the Trumpet of Patriots win zero seats. One Nation may keep Queensland senator Malcolm Roberts in his place, but there do not appear to be any other gains for Pauline Hanson’s team.

Coalition defectors fared poorly, too. Monash MP, independent and former Liberal Russell Broadbent, appears to have secured just 10% of the primary vote, placing him behind both major parties and the community independent candidate.

In the Perth seat of Moore, Liberal defector Ian Goodenough has fallen behind Labor, Liberal and the Greens, with preferences flowing mainly to Labor candidate Tom French. Right-wing LNP defector Gerard Rennick appears unlikely to win his contest for a Queensland senate seat. In the regional NSW seat of Calare, ex-National MP Andrew Gee appears the only one able to buck the trend, coming second on primary votes and benefiting from a stronger flow of preferences than his National Party opponent.

New crossbench faces?

A series of close contests may yet result in extra independent members of parliament. Despite a bitter campaign, community independent Nicolette Boele appears likely to win in the north Sydney seat of Bradfield. In the Victorian seat of Flinders, independent Ben Smith has enjoyed a 5.4% swing toward him, and away from Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie, though preferences have not yet been published in that seat. In Fremantle, where the Australian Electoral Commission is yet to report any preference flows, independent candidate Kate Hulett may still be in with a shot to beat Labor’s Josh Wilson. The competitive result follows an impressive campaign from Hulett at the state election earlier this year.

After five weeks of vicious debates about the public service and Canberra, voters in the ACT sent clear messages to both major parties. Voices for Bean candidate Jessie Price appears to have run close to victory in Bean, and independent Senator David Pocock enjoyed an easy victory. Labor received less than a third of the primary vote in that Senate race, and barely one in seven ACT residents voted Liberal.

Not burning down the house

Despite that qualification, Labor’s victory is historic by several measures. It is one of only four occasions over the past 30 years where its primary vote actually grew at a federal election. It looks to have won a lower house majority comparable with that of the Howard government’s final term, and maybe even with the Coalition’s 2013 victory (when it won 90 seats, more than double the figure it is likely to have won this time). The two-party preferred vote shows Albanese securing the kind of victory that made John Curtin a Labor hero in 1943.

So what role does that leave for independents in the 48th parliament?

Returning crossbenchers will regard their impressive primary votes as confirmation their voters want them to keep doing politics differently. The Liberal and National parties, on the other hand, will be consumed for much of the parliamentary term with introspection and institutional reckoning. Given how unhelpful their studied unity over the past term ultimately proved, it may be there’s more infighting within the Coalition during the next parliament.

Does it matter that the crossbenchers will not hold the balance of power in the lower house? Not necessarily. In the event of a serious policy misstep from the Albanese government during this term, the crossbenchers may prove to be the more influential voices of opposition in the lower house.

Sometimes a solo voice speaks with powerful volume. In 2001 the rural independent for Calare, Peter Andren, proved to be a singularly powerful voice against the Howard government’s draconian offshore detention program for asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat. Andren defied the national trends (and the local opinion polls) and was returned with an increased primary vote, and again in 2004. When he died, some said his opposition to the Howard government showed “more guts and decency” than “all the other Coalition and ALP candidates combined”.

Several of the current independents have earned themselves a national profile and are trusted advocates on issues such as public integrity and accountability, climate and energy policy and even foreign and security affairs. There will certainly be few MPs left on the opposition benches who can speak with compelling authority on some of these issues. In the face of an emboldened Labor government, their opposition to contentious legislation may sometimes have outsized influence.

In pragmatic political terms, it is arguably in the Labor Party’s interests to negotiate, and to be seen to negotiate, with the crossbench. The independents in formerly safe Liberal seats are some of the biggest obstacles in any future Liberal pathway back into office.

Newly-elected Labor MPs may also depend on preferences from community independent candidates next time they go to the polls. The Menzies government owed part of its longevity in the late 1950s and 1960s to its ability to win the preferences of the Democratic Labor Party, an anti-communist breakaway party from Labor.

Independents are nothing like the DLP, and many run open tickets instead of strictly recommending preferences on their how to vote cards. But in some seats, including the leader of the opposition’s seat of Dickson, independent and Greens voters’ preferences will have proven crucial for Labor’s success.

‘Every day is minority government in the Senate’

The other crucial reason independents still have a role to play is the Senate. Pocock recently remarked that “every day is minority government in the Senate”. Albanese’s victory, no matter how impressive, does not extend to a majority in the red chamber.

The last time a party won a majority in the Senate was in 2004. Before that, it was 1977. No matter how large a lower-house majority, negotiation and compromise are simply unavoidable for laws to get passed in the federal parliament.

The Greens will now hold the balance of power in the Senate. Other crucial crossbenchers include Pocock and, assuming she is re-elected as the sixth senator for Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie. During the 47th parliament, Pocock and Lambie often proved decisive in shaping, amending and sometimes postponing legislation they felt needed improvement.

Both will bring a range of priorities to the 48th parliament. They may also collaborate more routinely with lower house crossbench colleagues to make those critical votes in the senate count for everything that they are worth. That would be a good thing. After all, both chambers really do matter in our parliamentary system.

Editor’s note: this article was updated on May 5 to take account of the updated vote counts in the electorate of Bean and for the Senate.

Joshua Black, Visitor, School of History, Australian National University

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

Among the many lessons to be learnt by the Liberal-National Coalition parties from the election is that they should stop getting into bed with News Corporation Australia.

Why would a political party outsource its policy platform and strategy to people with plenty of opinions, but no experience in actually running a government?

The result of the federal election suggests that unlike the Coalition, many Australians are ignoring the opinions of News Corp Australia’s leading journalists such as Andrew Bolt and Sharri Markson.

Last Thursday, in her eponymous program on Sky News Australia, Markson said:

For the first time in my journalistic career I’m going to also offer a pre-election editorial, endorsing one side of politics […] A Dutton prime ministership would give our great nation the fresh start we deserve.

After a vote count that sees the Labor government returned with an increased majority, Bolt wrote a piece for the Herald Sun admonishing voters:

No, the voters aren’t always right. This time they were wrong, and this gutless and incoherent Coalition should be ashamed. Australians just voted for three more years of a Labor government that’s left this country poorer, weaker, more divided and deeper in debt, and which won only by telling astonishing lies. That’s staggering. If that’s what voters really like, then this country is going to get more of it, good and hard.

The Australian and most of News’ tabloid newspapers endorsed the Coalition in their election eve editorials.

The election result was a repudiation of the minor culture war Dutton reprised during the campaign when he advised voters to steer clear of the ABC and “other hate media”. It may have felt good alluding to “leftie-woke” tropes about the ABC, but it was a tactical error. The message probably resonated only with rusted-on hardline Coalition voters and supporters of right-wing minor parties.

But they were either voting for the Coalition, or sending them their preferences, anyway. Instead, attacking the ABC sent a signal to the people the Coalition desperately needed to keep onside – the moderates who already felt disappointed by the Coalition’s drift to the right and who were considering voting Teal or for another independent.

Attacking just about the most trusted media outlet in the country simply gave those voters another reason to believe the Coalition no longer represented their values.

Reporting from the campaign bus is often derided as shallow form of election coverage. Reporters tend to be captive to a party’s agenda and don’t get to look much beyond a leader’s message. But there was real value in covering Dutton’s daily stunts and doorstops, often in the outer suburbs that his electoral strategy relied on winning over.

What was revealed by having journalists on the bus was the paucity of policy substance. Details about housing affordability and petrol pricing – which voters desperately wanted to hear – were little more than sound bites.

This was obvious by Dutton’s second visit to a petrol station, and yet there were another 15 to come. The fact that the campaign bus steered clear of the sites for proposed nuclear plants was also telling.

The grind of daily coverage helped expose the lateness of policy releases, the paucity of detail and the lack of preparation for the campaign, let alone for government.

On ABC TV’s Insiders, the Nine Newspapers’ political editor, David Crowe, wondered whether the media has been too soft on Dutton, rather than too hard as some Coalition supporters might assume.

He reckoned that if the media had asked more difficult questions months ago, Dutton might have been stress-tested and better prepared before the campaign began.

Instead, the Coalition went into the election believing it would be enough to attack Labor without presenting a fully considered alternative vision. Similarly, it would suffice to appear on friendly media outlets such as News Corp, and avoid more searching questions from the Canberra press gallery or on the ABC.

Reporters and commentators across the media did a reasonable job of exposing this and holding the opposition to account. The scrutiny also exposed its increasingly desperate tactics late in the campaign, such as turning on Welcome to Country ceremonies.

If many Australians appear more interested in what their prospective political leaders have to say about housing policy or climate change than the endless culture wars being waged by the coalition, that message did not appear to have been heard by Peta Credlin.

The Sky News Australia presenter and former chief of staff to prime minister Tony Abbott said during Saturday night’s election coverage “I’d argue we didn’t do enough of a culture war”.

Matthew Ricketson, Professor of Communication, Deakin University and Andrew Dodd, Professor of Journalism, Director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

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

More than half of the world’s population currently lives in cities and this share is expected to rise to nearly 70% by 2050.

It’s no wonder “smart cities” have become a buzzword in urban planning, politics and tech circles, and even media.

The phrase conjures images of self-driving buses, traffic lights controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) and buildings that manage their own energy use.

But for all the attention the term receives, it’s not clear what actually makes a city smart. Is it about the number of sensors installed? The speed of the internet? The presence of a digital dashboard at the town hall?

Governments regularly speak of future-ready cities and the promise of “digital transformation”. But when the term “smart city” is used in policy documents or on the campaign trail, it often lacks clarity.

Over the past two decades, governments around the world have poured billions into smart city initiatives, often with more ambition than clarity. The result has been a patchwork of projects: some genuinely transformative, others flashy but shallow.

So, what does it really mean for a city to be smart? And how can technology solve real urban problems, not just create new ones?

What is a smart city, then?

The term “smart city” has been applied to a wide range of urban technologies and initiatives – from traffic sensors and smart meters to autonomous vehicles and energy-efficient building systems.

But a consistent, working definition remains elusive.

In academic and policy circles, one widely accepted view is that a smart city is one where technology is used to enhance key urban outcomes: liveability, sustainability, social equity and, ultimately, people’s quality of life.

What matters here is whether the application of technology leads to measurable improvements in the way people live, move and interact with the city around them.

By that standard, many “smart city” initiatives fall short, not because the tools don’t exist, but because the focus is often on visibility and symbolic infrastructure rather than impact.

This could be features like high-tech digital kiosks in public spaces that are visibly modern and offer some use and value, but do little to address core urban challenges.

The reality of urban governance – messy, decentralised, often constrained – is a long way from the seamless dashboards and simulations often promised in promotional material.

But there is a way to help join together the various aspects of city living, with the help of “digital twins”.

Digital twin (of?) cities

Much of the early focus on smart cities revolved around individual technologies: installing sensors, launching apps or creating control centres. But these tools often worked in isolation and offered limited insight into how the city functioned as a whole.

City digital twins represent a shift in approach.

Instead of layering technology onto existing systems, a city digital twin creates a virtual replica of those systems. It links real-time data across transport, energy, infrastructure and the environment. It’s a kind of living, evolving model of the city that changes as the real city changes.

This enables planners and policymakers to test decisions before making them. They can simulate the impact of a new road, assess the risk of flooding in a changing climate or compare the outcomes of different zoning options.

Used in this way, digital twins support decisions that are better informed, more responsive, and more in tune with how cities actually work.

Not all digital twins operate at the same level. Some offer little more than 3D visualisations, while others bring in real-time data and support complex scenario testing.

The most advanced ones don’t just simulate the city, but interact with it.

Where it’s working

To manage urban change, some cities are already using digital twins to support long-term planning and day-to-day decision-making – and not just as add-ons.

In Singapore, the Virtual Singapore project is one of the most advanced city-scale digital twins in the world.

It integrates high-resolution 3D models of Singapore with real-time and historical data from across the city. The platform has been used by government agencies to model energy consumption, assess climate and air flow impacts of new buildings, manage underground infrastructure, and explore zoning options based on risks like flooding in a highly constrained urban environment.

In Helsinki, the Kalasatama digital twin has been used to evaluate solar energy potential, conduct wind simulations and plan building orientations. It has also been integrated into public engagement processes: the OpenCities Planner platform lets residents explore proposed developments and offer feedback before construction begins.

We need a smarter conversation about smart cities

If smart cities are going to matter, they must do more than sound and look good. They need to solve real problems, improve people’s lives and protect the privacy and integrity of the data they collect.

That includes being built with strong safeguards against cyber threats. A connected city should not be a more vulnerable city.

The term smart city has always been slippery – more aspiration than definition. That ambiguity makes it hard to measure whether, or how, a city becomes smart. But one thing is clear: being smart doesn’t mean flooding citizens with apps and screens, or wrapping public life in flashy tech.

The smartest cities might not even feel digital on the surface. They would work quietly in the background, gather only the data they need, coordinate it well and use it to make citizens’ life safer, fairer and more efficient.

Milad Haghani, Associate Professor & Principal Fellow in Urban Risk & Resilience, The University of Melbourne; Abbas Rajabifard, Professor in Geomatics and SDI, The University of Melbourne, and Benny Chen, Senior Research Fellow, Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne

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

“Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.”

This statement might have been written last year – or last week – as a comment on the current state of political reporting. It is actually from Lying in Politics, an article by Hannah Arendt published in The New York Review of Books in November 1971. Her reflections were prompted by the release of the Pentagon Papers, which provided devastating evidence of the discrepancy between US government narrative about its role in the Vietnam War and the actual policies of engagement.

Review: Age of Doubt: Building Trust in a World of Misinformation – edited by Tracey Kirkland and Gavin Fang (Monash University Publishing)

Somehow, the sense that we can no longer trust public institutions and the information they feed us always seems immediate: a pathology of recent development. Age of Doubt: Building Trust in a World of Misinformation, a collection of essays edited by ABC journalists Tracey Kirkland and Gavin Fang, addresses the misinformation crisis as “one of the central issues of our time”.

Arendt wrote in response to a particular moment of crisis in public trust. There is no question that we are currently facing another. But if the problem isn’t new, what is “new” about the present crisis? What gives the issue an escalated priority now?

The 25 short articles in the book offer a range of diagnoses. Journalists and news editors feature prominently, but there are also contributions from heads of major public institutions. Their brief was to consider how and why trust has been replaced by doubt: the title of the book is printed on the cover so that the first word is overlaid by the second.

The implication that trust is the opposite of doubt is problematic. Mistrust or suspicion are surely the antitheses. And if trust is replaced by doubt, is that necessarily a bad thing? An environment riddled with propaganda and disinformation tends to generate fierce certainties about false beliefs. It promotes excessive levels of trust in influencers and highly manipulative public figures. This is not something the anthology sets out to address.

Cut flowers

Several of the contributors see the trust breakdown in almost existential terms, as part of a deep history of divided perceptions. Fang returns to Plato’s cave, where the inhabitants are restrained from turning in the direction of the real world and can only see its shadows on an inner wall. Everyone sees these shadows differently.

The relevance of this ancient metaphor to a culture increasingly dominated by screens is all too obvious. Fang quotes linguistics professor Nick Enfield, who calls for “a literacy around our own limitations”. The loss of common vision also concerns Simon Longstaff, director of the Ethics Centre, who suggests that we are at a similar juncture to that faced by French philosopher René Descartes in the mid 17th century. As the certainties of the past collapse, the loss of a common standard of judgement is making trust impossible.

Former New York Times journalist Ben Decker, a specialist in information warfare, compares the problem to coastal erosion. “It’s not like we didn’t see this coming,” he asserts. Marshall McLuhan, one of the pioneers of media theory, was warning us about it in the 1970s. Disinformation existed long before the internet. Like Fang, Decker sees it as an existential problem. We must focus on how to “increase empathy at scale”, rather than investing ever more in programs to counter disinformation.

Anglican archbishop Michael Stead diagnoses the empathy deficit as an inevitable consequence of loss of faith. A society that is no longer Christian continues to operate on Christian foundations, leaving us “like cut flowers”, without the common ground we need for survival.

Many of the contributors regard the COVID pandemic as a turning point. Conspiracy theories spread as a secondary and ultimately more enduring virus. Kaz Ross, a specialist in extremism and conspiracy theories, explains how they arise in the gap between an unexpected event and our capacity to account for it. Once the false accounts are up and running, it is hard for genuine explanation to get traction.

Former Victorian Police Commissioner Graham Ashton had to front up to situations in which the community was judging police actions without knowing the circumstances. Instantaneous online reactions exacerbated the tensions. The experience reinforced his conviction that police must be part of community, not other to it.

That’s easily said, and it puts another vote in the empathy box. But the word “empathy” itself is being enlisted to carry too much weight in the quest for solutions. What does it mean in these contexts?

The only person here with a convincing answer to that is Yolŋu elder Yalmay Yunupingu. Yunupingu is coming from a place where community is continuously lived rather than constantly referred to, where practices of truth-telling go back through generations. The kinship system, Gurrutu, is the foundational truth from which trust is grown.

There are none of Archbishop Stead’s cut flowers here. Instead of well-intentioned talk of something called empathy, there are rules, responsibilities and protocols. Children are educated in these through storytelling. Language is a precious heritage to be honoured and cultivated – a salient reminder that the betrayal of truth begins with speaking falsely.

Where does agency lie?

Telling a lie to a circle of people whose faces you can see carries a very different moral force from wielding the firehose of falsehoods in a global media environment. When Kirkland says “something in this current age is different, sometimes dangerously so”, we are steered towards the central questions of where agency lies, and to what extent the problem is inherent in new forms of media.

Social media platforms are an easy target, and one journalists are especially inclined to pick, for obvious reasons. As Nic Newman and Amy Ross Arguedas from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism point out, journalists are often targets of vindictive posts from bloggers who have no accountability for what they say.

Polarisation is being supercharged in the pandemonium of social media. Plummeting levels of trust in professional news media tend to correlate with escalating levels of aggravation on TikTok or X. But that is only part of the story, which requires more sustained focus than it gets from this rather disparate collection of writings. Social media are as various as any other form of public communication. It is easy to overlook the role of public commentary in responding to real problems and critiquing the roles high-profile reporters and presenters play in the political arena.

There is as wide a difference between an abusive spray on X and a serious discursive exchange on Threads as there is between political feuding on Sky and the kind of news reporting we expect from the ABC. News journalists who are feeling the pressure might do well to attend to some of the more cogent criticism on public platforms, rather than sweeping it all into the basket of deplorables.

None of the contributors who are engaged in news journalism are proposing this kind of rapprochement as one of the solutions to the yawning gulf of mistrust, even though there are many distinguished reporters who have a significant social media presence and use it to promote ethical awareness on issues of critical importance. Australians Van Badham and Debbie Spillane, Guardian writer George Monbiot, Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic, and MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman are among those who do this effectively.

Radical impartiality

ABC presenter Patricia Karvelas takes on the “radical impartiality” challenge that dogs all political journalists at the national broadcaster. In a measured and well-documented overview, she cites data on falling levels of satisfaction with government, loss of faith in democracy, and the rise of influence campaigns funded by “bad actors sowing dissent”.

Then comes the question of what radical impartiality looks like in this volatile environment, where high profile figures like herself can only measure their performance by being attacked with equal virulence from the left and the right. The solution, says Karvelas, lies in raising democratic literacy levels and equipping the public with tools to be better adjudicators.

That is a rather condescending view, which goes along with being satisfied that the public have been given a voice when their text messages are read out or when they get to ask a question of a panel of celebrity speakers. But this only widens the gulf and increases the frustration. Perhaps people make comments on social media because they have a point to make that is being missed by the voices issuing from television and radio?

News professionals, even in the most distinguished circles, can be remarkably obtuse on matters that are their core business. “Every tribe has its myths, and journalists are no exception,” writes Fergus McIntosh of the New Yorker. Fact-checking he says, has become “a pursuit bordering on mania”. But as the go-to solution in a disinformation fire-storm, the practice is just not cutting through.

Are those who manage staff budgets catering for some 30 dedicated fact-checkers at the New Yorker unaware that deception and manipulation do not reside in individual “facts” (however defined), but in the connections between them, the way they are strung into pseudo-logical assertions, thrown out in colourful non-sequiturs, or woven into narratives heavily loaded with implication?

Those are exactly the kinds of things that get picked up in social media communities, where participants correlate their understanding from a range of sources and share them with others who do likewise.

It is Danish news director Ulrik Haagerup, CEO of the Constructive Institute, who offers the most agile and insightful perspective on these matters. His contribution is all about the challenge of self-appraisal. He reports on workshops for editors – held at News Corp, of all places – in which the agenda was identifying how to do and see things differently.

This exercise begins with a resolve “to rethink continuously the business of storytelling”. At the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Haagerup led experiments with stories that asked different kinds of questions and shifted some hardwired premises about how news communication should be framed. One strategy involved accompanying politicians to regional locations, where they were asked to talk to “real people”.

In picking “trust” rather than “truth” as the central theme of the anthology, the editors have wisely sidestepped the risks of inviting didactic or polemical views. “Truth carries within itself an element of coercion,” Arendt warns. Trust may involve an acceptance of the Plato’s cave dilemma. No one lays claim to the truth more vehemently than the propagandist who appeals to reason with lies.

Jane Goodall, Emeritus Professor, Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University

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

The internet’s latest absurd obsession is: who would win in a no-rules fight between 100 average human men and one adult male gorilla?

This hypothetical and strange question has taken over Reddit, TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. Some argue that humans once hunted mammoths so, clearly, we would win. Others point out that a silverback gorilla can lift close to 1,000kg and could throw a grown man like a rag doll.

To be honest, it’s not really a question we need to answer – and yet, as usual on the internet, everyone has an opinion.

But, beyond the jokes and memes, this silly debate provides an opportunity to reflect on human evolution. What are the real strengths of our species? What have we sacrificed? And what can a gorilla, our majestic, powerful and endangered distant cousin, teach us about our own nature and evolution?

Gorillas and humans: two branches of the same evolutionary tree

Gorillas are one of our closest living relatives. Along with chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans, they belong to the great apes or Hominidae family. Chimpanzees share about 98.8% of their DNA with us, while gorillas come a close second, sharing around 98.4%.

The last common ancestor between humans and gorillas lived roughly 10 million years ago, and it is also the same ancestor for chimpanzees.

Since the evolutionary split, humans and gorillas have followed very different paths. Gorillas have adapted to dense forests and mountainous terrains, while humans have evolved to live in the open, but realistically to multiple and various environments.

Despite the substantial difference in ecological niches, humans and gorillas share many traits, such as opposable thumbs, facial expressions, complex social behaviours and emotional intelligence.

Mastering forest power

In the recent Dune saga, to win, Duke Leto Atreides wanted to develop “desert power”. Well, gorillas have mastered forest power.

And let’s be clear – in terms of raw power, the gorilla wins every time. An adult male silverback can weigh more than 160kg and lift about a tonne without going to the gym every day. Their upper-body strength is shocking. And that’s no evolutionary accident – it’s the result of intense competition between males, where dominance determines mating.

Additionally, gorillas are extremely tough and resilient, yet gentle and calm most of the time. Gorillas, like many primates, have a strong social intelligence. They use a variety of vocalisations, gestures and even chest drumming to communicate across distances.

They have shown the ability to use sign language, mourn their dead, and demonstrate empathy, attesting to sophisticated cognitive skills.

Trading muscles for minds

A fight between 100 men and one gorilla might lead to a lot of dead men, but we all know that men will come with weapons, strategies, drones, fire and other clever tricks.

Humans are not physically strong in comparison to many other mammals. Our strength as a species is our adaptability and our ability to collaborate in very large groups.

Our brains are, on average, three times larger proportionally than those of gorillas. This fantastic evolutionary adaptation has allowed us to develop abstract thinking and symbolic language, but most of all, to pass and build on complex knowledge across generations.

And this is our greatest superpower, our ability to cooperate across vast groups, far beyond the average gorilla social unit, which usually ranges from a few family members up to a group of 30 individuals.

Humans’ evolutionary history has led to trading brute force for social, cultural and technological complexity, making us Earth’s most versatile and dangerous species.

So, who’s the winner?

In a one-on-one brawl, the gorilla can make “human-mash” with one hand. There is no contest when discussing brute force and bare hands.

But humans fight dirty. Judging by our evolutionary success, humans would likely lose many battles but ultimately win the fight. Mountain gorillas were not on the brink of extinction in the 1980s without our help.

Our species has spread across all continents, all terrains, and all climates. We have reshaped ecosystems, walked on the Moon, and developed advanced technologies. But gorillas are another kind of success rooted in harmony with their environment, physical grace, and quiet strength.

Perhaps the real takeaway message isn’t who wins in a fight, but to realise that two very different and yet very close cousins have walked two separate evolutionary roads, each in their own distinct way. And both are nature’s triumph and accomplishment.

Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Professor in Geochronology and Geochemistry, Southern Cross University

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

When it comes to our health, we’re constantly being warned about being taken in by misinformation. Yet for most of us what we believe ultimately comes down to who we trust, including which “experts” we trust.

The problem is that not everyone who presents themselves as an expert is actually an expert. And an expert in one area isn’t necessarily an expert in everything.

The reality is that we often rely on superficial cues to decide who to trust. We’re often swayed by how confidently someone speaks, their perceived authority, or how compelling their story sounds. For some, it’s simply the loudest voice that carries the most weight.

Even if we feel we have some understanding of science, few of us have the time or the capacity to verify every claim made by every so-called “expert”.

So how can we distinguish credible experts from those that are not? Here are four things I look out for.

1. Dodgy experts don’t acknowledge uncertainty

One thing that separates trustworthy experts from dodgy ones, is their humility. They have a healthy respect of the limitations of science, the gaps in the evidence, and even the limitations of their own expertise.

And importantly, they communicate this clearly.

In contrast, one of the most common characteristics of the dodgy expert is they are misleadingly certain. They often present issues in overly simplistic, black-and-white terms, and they draw conclusions with misplaced confidence.

This, of course, is part of their appeal. A neat clear-cut message that downplays uncertainty, complexity and nuance can be persuasive – and often even more persuasive than a messy but accurate message.

One of the clearest examples of unfounded certainty was the confident claim by some “experts” early in the pandemic that COVID was no worse than the flu, a conclusion which ignored uncertainties in the emerging data.

2. The dodgy expert doesn’t strive to be objective

Credible experts follow a well-established and disciplined approach when communicating science. They present their understanding clearly, support it with evidence, and endeavour to remove emotion and bias from their thinking.

A core principle of scientific thinking is striving for objectivity – and language reflects this. Experts generally aim to provide high-quality information to assist the public to make informed decisions for themselves, rather than manipulating them to reach specific conclusions.

Dodgy experts often rely on overly emotional language, inject political agendas, or resort to personal attacks against critics in order to elicit strong emotions. This is a powerful tool for manipulating opinions when the evidence is lacking.

One of the most harmful examples of this is the use of emotional testimonials by dodgy experts who claim people have “beaten cancer naturally”, offering false hope and often leading patients to abandon proven treatments.

3. Dodgy experts cherry-pick evidence

Despite what those seeking to mislead you would have you believe, scientists only reach consensus when a large body of high-quality evidence points in the same direction.

So one of the most crucial skills experts possess is the ability to critically evaluate evidence. That means understanding its strengths and weaknesses, assessing its reliability, and synthesising what the full evidence base indicates. This task requires a deep understanding of their area of expertise.

Dodgy experts don’t do this. They tend to dismiss inconvenient evidence that contradicts their narrative and readily embrace flawed, or even discredited, studies. In short: they often cherry-pick evidence to suit their position.

Unfortunately, this tactic can be hard to spot if you don’t have an understanding of the full evidence base, which is something dodgy experts exploit.

A red flag that you are being misled by a dodgy expert is when there is a clear over-reliance on a single study, despite its low quality.

Perhaps the most well-known example of cherry-picking is the way dodgy experts rely on a single, discredited study to push the false claim that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine causes autism, while ignoring the vast body of high-quality evidence that clearly shows no such link.

4. Dodgy experts don’t change their mind when the evidence changes

Dodgy experts are often rigidly attached to their beliefs, even when new evidence emerges.

In contrast, genuine experts welcome new evidence and are willing to change their views accordingly. This openness is often unfairly portrayed as weakness, but it reflects an expert’s desire to understand the world accurately.

A striking example of this is the shift in our understanding of stomach ulcers. For years, ulcers were blamed on stress and spicy food, but that changed when Australian gastroenterologist and researcher Barry Marshall, in a bold move, swallowed Helicobacter pylori to demonstrate its potential role.

His self-experiment (which is generally not recommended!) was the first step in a broader body of research that ultimately proved bacteria, not lifestyle, was the primary cause of ulcers. This ultimately led to Marshall and his colleague pathologist and researcher Robin Warren being awarded a Nobel Prize.

As this example highlights, when presented with the evidence, clinicians and scientists acknowledged they’d got the underlying cause of stomach ulcers wrong. Clinical practice subsequently improved, with doctors prescribing antibiotics to kill the ulcer-causing bacteria.

This is how science informs practice so we can continually improve health outcomes.

In a nutshell

True expertise is marked by intellectual humility, a commitment to high-quality evidence, a willingness to engage with nuance and uncertainty, flexibility, and a capacity to respectfully navigate differing opinions.

In contrast, dodgy experts claim to have all the answers, dismiss uncertainty, cherry-pick studies, personally attack those who disagree with them, and rely more on emotion and ideology than evidence.

Hassan Vally, Associate Professor, Epidemiology, Deakin University

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

I grew up playing in a lot of different bands, and my bandmates and I always held onto the belief that if we could just open for a more established act, it would pave the way to more success.

When I started playing in the indie pop band Passion Pit – a group known for its shimmering synths, energetic live shows and breakout hits like Sleepyhead and Take a Walk – we began gaining traction and soon had the chance to open for the British band Muse, in what would be our first arena shows.

Until then, we’d been headlining 3,000-capacity venues. Our label, management and booking team made it clear that this next step – playing in front of massive audiences – would catapult us to megastardom.

Reality was different. After playing our own packed shows where fans cheered and called for encores, we suddenly found ourselves in 15,000-capacity arenas, where it seemed like everyone was ignoring us: chatting among themselves, still getting to their seats or waiting in line for food and drinks.

It was a wake-up call. The transition from being a headliner at a smaller music venue to opener for a major act didn’t feel like a step forward. It felt like starting over.

Years later, as an academic studying the music industry, I found myself returning to this question: Does opening for a major act help an artist’s career?

There’s an assumption that it’s a golden ticket. But I’d seen plenty of openers, some incredibly talented, disappear from the spotlight soon after a tour ended. If touring is supposed to be a stepping stone to long-term success, why do so many promising acts fade into obscurity?

These questions became the basis for my most recent study. I wanted to see whether these high-profile opportunities deliver any benefits for a singer or band, or if they were more like a sugar high, providing little more than a brief boost in exposure.

It’s harder to stick out from the crowd

Popular music is a US$28.6-billion global industry, and music consumption, according to a 2025 report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, is at an all-time high. People around the world now spend an average of 20.7 hours per week listening to music on radio, streaming platforms, vinyl, CDs and social media.

The ease of listening to and recording music presents both an opportunity and a challenge for aspiring artists.

On one hand, streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music have removed traditional gatekeepers, making it easier than ever to release music and reach a global audience. But these platforms have also saturated listeners with content, and discovery is dictated more by algorithms rather than by word-of-mouth buzz, local touring circuits or traditional artist development.

Social media, especially TikTok, can launch an unknown act into viral stardom within days. However, the attention span of digital audiences is fleeting. Most people consume music passively – often through playlists they didn’t curate and might not even remember.

In other words, getting heard has never been easier. Being recognized and staying relevant? That’s the real challenge.

For artists trying to break through, it’s no longer a question of choosing between touring or posting content. It’s about doing both, constantly, at a high level.

Fleeting benefits

But while headlining tours are often seen as a marker of success, many emerging acts first step onto national stages as openers – raising the question, does opening for a major artist actually lead to meaningful career growth?

In my study, I analyzed the touring and streaming data of 57 opening acts on major U.S. tours in 2022 and 2023. For this project, “major” referred to nationally promoted, ticketed tours at venues with capacities of 2,000 or more, such as Harry Styles’ “Love On Tour,” Paramore’s spring arena run and Mitski’s “Laurel Hell Tour.” These tours drew large, dedicated fanbases – offering opening artists significant exposure.

Using platforms such as Pollstar, Songkick and Chartmetric, I tracked each artist’s listenership across Spotify four weeks before the tour, during the tour and four weeks after the tour. I also conducted surveys with 500 fans to better understand how people were discovering and engaging with openers.

The results were revealing. Most opening acts saw a streaming bump during the tour – usually between 18% and 20%, with some surging up to 200%.

But that momentum rarely held. Within weeks, streams often dropped by 6% to 10%, or returned to their pre-tour levels entirely. While a few artists managed to hold onto new listeners, most saw the gains quickly fade. And even when audiences enjoyed an opener’s set, their interest withered: They may have checked out a song or two after the show, but few became regular listeners.

These findings challenge the long-standing narrative that opening for a major artist is a surefire path to career growth. Exposure helps, but it’s not enough on its own. Without a clear post-tour strategy, that attention quickly fades.

Algorithms can’t generate loyalty

I’m not trying to discourage aspiring bands from going on tour. Far from it. Touring remains a crucial part of building a fan base.

In a landscape defined by passive consumption, there’s still something powerful about the shared experience of live music. A performance can create an emotional connection that a stream simply can’t.

Today, discovery often starts with a playlist. Someone hears a song and maybe adds it to their rotation. But they rarely click to learn more about the artist. Listeners follow the playlist, not the person behind the music. Many acts land on major playlists and go on to generate tens of thousands of streams. Others will even go viral on social media. And they still can’t sell more than 25 tickets to a local show.

Live performances offer something different. A great set can turn a casual listener into a true fan. I’ve heard countless people say a particular show changed the way they experienced that artist’s music, that it left a lasting impression and forged a bond with the singer or group.

That kind of loyalty doesn’t come from an algorithm. It comes from being in the room. And with more than 100,000 tracks uploaded to streaming services each day, artists need to use every tool they can to stand out.

Cutting through the noise

In an era when streaming revenue is notoriously slim, touring has become one of the few reliable sources of income for working artists. The top artists in 2017 earned 80% of their income from touring, 15% from recorded music and 5% from publishing fees.

Even though touring is far from a guarantee – especially if you’re not the headliner, as my research shows – it’s still one of the few ways left to cut through the noise. In the survey I ran for my study, 68% of concertgoers said they discovered at least one new artist through an opener, and 39% said the opener influenced their ticket purchase.

And there are success stories – instances where opening slots have helped launch lasting careers.

Billie Eilish opened for Florence + The Machine early on in her career, using that visibility to build a massive following. Taylor Swift, in particular, has a reputation for picking future stars: Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, Shawn Mendes, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan all opened for her before becoming major names.

These examples are outliers, of course. For most openers, visibility comes quickly but fades just as fast.

Today’s artists need more than one big moment. There needs to be some sort of plan, whether it’s releasing new content, crafting a strong identity or figuring out ways for new fans to stay engaged after the show ends.

Because at the end of the day, it’s not about being seen once. It’s all about being remembered.

Jeff Apruzzese, Professor of Music Industry, Drexel University

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

It is late at night, and we are silently watching a bat in a roost through a night-vision camera. From a nearby speaker comes a long, rattling trill.

The bat briefly perks up and wiggles its ears as it listens to the sound before dropping its head back down, uninterested.

Next from the speaker comes a higher-pitched “whine” followed by a “chuck.”

The bat vigorously shakes its ears and then spreads its wings as it launches from the roost and dives down to attack the speaker.

Bats show tremendous variation in the foods they eat to survive. Some species specialize on fruits, others on insects, others on flower nectar. There are even species that catch fish with their feet.

At the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, we’ve been studying one species, the fringe-lipped bat (Trachops cirrhosus), for decades. This bat is a carnivore that specializes in feeding on frogs.

Male frogs from many species call to attract female frogs. Frog-eating bats eavesdrop on those calls to find their next meal. But how do the bats come to associate sounds and prey?

We were interested in understanding how predators that eavesdrop on their prey acquire the ability to discriminate between tasty and dangerous meals. We combined our expertise on animal behavior, bat cognition and frog communication to investigate.

How do bats know the sound of a tasty meal?

There are nearly 8,000 frog and toad species in the world, and each one has a unique call. For instance, the first rattling call that we played from our speaker came from a large and toxic cane toad. The second “whine chuck” came from the túngara frog, a preferred prey species for these bats. Just as herpetologists can tell a frog species by its call, frog-eating bats can use these calls to identify the best meal.

Over the years, our research team has learned a great deal from frog-eating bats about how sound and echolocation are used to find prey, as well as the role of learning and memory in foraging success. In our newly published study, we focused on how associations between the sounds a bat hears and the prey quality it expects arise within the lifespan of an individual bat.

We considered whether the associations between sound and a delicious meal are an evolved specialty that bats are born with. But this possibility seemed unlikely because the bat species we study has a large geographic distribution across Central and South America, and the species of frogs found across this range vary tremendously.

Instead, we hypothesized that bats learn to associate different sounds with food as they grow up. But we had to test this idea.

First, we and our collaborators spent time in the forest and at ponds to record the mating calls from 15 of the most common frog and toad species in our study area in Panama.

Then, we set up mist nets along streams in Soberanía National Park to capture wild bats for the study.

Frog call, bat response

For the testing, each bat was housed individually in a large, outdoor flight chamber. From a speaker on the ground in the center, we played calls from one frog species on loop for 30 seconds and measured the behavior of the bat, which was hanging from a cloth roost. As we expected, adult bats were generally uninterested in the sounds of species that were unpalatable, such as those with toxins or those that are too large for the bat to carry.

But it was a different story for young bats. Juveniles responded with significantly more predatory behaviors in response to the calls of toxic toads compared with the adults. They also responded more weakly than adults to the sounds of túngara frogs, a palatable, abundant prey that adult bats prefer.

Thus it seems that juvenile bats must learn the associations between sounds and food over the course of their lives. As they grow up, we believe they learn to ignore the calls of frogs that aren’t worth the trouble and zero in on the calls of frogs that will be a good meal.

To better understand how sounds drive prey associations, we measured the acoustic properties of the different calls. We found that some of the most noticeable features of the calls correlated with body size: Larger frogs produce lower-frequency calls – that is, their voices are deeper. Both the adult and juvenile bats responded more strongly to larger species, which would provide larger meals.

However, there was a clear exception in the responses of adults, where the toxic toads and very large frogs elicited much weaker responses than expected for their body size. This finding led us to hypothesize that bats have early biases to pay attention to sounds associated with larger body size. Then they must learn through experience that meal quality is not only about size. Some large meals are toxic or impossible to carry, making them unpalatable.

After the bats spent a few days with us, we released each one back at its original site of capture. The bats departed, taking with them a small RFID tag, just like the ones pet owners use to identify their dogs and cats, in case we meet again as part of a future study.

As the bats go on with their lives in the wild, we continue our quest to deepen our understanding of the subtleties of information discrimination. How do individuals weed through information overload to make choices that make sense and benefit them? That’s the same challenge we all face each day.

Logan S. James, Research Associate in Animal Behavior, The University of Texas at Austin; Rachel Page, Staff Scientist, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Smithsonian Institution, and Ximena Bernal, Professor of Biological Sciences, Purdue University

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

In this age of artificial intelligence, data tampering and genetic manipulation, it seems that the nature of fraud and deception in competitive sport is becoming increasingly sophisticated. So, it seems almost surprising to see cheating in sport take a relatively old-fashioned form of late: tampering with equipment.

Yet that’s precisely what unfolded last month in ski jumping, a winter sport whereby athletes soar down a ramp, take flight and aim to maximise both distance and technique. Over the last few months, several ski jumpers and their management have been suspended from the sport due to the intentional illegal tampering and modification of the suits they wear.

The case first came to light during the 2025 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships held in Trondheim in March. Two Norwegian athletes, Marius Lindvik and Johann Andre Forfang, were subsequently disqualified from the men’s large hill event due to allegations of illegal ski jump suit manipulation with the intention of improving their performance.

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A subsequent investigation revealed that their ski suits had been illegally altered. In response, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) provisionally suspended the two athletes, along with three Norwegian national team officials – including the head coach and their equipment manager. Both athletes ultimately admitted the illegal alterations.

The scandal then intensified as FIS expanded its investigation which then subsequently led to the suspension of three other Norwegian ski jumpers. Several members of the team were all found to have been involved in the decision to modify the suits for the championships.

This wasn’t the sport’s first brush with controversy surrounding its suits. At the 2022 Winter Olympics, several jumpers there were disqualified for wearing suits that were deemed too large, again raising concerns about fairness.

What did the cheating intend to achieve?

A successful ski jump can be divided into several phases: in-run, take-off, early flight, stable flight, landing preparation, and landing. The suit contributes to enhancing the performance in all of these phases by directly affecting the aerodynamics and flight characteristics of the athlete. As a result, the size and shape of the suit is heavily regulated.

In the case of this scandal, the Norwegian Ski Federation general manager told a news conference that a reinforced thread or an extra seam had been put in the jumpsuits of the first two athletes that were suspended.

This additional material was inserted into the crotch area of the suits, increasing the surface area and stiffness, potentially providing extra lift during a jump’s flight phases. This extra lift would essentially translate into an increase in flight time and therefore a potential increase in the jumping distance. These modifications were not detectable through standard visual inspection and were only discovered upon detailed examination of the suits by then tearing them open.

Of course, cheating in sport is not a new phenomenon. However, in some cases, such controversies are not cheating per se, but merely new technologies emerging that challenge our perceptions of a sport and its values.

Some examples of this were the use of full-body swimsuits at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, or the potential use of prosthetic legs in track athletics at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

However, sometimes cheating can occur whereby sports equipment is intentionally modified physically to provide a competitive advantage. A recent example of this is the Australian cricket ball tampering scandal in 2018 where balls were intentionally scuffed by players to change their behaviour when bowled.

Improving a piece of sports equipment to increase its performance is the field of mechanical ergogenics, or, when illicitly performed, colloquially known as “technodoping”.

Some consider that the physical capabilities of athletes in some sports have now plateaued to the extent that any future improvements in performance will need to rely predominantly on technological innovation. So perhaps it can be understood why the suits were targeted in this particular sport.

In April 2025, the FIS decided to lift the provisional suspensions of the five Norwegian athletes under investigation for suspected involvement in suit tampering because it is the competitive off-season.

However, the ban for the officials involved remains in place. In the wake of the scandal, FIS has now implemented stricter regulations to prevent future instances of equipment manipulation. These key measures included limiting athletes to a single, pre-approved suit for the year’s competitions, and the FIS storing and inspecting all suits.

These reforms aim to uphold the integrity of ski jumping and will hopefully restore confidence in the sport itself. The 2025 scandal stands as a clear reminder that in the pursuit of victory, sports must remain vigilant – because when innovation outpaces fair play, integrity is the first casualty.

Bryce Dyer, Associate Professor of Sports Technology, Bournemouth University

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

In the second episode of Apple TV’s The Studio (2025–) – a sharp satirical take on contemporary Hollywood – newly-appointed studio head Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) visits the set of one of his company’s film productions.

He finds the crew anxiously attempting to pull off an extremely audacious and technically demanding shot known as a “oner”, or “long take”. Chaos ensues.

But despite the difficulties associated with it, the long take has a long history and continues to be a promising creative choice in contemporary film and television.

High stakes on the set

The long take is a shot which captures a scene in a single, unbroken take.

It’s a risky endeavour. While most film and TV production is constructed through the use of coverage – different shots edited together – the long take can’t hide behind the editing process. Every minute detail needs to be perfectly planned, executed and captured.

As a result, the oner is often associated with big, ostentatious, showstopping set pieces that exemplify technical and directorial prowess. Think of the “Copacabana” sequence from Goodfellas (1990), or the opening scene of Children of Men (2006).

The shot has gained a cultish type of reverence among film enthusiasts, with countless online articles and videos counting down the “best long takes in film history”.

Yet the practice also has its detractors. Film critic A.A. Dowd’s recent article for The Ringer says that “to the unimpressed, oners often come across as an act of glorified self-glorification”.

This dichotomy is also highlighted in The Studio, when one executive complains long takes are just directors showing off. Rogen’s character counters the oner is, in fact, “the ultimate cinematic achievement”.

A theory of the long take

The long take has existed in nearly every stage of film history – from silent films to sound, from Asian films to European, and from art-house to mainstream.

The greatest advocate of the long take was arguably French film theorist André Bazin. In his piece The Evolution of Film Language, Bazin argued cinema’s greatest asset was its ability to capture reality – and the long take was central to his understanding of how film achieved that.

For Bazin, editing “did not show us the event, but alluded to it”. To illustrate his point, he examines a scene from Robert Flaherty’s controversial silent documentary Nanook of the North (1922), in which a hunter patiently waits for his prey.

The passage of time could have been suggested by editing but, as Bazin notes, Flaherty “confines himself to showing the actual waiting period”. If the act of editing creates a synthetic manipulation of space and time, then the long take does the opposite – bringing us closer to a true representation of reality. For Bazin, the length “is the very substance of the image”.

The tradition of the long take – of showing “reality” – is perhaps most upheld in the world of art-house cinema. Directors such as Chantal Akerman, Béla Tarr, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tsai Ming-liang have used the long take to “de-dramatise” narrative, creating a deliberately slow pace to prompt audiences to contemplate aspects of existence traditional narratives usually ignore.

Mainstream cinema also uses the long take to show “reality”, albeit in a different manner. Here, the long take has often been used as a mark of authenticity for the amazing feats of practical performers, whether this is the wild stunts or camera trickery of Buster Keaton, the balletic graces of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or this white-knuckled fight scene from The Protector (2005), starring Thai martial artist Tony Jaa.

However, our strong association between the oner and a distinct directorial vision likely began with Citizen Kane (1941). In this film, screen reality itself is manipulated, as director Orson Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland liberated the camera to move as if it was its own player in the drama.

In the below example, the camera starts outside, before reversing backwards through a window and two different rooms. The actors are constantly repositioning themselves around the camera for dramatic impetus, rather than for reality.

Bazin would refer to this as “shooting in depth”. Subsequent auteurs also embraced this technique, including William Wyler, Max Ophüls, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg.

Many viewed it as a chance to up the ante from Welles, something the director did himself with the remarkable opening sequence of his 1958 film Touch of Evil.

The future of the long take

There are far too many oners for me to list here, and they seem to only be increasing. It’s now common to see entire films seemingly shot in one take, such as Russian Ark (2002), Birdman (2014), 1917 (2019) and Boiling Point (2021), to name a few.

Technological advancements have made the long take more achievable. Camera stabilisers enable greater freedom of movement, while digital camera tech allows us to record for longer durations.

Furthermore, digital compositing has made it easier to fake the long take, such as in Birdman and 1917. Both of these films use multiple long takes that are strategically edited to look like a single shot. Impossible-to-see cuts may be hidden in dark moments, or through fast whip pans.

Prestige television has also lifted the oner practice, with examples from shows such as Mr. Robot (2015-19), True Detective (2014–), The Bear (2022-), Severance (2022) and, of course, The Studio.

But perhaps the most remarkable recent example comes from Netflix’s Adolescence (2025), a show in which four separate standalone episodes are all shot in a single long take.

In the age of TikTok and shortening attention spans, it should strike us as positive to see a resurgence of the long take as a creative choice in so much contemporary film and TV.

Kristian Ramsden, PhD Candidate, University of Adelaide

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

So you want to write a self-help book? Let me help you.

First, you’ll need a catchy idea. Ideally it will name the key elements of something important. But keep it simple: “The 57 Habits of Highly Effective People” or “98 Steps to Infinite Happiness” aren’t going to cut it.

Your idea doesn’t have to be new. How many genuinely original ideas about human nature are there after thousands of years of self-reflection? Recycle old ideas but dress them in contemporary clothing.

Resist the temptation to be modest. In the crowded marketplace of self-improvement, you mustn’t hide your light under a bushel. Your readers know the norms of the genre and will tolerate levels of preening and hyperbole they wouldn’t accept anywhere else.

Speaking of that marketplace, don’t pretend there are no other self-help authors. Find ways to acknowledge and applaud popular ones and align their ideas with yours. It might be the beginning of a beautiful cross-promotional friendship.

Add a dash of science, but don’t overdo it. Like salt, too much will make the stew unappetising. The science is usually complex and unsettled, so doing justice to it will only muddy your message.

Where possible, upgrade the research you cite from psychology to neuroscience. Instead of “fear”, “self-control” and “pleasure”, say “amygdala”, “prefrontal cortex” and “dopamine”. People don’t have strong intuitions about brains, so they’ll be more impressed and credulous when you write about them.

If your recipe for personal growth has a specific focus – becoming a better partner or parent, losing weight, overcoming addiction or trauma, getting ahead at work – so be it. But see if you can widen its focus so it speaks to other topics.

Don’t underestimate the importance of your persona. You need to come across as capable but relatable. Use lots of personal anecdotes, both to illustrate your formula for success and to humanise yourself.

Show readers you share their everyday struggles and failings. They need to like you, not see you as an unreachable, envy-making icon.

The Let Them Theory

Anyone wishing to see this formula applied to perfection should look no further than Mel Robbins, author of the virally successful new book The Let Them Theory.

The Guardian reported a trend for Let Them tattoos. The hashtag #letthem has over 206,000 posts on TikTok. On her podcast, Oprah called the book both “a game-changer” and “a life-changer”. And within a month of its release date, it had sold over 1.2 million copies.

Robbins’ previous books, The 5 Second Rule (not about dropped food) and The High 5 Habit, were bestsellers, and she has built a vast online presence, including a podcast currently topping the iTunes chart.

Whereas her earlier works were intended to help people overcome inertia and under-confidence, Let Them moves into the troubled waters of relationships. Rather than make us better stewards of our personal motivation and self-esteem, it aspires to help us deal with the endless frustrations, impositions and disappointments of other people.

Robbins abandons her previous fondness for five-item formulas and gives us the mantra-like “Let them”. In essence, we should recognise we can’t control what other people think and do, and should therefore stop being bothered by it.

She shared a couple of examples on the NBC Today show recently: “The person you’re dating doesn’t want a commitment. Let them. Your company is laying people off. Let them.”

We spend too much time and energy accommodating others, trying to change them and worrying what they think of us. We can only control ourselves, so we should focus on choosing the life we want. This she calls Let Me, the inseparable but unsung companion to Let Them.

Robbins frames Let Me as a way to reclaim power. By allowing others to dictate how we act, think and feel, we give them the power to affect us. Saying Let Them takes back that power and allows us to wield it for our own benefit, she writes.

The book is saturated with the language of control and power. Lacking them is what troubles and motivates people, Robbins suggests.

The need for control is repeatedly described as a “hard-wired” feature of human nature. Described in a zero-sum manner – the more you have, the less I do – it is front and centre in Let Them’s account of what makes relationships challenging.

It’s important to clarify what Let Them doesn’t mean. To Robbins, it doesn’t mean we should passively accept everything in life. It doesn’t mean we should let people do bad things to us (“They want to poke me in the eye with a sharp stick? Let them!”).

Let Them also doesn’t mean we should be selfish. Many of Robbins’ examples look like enlightened selfishness, but she argues Let Them improves relationships by clarifying boundaries, reducing conflict and allowing loved ones to make positive changes by no longer enabling them.

In theory, Let Them means accepting and emotionally detaching from challenging aspects of other people, not disconnecting from them.

Despite these clarifications of what it is and isn’t, what Let Them entails remains somewhat ambiguous throughout the book. Whatever Robbins’ intentions, a reader might easily read it as a call to look out for number one, to cut difficult people loose and to see relationships as power struggles.

However beneficial its advice might be, Let Them asks us to insulate ourselves psychologically from other people. At its heart, it is a deeply individualistic prescription that draws a sharp line between the self and others.

Research evidence

The basic idea of Let Them can be distilled into three propositions. First, how we should respond to something depends on whether we can control it. Second, because we can’t control other people, the best way to cope with the challenges they pose is detached acceptance. Third, because we can control ourselves, we should seize responsibility and actively choose our own path, guided by our values.

Psychological research shines a light on each of these propositions. Whether the best way to cope with an event depends on its controllability has been a focus of research on coping strategies since the 1980s. The idea itself is much older, dating at least to the Stoics, and is spelled out in the famous Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Studies find forms of emotion-focused coping, which modify how we respond to an event rather than the event itself (including acceptance and distancing), are usually more effective when stressful events are outside our control. In general, though, problem-focused coping strategies, such as actively confronting the stressor, tend to be more effective, especially when it is to some degree controllable.

Studies generally find that flexible use of coping strategies is most effective, so Robbins’ advice to adjust our responses to the controllability of the problem is well founded. But is the detached acceptance she advocates effective?

Research on emotion regulation suggests it often is. Meta-analyses find using acceptance strategies is associated with better emotional outcomes, such as the ability to tolerate distress.

This finding should come as no surprise, because acceptance is a primary ingredient of the well-established Acceptance and Commitment Therapy approach to psychotherapy. It is also central to mindfulness interventions.

Even if acceptance strategies are effective and suited to uncontrollable problems, however, it doesn’t follow that we can’t control other people, as Robbins argues. They are not puppets on strings, of course, but they can be persuaded, instructed, cajoled, manipulated and role-modelled. In short, people can be controlled imperfectly, or influenced.

Robbins takes a black-or-white view of the uncontrollability of other people to justify letting them be. She then smuggles in the concept of influence when offering advice on how not to let them be: how to make friends and deal with slovenly spouses.

Just as others aren’t entirely outside our control, we aren’t entirely inside it. The Let Them world, where we control what’s ours and can’t control what’s theirs, is a polarised one far removed from the interconnected reality of social life.

Robbins’ third proposition is on more solid ground. She is unquestionably correct in promoting the value of an action-oriented, problem-focused or agentic approach to life. Countless studies point to the benefits of traits and mindsets that foster authenticity and autonomy. Even if the argument for Let Them can be questioned, Let Me is uncontroversial.

Self-help books might help

It’s easy (and fun) for bookish types to be snooty about self-help titles like The Let Them Theory. They can be simplistic, naïve, immodest, one-note, grandiose, unnuanced, breathless, name-droppy, scientifically unsupported or just plain wrong.

They can make change look easy – just follow these fail-safe rules for happiness! – when we know it’s hard. They often overlook how much the difficulties we face are beyond our control, and as a result they imply we’re responsible when we don’t overcome them.

All of this criticism is fair, but it also misses the point. The main goal of the self-help book – aside from selling itself – is to instigate change rather than to capture complex truths. It aims to convey an idea or technique that will hook into readers’ minds and inspire positive action, not to offer a sober, scientifically sound account of psychological reality.

Different hooks will work with different people. Let Them will resonate with some readers and give them an easy-to-apply, all-purpose tool (“mind-hack”, to use the vernacular) for approaching life problems. It won’t resonate with others. Many readers of the self-help genre read multiple books in the hope of finding new and better ways to be hooked.

This is exactly what a good therapist would do. Some techniques won’t work with a particular client and some formulations of their problems won’t make sense to them, however well-founded they may be. Therapy aims to find the keys that fit the client’s mental locks.

A self-help book may only offer a single key, and it may be the wrong one for many people. But for roughly the price of five minutes of therapy – based on the Australian Psychological Society’s recommended hourly consultation rate – that’s not such a bad deal.

If we accept that the aim of a self-help book is to persuade and be actionable, its simplifications and overconfident claims are features, not bugs. Easily remembered, simple ideas are exactly the ones that have a chance of being implemented. They might even work.

People may mock pop psychology, scoff at the inflated claims of self-improvement gurus and sneer at self-help books. Let them.

Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne

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

The lights are mostly back on in Spain, Portugal and southern France after a widespread blackout on Monday.

The blackout caused chaos for tens of millions of people. It shut down traffic lights and ATMs, halted public transport, cut phone service and forced people to eat dinner huddled around candles as night fell. Many people found themselves trapped in trains and elevators.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has said the exact cause of the blackout is yet to be determined. In early reporting, Portugal’s grid operator REN was quoted as blaming the event on a rare phenomenon known as “induced atmospheric vibration”. REN has since reportedly refuted this.

But what is this vibration? And how can energy systems be improved to mitigate the risk of widespread blackouts?

How much does weather affect electricity?

Weather is a major cause of disruptions to electricity supply. In fact, in the United States, 83% of reported blackouts between 2000 and 2021 were attributed to weather-related events.

The ways weather can affect the supply of electricity are manifold. For example, cyclones can bring down transmission lines, heatwaves can place too high a demand on the grid, and bushfires can raze substations.

Wind can also cause transmission lines to vibrate. These vibrations are characterised by either high amplitude and low frequency (known as “conductor galloping”), or low amplitude and high frequency (known as “aeolian vibrations”).

These vibrations are a significant problem for grid operators. They can place increased stress on grid infrastructure, potentially leading to blackouts.

To reduce the risk of vibration, grid operators often use wire stabilisers known as “stock bridge dampers”.

What is ‘induced atmospheric vibration’?

Vibrations in power lines can also be caused by extreme changes in temperature or air pressure. And this is one hypothesis about what caused the recent widespread blackout across the Iberian peninsula.

As The Guardian initially reported Portugal’s REN as saying:

Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as “induced atmospheric vibration”. These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.

In fact, “induced atmospheric vibration” is not a commonly used term, but it seems likely the explanation was intended to refer to physical processes climate scientists have known about for quite some time.

In simple terms, it seems to refer to wavelike movements or oscillations in the atmosphere, caused by sudden changes in temperature or pressure. These can be triggered by extreme heating, large-scale energy releases (such as explosions or bushfires), or intense weather events.

When a part of Earth’s surface heats up very quickly – due to a heatwave, for example – the air above it warms, expands and becomes lighter. That rising warm air creates a pressure imbalance with the surrounding cooler, denser air. The atmosphere responds to this imbalance by generating waves, not unlike ripples spreading across a pond.

These pressure waves can travel through the atmosphere. In some cases, they can interact with power infrastructure — particularly long-distance, high-voltage transmission lines.

These types of atmospheric waves are usually called gravity waves, thermal oscillations or acoustic-gravity waves. While the phrase “induced atmospheric vibration” is not formally established in meteorology, it seems to describe this same family of phenomena.

What’s important is that it’s not just high temperatures alone that causes these effects — it’s how quickly and unevenly the temperature changes across a region. That’s what sets the atmosphere into motion and can cause power lines to vibrate. Again, though, it’s still unclear if this is what was behind the recent blackout in Europe.

More centralised, more vulnerable

Understanding how the atmosphere behaves under these conditions is becoming increasingly important. As our energy systems become more interconnected and more dependent on long-distance transmission, even relatively subtle atmospheric disturbances can have outsized impacts. What might once have seemed like a fringe effect is now a growing factor in grid resilience.

Under growing environmental and electrical stress, centralised energy networks are dangerously vulnerable. The increasing electrification of buildings, the rapid uptake of electric vehicles, and the integration of intermittent renewable energy sources have placed unprecedented pressure on traditional grids that were never designed for this level of complexity, dynamism or centralisation.

Continuing to rely on centralised grid structures without fundamentally rethinking resilience puts entire regions at risk — not just from technical faults, but from environmental volatility.

The way to avoid such catastrophic risks is clear: we must embrace innovative solutions such as community microgrids. These are decentralised, flexible and resilient energy networks that can operate independently when needed.

Strengthening local energy autonomy is key to building a secure, affordable and future-ready electricity system.

The European blackout, regardless of its immediate cause, demonstrates that our electrical grids have become dangerously sensitive. Failure to address these structural weaknesses will have consequences far worse than those experienced during the COVID pandemic.

Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian, Professor of Electrical Engineering, School of Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology

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

We’ve discovered that a meteorite struck northwest Scotland 1 billion years ago, 200 million years later than previously thought. Our results are published today in the journal Geology.

This impact now aligns with some of Earth’s earliest known, land based, non-marine microbial fossils, and offers new insights into how meteorite strikes may have shaped our planet’s environment and life.

A rocky treasure trove

The Torridonian rocks of northwest Scotland are treasured by geologists as some of the finest archives of the ancient lakes and river systems that existed a billion years ago.

Those water bodies were home to microbial ecosystems consisting of eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are single-celled organisms with complex internal structures that are the ancestors of all plants and animals.

But the Torridonian environments and their associated microbial communities were dramatically disrupted when a meteor slammed into the planet.

The record of this event is preserved in a geological unit known as the Stac Fada Member. It is comprised of unusual layers of rock fragments broken and melted by the impact.

Also, crucially, there are shock-altered minerals that closely resemble those found in famous impact sites such as Chicxulub (Mexico) and Sudbury (Canada).

In the case of the Stac Fada, these minerals were engulfed in high-energy, ground-hugging flows of smashed rock triggered by the impact that spread across the ancient landscape.

What is exciting about our new date for the Stac Fada impact is that it now overlaps in age with microfossils preserved elsewhere in the Torridonian rocks.

This raises some interesting questions. For example, how did the meteorite strike influence the environmental conditions those early non-marine microbial ecosystems relied on?

Finding out the date

Determining when a meteorite struck is no easy task.

We can use minerals to constrain the age, but they have to be the right kind. In this case it means something that wasn’t overly altered by the intense heat, pressure and fluids generated by the impact, yet robust enough to survive the ravages of deep geological time.

Suitable minerals are extremely rare, but we found a few in the Stac Fada rocks. One was reidite, a mineral that only forms under extreme pressure. The other was granular zircon, a uranium-bearing mineral formed by immense impact temperatures.

These minerals are, in effect, tiny stopwatches whose clocks start “ticking” at the time they form. Although these clocks are often damaged during the impact and the ensuing pulse of heat, we used mathematical modelling to determine the most probable time of impact.

Together, these techniques consistently pointed to an event 1 billion years old, not 1.2 billion years old as previously suggested. Given such vast spans of time, a 20% change in age might not seem dramatic.

However, the new age shows the timing of the impact coincides with early non-marine eukaryotic fossils. It also lines up with a major mountain-building event. This means the Torridonian lifeforms had to cope with significant, environment-altering phenomena.

Why this is important for you, me, and life in general

The origin of life is a deeply complex process that likely began with a series of pre-biotic chemical reactions.

While much remains unknown, it is intriguing that two ancient meteorite impacts, the 3.5-billion-year-old North Pole impact in Western Australia and now the 1-billion-year-old Stac Fada deposit in northwest Scotland, occur close in time to major milestones in the fossil record.

The North Pole impact occurs in a sequence of rocks containing stromatolites, some of the oldest-known fossils considered to be indicative of microbial life.

All life requires energy. The earliest forms of life are thought to be associated with volcanic hydrothermal springs. Impacts offer a plausible alternative. The immediate aftermath of a meteorite strike is extreme and hostile, and would ruin your day. But the long-term effects could support key biological processes.

Meteorite strikes fracture rocks, generate long-lived hydrothermal systems and form crater lakes that enable the concentration of important ingredients for life, such as clays, organic molecules and phosphorus. The latter is a key element for all forms of life.

In Scotland, the Stac Fada impact lies within an ancient river and lake environment that housed microbial ecosystems colonising the land. What makes the Stac Fada impact deposits fascinating is that, unlike most other impacts on Earth, they preserve the environments in which those pioneering organisms lived immediately prior to the impact.

Further, the impact deposits were subsequently buried as non-marine microbial habitats became reestablished. So, the Stac Fada rocks provide an opportunity to see how microbial life recovered from impact.

Extraterrestrial visitors in the form of meteorite collisions may not just have scarred Earth’s surface, but shaped its future, turning catastrophic events into natural crater-cradles of life.

Chris Kirkland, Professor of Geochronology, Curtin University; Timmons Erickson, Visting Research Associate, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University, and Tony Prave, Emeritus Professor, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of St Andrews

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

When miniature dachshund Valerie was captured after 529 days alone in the wilds of Australia’s Kangaroo Island, experts speculated she survived partly by eating other animals’ poo.

While this survival tactic may have saved the resilient sausage dog, it highlights a behaviour that makes many dog owners cringe.

This type of “recycling” is surprisingly common in our canine companions. But why would dogs, even those with full food bowls, choose to indulge in such a revolting habit?

Here’s why some dogs can’t resist a faecal feast, known more technically as coprophagia.

What is coprophagia?

Coprophagia or coprophagy is the scientific term for eating faecal matter (poo). It’s a behaviour displayed across a number of animal species.

Around half of all dogs try eating poo at some stage – either their own, another dog’s, or other animals’. Research suggests about one in four dogs have made it a regular habit.

In wild canids like foxes and wolves, mothers will eat their puppies’ stools to keep dens clean and reduce scents that might attract predators.

It’s also thought that eating fresh faeces could reduce the likelihood of intestinal parasites being spread, offering an evolutionary benefit to our dogs’ wild counterparts.

Modern dogs still actively clean their puppies’ poo away in the first few weeks of life, a behaviour that puppies observe and can learn.