Thousands of Year 12 students across Australia are getting ready to sit their final exams.

Students may be feeling a lot of things right now – from heightened pressure to excitement it will all be over soon. Families may be seeking strategies to help their young people to feel confident and stay calm.

Here are some research-backed strategies to help.

Reframe the narrative

Students, schools and the media often talk about Year 12 exams as the culmination of schooling. This may not be helpful to everyone, as not everyone will receive the results they want.

Stress tends to increase throughout the final year of school.

Although a moderate level of stress is normal, and some pressure may even be useful, too much worry about exams can affect performance and overall wellbeing.

Remember, one exam is not the whole story of your ATAR or your future.

It is healthier to think about the bigger picture. Education isn’t just about exams. They are one part of a bigger journey that includes the relationships you’ve formed with peers and teachers, all the things you learned and all the experiences you’ve had.

Students have already achieved a great deal in 13 years of school – regardless of what happens in their exams or ATAR.

What is ‘success’?

In our 2021 study, colleagues and I looked at how different ideas of “success” relate to young people’s wellbeing.

A review of existing studies suggests teenagers who focus on their connections to others and their personal growth may have greater wellbeing than those who focus on “extrinsic” goals or external approval.

Families can help students by emphasising the importance of life beyond the classroom.

You’ve got options!

Keep in mind, your future does not hinge on this result.

There are more alternative pathways into university or further study than ever before. This can include going to TAFE or non-ATAR entry schemes for university.

Reminding yourself – or your child – about these options may help to reduce stress.

Have a clear plan for your exams

As you near the end of your study revision period, think about your plan for certain exams.

You will likely already have done practice exams and revision questions, so you know what format to expect.

Remind yourself when you get into the exam room to take your time to read the instructions carefully and be aware of sections where there is a choice. Pay attention to the weighting of questions as this can help you to plan the time well.

And remind yourself to stop and understand the “command terms”. These are words that tell you what to do in a question, like “analyse”, “compare” or “discuss”.

What if something goes wrong?

You may come out of an exam feeling like you didn’t do your best or something didn’t go to plan. This is very common!

So having a strategy to manage when things do not go well can be important –especially when the setbacks happen early in the exam schedule.

Research tells us planning and persistence are key components of “academic buoyancy”, or students’ resilience in the face of a setback.

This means you should revisit your plan for the next exam, whether it is tomorrow or next week. Plan your timing and approach. Look at any feedback you received on the practice exams, or advice you have received from teachers. Feeling prepared for the next exam will increase your confidence.

Remember, resilience is not just an individual trait: it comes from relationships and contexts too.

You don’t have to handle setbacks alone. In fact, it’s better if you ask for help.

Talking with a trusted friend, teacher, family member or counsellor can put things into perspective or help reframe your approach for the next exam.

Keep some balance in your life

In among your revision and preparation, don’t forget to look after your health.

Get plenty of sleep, eat well, take breaks and spend time in nature – these will all help you maintain focus and wellbeing.

Kylie Trask-Kerr, Senior lecturer, School of Education, Australian Catholic University and Steven Lewis, Associate Professor of Education Policy, Australian Catholic University

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

Advice about cutting down on dopamine is everywhere right now. From “dopamine fasting” to “anti-dopamine parenting” and even “raw-dogging” flights (going without any screens, books or music), TikTok influencers claim these practices have rewired their brains.

Modern life constantly bombards our brains with stimulation, through scrolling feeds, video games, email pings and sugary snacks. This keeps dopamine – the neurotransmitter linked to reward and motivation – in steady circulation.

Over time, this constant activation can leave us desensitised, chasing even more stimulation just to feel “normal”. Everyday life begins to seem bland by comparison.

So it’s no surprise people have tried to come up with ways to reset their dopamine and change their behaviour. But do these strategies actually work?

Can you actually detox from dopamine?

No, you can never actually “detox” from dopamine itself. A detox involves eliminating a chemical from your body. If you go through an alcohol detox, for example, you stop drinking and allow your body to rid itself of alcohol-related toxins.

In the context of dopamine, a detox is impossible. Dopamine is naturally occurring and plays a significant role in various aspects of human physiology. It’s involved in the pleasure and reward centre of the brain, as well as in motivation, movement, arousal and sleep.

If we were to completely detox from dopamine, we wouldn’t be able to function, let alone stay alive.

“Dopamine detoxes” have involved people intentionally avoiding behaviours or substances that trigger quick bursts of dopamine, such as gaming, social media, sugary foods or online shopping. These “pleasure detoxes” usually occur over a short, set period of time: around 24 hours.

A 24-hour dopamine detox might feel hard and like something significant is happening. People report uncomfortable urges, cravings and sometimes even feelings of fatigue, anxiety or irritability during the process. The discomfort can lead some to believe that they are successfully “resetting” their brains.

While a dopamine detox may feel intense, most people won’t experience any meaningful, lasting improvements by abstaining for a day or two. Dopamine regulation is a complex process influenced by many factors, and it doesn’t undergo a sudden reset in a short 24-hour period.

Research suggests that after the period of abstinence, old habits and urges often return, unless people actively build new routines and coping strategies that engage healthier reward pathways.

So what can you do instead?

If you want to change your relationship with dopamine-driven behaviours or substances, be prepared for this to take longer that 24 hours.

Substituting “fast dopamine” rewards with “slow dopamine” activities can gradually restore the brain’s sensitivity to pleasure and help life feel rich again.

This might involve returning to activities that naturally require more patience and effort, such as creative projects, exercising or learning something new.

But it can also include other pleasurable experiences, such as connecting with someone face-to-face, or listening to music you love.

These activities can activate dopamine pathways, as well as the release of other neurotransmitters, such as oxytocin and serotonin, which contribute to a positive mood.

The popularity of dopamine detoxes reflects a desire to feel better, regain motivation and reconnect with pleasures in a world overloaded by stimulation. But there’s no reset button for the brain’s dopamine system. Luckily, we can switch to longer-term rewards from movement, music, connection and stretching ourselves in other ways.

Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, Lecturer and Research Supervisor, Graduate School of Health, University of Technology Sydney

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

The hope of the world wide web, according to its creator Tim Berners-Lee, was that it would make communication easier, bring knowledge to all, and strengthen democracy and connection. Instead, it seems to be driving us apart into increasingly small and angry splinter groups. Why?

We have commonly blamed online echo chambers, digital spaces filled with people who largely share the same beliefs – or filter bubbles, the idea that algorithms tend to show us content we are likely to agree with.

However, these concepts have both been challenged by a number of studies. A 2022 study led by one of us (Dana), which tracked the social media behaviours of ten respondents, found people often engage with content they disagree with – even going so far as to seek it out.

When an individual engages with a disagreeable post on social media – whether it’s “rage bait” or something else that offends you – it drives income for the platform. But on a societal scale, it drives antisocial outcomes.

One of the worst of these outcomes is “affective polarisation”, where we like people who think similarly to us, and dislike or resent people who hold different views. Research and global surveys both show this form of polarisation is growing across the world.

Changing the economics of social media platforms would likely reduce online polarisation. But this won’t be possible without intervention from governments, and each of us.

How our views get reinforced online

Social media use has been associated with growing affective polarisation.

Online, we can be influenced by the opinions of people we agree or disagree with – even on topics we had previously been neutral towards. For instance, if there’s an influencer you admire, and they express a view on a new law you hadn’t thought much about, you’re more likely to adopt their viewpoint on it.

When this happens on a large scale, it gradually separates us into ideological tribes that disagree on multiple issues: a phenomenon known as “partisan sorting”.

Research shows our encounters on social media can lead to us developing new views on a topic. It also shows how any searches we do to get more insight can solidify these emerging views, as the results are likely to contain the same language as the original post that gave us the view in the first place.

For example, if you see a post that inaccurately claims taking paracetamol during pregnancy will give your baby autism, and you search for other posts using the key words “paracetamol pregnancy autism”, you will probably get more of the same.

Being in a heightened emotional state has been linked to higher susceptibility to believing false or “fake” content.

Why are we fed polarising content?

This is where the economics of the internet come in. Divisive and emotionally laden posts are more likely to get engagement (such as likes, shares and comments), especially from people who strongly agree or disagree, and from provocateurs. Platforms will then show these posts to more people, and the cycle of engagement continues.

Social media companies leverage our tendency towards divisive content to drive engagement, as this leads to more advertising money for them. According to a 2021 report from the Washington Post, Facebook’s ranking algorithm once treated emoji reactions (including anger) as five times more valuable than “likes”.

Simulation-based studies have also revealed how anger and division drive online engagement. One simulation (in a yet to be peer-reviewed paper) used bots to show that any platform measuring its success and income by engagement (currently all of them) would be most successful if it boosted divisive posts.

Where are we headed?

That said, the current state of social media need not also be its future.

People are now spending less time on social media than they used to. According to a recent report from the Financial Times, time spent on social media peaked in 2022 and has since been declining. By the end of 2024, users aged 16 and older spent 10% less time on social platforms than they did in 2022.

Droves of users are also leaving bigger “mainstream” platforms for ones that reflect their own political leanings, such as the left-wing BlueSky, or the right-wing Truth Social. While this may not help with polarisation, it signals many people are no longer satisfied with the social media status quo.

Internet-fuelled polarisation has also resulted in real costs to government, both in mental health and police spending. Consider recent events in Australia, where online hate and misinformation have played a role in neo-Nazi marches, and the cancellation of events run by the LGBTQIA+ community, due to threats.

For those of us who remain on social media platforms, we can individually work to change the status quo. Research shows greater tolerance for different views among online users can slow down polarisation. We can also give social media companies less signals to work from, by not re-sharing or promoting content that’s likely to make others irate.

Fundamentally, though, this is a structural problem. Fixing it will mean reframing the economics of online activity to increase the potential for balanced and respectful conversations, and decrease the reward for producing and/or engaging with rage bait. And this will almost certainly require government intervention.

When other products have caused harm, governments have regulated them and taxed the companies responsible. Social media platforms can also be regulated and taxed. It may be hard, but not impossible. And it’s worth doing if we want a world where we’re not all one opinion away from becoming an outcast.

George Buchanan, Deputy Dean, School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University and Dana McKay, Associate Dean, Interaction, Technology and Information, RMIT University

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

The iconic feathered showgirl was born amid the chaos of the first world war, when the wealthy, global French superstar Gaby Deslys entertained Parisians and Allied soldiers in a 1917 show called Laissez-les tombe! (Let Them Fall), a dazzling spectacle of ostrich feathers, rhinestones and beauty.

Although showgirls first appeared in late-19th century music halls, the red, white and blue feathered costumes in Deslys’ revue offered Paris something new and triumphal. The massed plumes, wild dancing and bodily displays celebrated French aesthetics and extravagance and communicated that France and her allies would not bow to Germany.

Prior to 1914 Deslys’s expensive jewellery, haute couture and expansive feathered hats – along with her affairs with powerful men such as department store magnate Harry Selfridge and King Manuel II of Portugal – created countless headlines.

But she was also outspoken about a woman’s right to support herself financially and worked tirelessly during the war raising funds for the Allies. Deslys was so passionate about aiding the devastated Parisian nightlife that she paid for all the costumes in Laissez-les tombe! herself.

Deslys’s cultural impact has inextricably linked feathers, high fashion, celebrity and showgirls ever since.

From France to Broadway

Feathered showgirl revues were so popular that they quickly went global. In 1920s New York, impresarios such as Florenz Ziegfeld staged luxurious Broadway productions that glorified the American showgirl.

But he made exceptions to American women. One of Ziegfeld’s most famous showgirls, Dolores, was born into poverty in London’s East End as Kathleen Mary Rose. She rose to become a supermodel who walked for the couturier Lady Duff-Gordon, known professionally as Lucile.

Ziegfeld considered Dolores one of the world’s most beautiful women. Tall, slender and graceful, she drove audiences wild when she glided across Ziegfeld’s stage and posed in opulent costumes.

On becoming a showgirl, Dolores used her modelling ability to make her fortune, earning today’s equivalent of US$10,000 a week by 1923.

Other performers harnessed the feathered showgirl aesthetic, including the celebrated twins Jenny and Rosie Dolly, who came from humble origins and used their beauty, talent and hard work to dominate American and European stages in the 1910s and 1920s.

Ziegfeld paid the Dollys the equivalent of US$64,000 weekly in 1915. Like Deslys, they became notorious for their consumption of fashion and affairs with famous men.

However, stage revues became unpopular around 1930 due to their vast expense and the rise of cinema – so the showgirl travelled to Hollywood.

There, she was celebrated in biopics such as The Great Ziegfeld (1936) with its glittering, feathered costumes by the designer Adrian.

In the second world war, showgirls boosted troop morale, like Deslys did in 1917.

Hollywood made feel-good films including the biopic The Dolly Sisters (1945), which reimagined the brunette twins as all-American blondes by casting 1940s pinup stars Betty Grable and June Haver.

From Hollywood to Vegas

From there, the American showgirl arrived in Las Vegas, performing in every hotel and casino on the strip during the 1950s and 1960s.

Like the showgirls of yore, these performers’ allure was their grace, beauty, and extravagant, expensive costumes, produced by the world’s leading designers.

Showgirls remained a fixture of Las Vegas entertainment throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Choreographers including Donn Arden and Madame Bluebell (who also worked in the Parisian revues) created hallmark, visual spectacles featuring costumes by Bob Mackie.

Jubilee!, which opened at the old MGM Grand casino in 1981, was one such revue. In addition to the vast volume of plumes, it was claimed the show had caused a global shortage of Swarovski crystals because the costumes had used them all.

In 1986 the old MGM Grand became Bally’s Casino, but Jubilee! stayed. The costumes, some of which cost more than US$7,000 each (roughly US$25,000 today), were used six nights a year for 35 years and maintained by 18 wardrobe staffers.

Jubilee! closed in 2016, but its costumes live on as valuable cultural artefacts that celebrities borrow to reinterpret the American showgirl for 21st-century audiences.

This includes demonstrating that showgirls are independent, hardworking and talented women.

From Vegas to Taylor Swift

Burlesque performer Dita Von Teese draws on the American showgirls’ legacy by wearing costumes from Jubilee! in her Las Vegas cabaret, and called the 1945 Dolly Sisters film one of her inspirations.

Pamela Anderson wore Jubilee! costumes in The Last Showgirl (2024), a film that highlights the sacrifices female performers often have to make to pursue their dreams.

Taylor Swift is the latest superstar to harness showgirl iconography. Photographs from her new album show Swift wearing the Jubilee! “Diamond” and “Disco” costumes by Mackie.

Another photograph shows Swift in a cloud of ostrich plumes and rhinestones wearing a dark, bobbed wig: a direct reference to 1920s American showgirls and performers such as the Dolly Sisters.

Swift’s stage costumes are by the world’s leading fashion designers, while her songs often reference historical celebrities to critique how the entertainment and media industry treat female performers.

Choosing Mackie’s Jubilee! costumes allows Swift to become the American showgirl (Taylor’s Version), by tapping into a century of glamour and signalling that she too has worked hard and made sacrifices to reach the top.

Emily Brayshaw, Honorary Research Fellow, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

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

If you have studied almost any European language, you will have noticed words that felt oddly familiar. French mort (dead) recalls English murder. German Hund (dog) is a dead ringer for hound. Czech sestra resembles English sister. No prizes for guessing the meaning of Albanian kau (OK, well – it’s actually ox).

You might have wondered: could these words be in some way related?

Of course, words can look similar for various reasons. Unrelated languages borrow from one another: consider English igloo, from Inuktikut iglu (house), or wok from Cantonese 鑊 wòk (frying pan). And there are plenty of sheer coincidences: Thai ไฟ fai resembles its English translation fire for no particular reason at all.

But the preceding sets of words actually are related to one another. They are cognate, which means they share a common origin in descent from a single ancestral language.

This now-extinct tongue was probably spoken somewhere in Eurasia as many as 8,000 years ago. Long predating the advent of writing systems, its words – and its name, if it had one – were never written down. Lacking such direct knowledge, linguists have therefore developed methods for reconstructing aspects of its structure, and refer to it using the label Proto-Indo-European – or PIE.

But how do we know Proto-Indo-European must have existed?

Shared ancestry of language

Our modern-day awareness of the shared ancestry of Indo-European languages first took shape in the Renaissance and early colonial periods.

India-based European scholars such as Gaston Coeurdoux and William Jones were already familiar with the ties among European languages.

But they were astonished to find echoes of Latin, Greek and German in Sanskrit words such as mā́tṛ (mother), bhrā́tṛ (brother) and dúhitṛ (daughter).

Such words could not plausibly be borrowings, given these languages’ lack of historical contact. Sheer coincidence was obviously out of the question.

Even more striking was the systematic nature of the correspondences. Sanskrit bh- matched Germanic b- not only in bhrā́tṛ (brother) but also in bhar (bear). Meanwhile, Sanskrit p- aligned with Latin and Greek p-, but with Germanic f-.

There could be only one explanation for such regular correspondences. The languages must have descended from a single common ancestor, whose ancient breakup led to their distinct evolutionary pathways.

Philologists from the 19th century, such as Rasmus Rask, Franz Bopp and August Schleicher, later systematised these observations. They showed that, by comparing and reverse-engineering the changes each descendant language’s words had undergone, the words of the lost ancestral language could be reconstructed.

These insights not only laid the foundations of modern-day historical linguistics, but also went on to influence Darwin’s conception of biological evolution.

Forming a family

Like a biological genus, the Indo-European languages became understood as forming a family. At their root was the PIE ancestor, while the descendant languages branched out (like species) to form a tree.

The Indo-European family includes Indo-Aryan languages such as Sanskrit and Hindi; Iranian languages (including Persian and Kurdish); Hellenic (including Greek and Ancient Macedonian); Italic (including Latin, Spanish and Italian); Germanic (including English, Dutch and German); Balto-Slavic (including Russian and Lithuanian) and Celtic languages (including Welsh and Breton), as well as Armenian and Albanian.

Extinct branches – attested only through written records – include Anatolian (Hittite) and Tocharian. Languages like Phrygian, Dardanian and Thracian seem likely to have been Indo-European, but are not as well attested in historical records.

But not all Indian or European languages are Indo-European!

Non-Indo-European languages of India include Dravidian languages such as Tamil and Telugu, while European languages outside the family include Basque, Georgian, Maltese and Finnish. Compare with the above table the quite different Finnish words jalka (foot), isä (father) and viisi (five).

Learning about those who spoke PIE

Reconstructed PIE vocabulary has also yielded insights into the lives of its speakers: what their culture may have been like, where they might have lived, and what may have fuelled their language’s diversification and expansion.

Roots such as *rēg-, (tribal) king, and *pelə-, fortified high place, suggest a martial, hierarchical society.

Speakers knew grain agriculture (*agro, field; *grə-no, grain), animal domestication (*ghaido, goat; *gwou, cattle), vehicular transport (*wogh-no, wagon; *aks-lo, axle), metalworking (*arg-, shine or silver; *ajes, copper or bronze), trade (*wes-no buy; *k(a)mb-yo, exchange) and religion (*deiw-os, god; *meldh, pray).

From such evidence, scholars such as V. Gordon Childe linked Proto-Indo-European to the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age Kurgan culture of the Pontic-Caspian steppe (today’s Ukraine and southern Russia).

More recent studies have (somewhat controversially) employed phylogenetic methods derived from evolutionary biology to argue for a PIE origin in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), suggesting that agriculture was most probably the engine of Indo-European expansion.

Alas, spoken languages do not fossilise well. The actual words, ideas and identities of Proto-Indo-European speakers vanished into the air many millennia ago.

Yet patterns in their descendant languages preserve enough structure to enable us to manage at least a shadowy glimpse of them. The theories and methods pioneered through this work will continue to fuel research into the reconstruction of human ethnolinguistic prehistories worldwide for many years to come.

Mark W. Post, Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Sydney

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

As the weather starts to warm in Australia, you might notice the pleasant flutter of butterflies in your garden during the day. And perhaps if you’ve left a porch light on during the night, you will see a flurry of moths have gathered around it.

To an untrained eye, these fluttering insects can seem similar. And indeed, both are from the order of insects called Lepidoptera, which roughly translates to “scaly wings”. That’s because the wings of butterflies and moths are covered in microscopic scales. These scales are important for providing these insects with their beautiful colours, and they’re the cause of the “dust” that often comes off moths when handled or found in the back of a pantry.

But there are some key differences between these two kinds of creatures. So what makes a moth a moth and a butterfly a butterfly?

What is a moth?

When we think about moths, we’re often thinking about little, brown, (definitely not) boring insects in our pantries, and flying around our porch lights. However, there is so much variation in this group of insects, given there are about 22,000 species in Australia.

Moths generally have straight antennae. But if they’re males, their antennae are often fluffy and feather-like. These fluffy antennae are used to help them find mates from large distances.

Most moths are nocturnal, preferring to fly at night. And many flowers are adapted to be pollinated by night-flying insects such as moths. Dragonfruit, for example, benefit from pollination by moths and the flowers bloom at night.

Because they fly at night, moths can’t use the same visual cues, such as sunlight, that butterflies use to navigate. Instead, they use a range of non-visual cues to know where they are in the dark. For example, Australian bogong moths, which can travel up to 1,000 kilometres during their migrations, are known to use magnetic fields and stars to navigate.

Many moths are excellent at camouflage. Historically, there have been stories surrounding how peppered moths became darker due to the industrial revolution, but there are much more impressive moths! For example, moths from the genus Eudocima manage to look like a curled leaf with completely flat wings. Bee hawk-moths can trick us into thinking they’re bees.

Due to the significant amount of time they spend camouflaging and travelling at night, there’s less value to moths to be extremely colourful. So many moth species are duller in colour than their flamboyant cousins, the butterflies.

They’re also less hungry. Generally speaking, lepidopterans have a long coiled mouthpart to help them feed on nectar (and sometimes other things, including corpses).

However, many moths spend so much time feeding as caterpillars, that as adult moths they don’t have mouthparts. They live short adult lives that include mating and starving to death.

What is a butterfly?

Butterflies are the charismatic, popular members of the insect world, and with good reason. They come in a range of colours, and can be large and relatively easy to see. However, there are a lot less butterflies in Australia compared to moths, approximately 450 species.

So what makes a butterfly a butterfly?

The main factor that determines a butterfly is its clubbed antennae. Unlike those of moths, butterfly antennae consist of a long thread with a bead at the end. However, this can be pretty hard to see while they are fluttering around!

Butterflies are also day flying. This drastically changes how they look and behave in comparison to moths. Butterflies come in a range of bright and beautiful colours because they can be seen during the day.

Some butterflies are colourful simply to attract mates. Some, such as monarch butterflies, have aposematic displays, which aim to warn off predators by advertising the butterfly’s potential to be poisonous. Others, such as European swallowtails use deimatic displays, aimed to startle predators by imitating something scary like a face.

There are also examples of caterpillars that mimic bird poo, but that’s less of a defining factor.

There are always exceptions to the rules

We can’t talk about moths without discussing some of the species that don’t necessarily follow all the rules. There are many brightly coloured moths, including the Madagascan sunset moth and the heliotrope moth.

To make things more confusing there are also groups of moths that have hardly any scales on their wings, including clearwing moths.

Not all moths fly around at night, either. Tiger moths, for example, are frequently seen flying during the daytime, and are brightly coloured.

So sometimes, it can be really hard to determine where the line is between a moth and a butterfly.

How can we help moths and butterflies?

Our fluttering insects face many threats, including pesticide use, climate change and habitat loss. Planting a range of flowers in your garden can help provide food and habitat for moths and butterflies.

You can also get involved in citizen science, by uploading sightings of insects you see on apps like iNaturalist. If you’re interested in learning more about the grand travel of bogong moths, take photos of ones you see and upload them to Bogong Watch.

Caitlyn Forster, Associate Lecturer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

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

Hidden beneath farmland in the central tablelands of New South Wales lies one of Australia’s most extraordinary fossil sites – McGraths Flat. It dates back between 11 million and 16 million years into the Miocene epoch, a time when many of today’s familiar plants and animals evolved.

It is here that palaentologists and geologists from the Australian Museum Research Institute have made remarkable fossil discoveries. Where dust and drought now dominate, a lush rainforest once flourished. In stunning ecological detail, fossils at McGraths Flat reveal this ancient ecosystem.

Strikingly red in appearance, the sedimentary rocks here are composed entirely of goethite – a fine-grained mineral that contains iron. This iron has preserved a range of plants, insects, spiders, fish and feathers with exceptional detail.

Our new study, published in the journal Gondwana Research, shows there’s another reason these rocks are so intriguing. They fundamentally challenge ideas about where well-preserved fossil sites on Earth can be found, and why.

Beyond shale and sandstone

Traditionally, the most exceptionally well-preserved fossil sites are from rocks dominated by shale, sandstone, limestone, or volcanic ash.

Consider Germany’s Messel Pit or Canada’s Burgess Shale. At these sites, organisms were rapidly buried in fine-grained sediments, allowing the exceptional preservation of soft tissues, not just hard parts.

Messel Pit has preserved roughly 47 million-year-old fossils showing the outlines of feathers, fur and skin. Meanwhile, the Burgess Shale contains soft tissues from some of Earth’s earliest animal life, dating back about 500 million years.

By contrast, sedimentary rocks made entirely of iron are the last place you’d expect to find well-preserved remains of land-based (terrestrial) animal and plant life.

That’s because iron-rich sedimentary rocks are predominantly known from banded iron formations. These massive iron deposits largely formed around 2.5 billion years ago in Earth’s ancient oxygen-depleted oceans, long before complex animal and plant life evolved.

In more recent history, iron is considered a mere weathering product, forming rust on the continents when exposed to our oxygen-rich atmosphere. Just look at Australia’s iconic red-rocked outback landscape that preserves these million- to billion-year-old features.

Yet the discovery of McGraths Flat has defied these expectations.

Terrestrial life entombed in iron

McGraths Flat is made from a very fine-grained, iron-rich rock called ferricrete. It’s essentially a cement made from iron.

The ferricrete consists almost entirely of microscopic iron-oxyhydroxide mineral particles, each just 0.005 millimetres across. When an animal died and was buried in the sediment, this minute scale is what allowed the iron particles to fill every cell. The result? Extraordinarily well-preserved soft tissue fossils.

Compared with marine life, fossil sites preserving terrestrial life are notoriously rare. Terrestrial sites that preserve soft tissues? Even rarer. The exceptional detail captured in the McGraths Flat fossils reveals new snapshots of past life we don’t often get to find.

These fossils are so perfectly preserved that individual pigment cells in fish eyes, internal organs of insects and fish, and even delicate spider hairs and nerve cells can be seen.

This level of preservation rivals other well-preserved fossil sites, such as those consisting of shale or sandstone. Except here, they are entombed in iron.

How did McGraths Flat form?

Our new study sheds light on how this fossil site came to be – a crucial step for finding similar terrestrial fossil troves in iron.

McGraths Flat began forming during the Miocene when iron leached from weathering basalt under warm, wet rainforest conditions.

Acidic groundwater then carried the dissolved iron underground until it reached a river system with an oxbow lake – an abandoned river channel. There, the iron became ultra-fine iron-oxyhydroxide sediment.

It rapidly coated dead organisms on the lake floor and replicated their soft tissue structures down to the cellular level.

A new fossil roadmap

Understanding how McGraths Flat formed could provide a roadmap for finding similar iron-rich fossil sites worldwide.

Key features to look for include very fine-grained and finely layered ferricrete in areas where:

• ancient river channels cut through older iron-rich landscapes, such as basaltic rocks from volcanoes

• ancient warm, humid conditions once promoted intense weathering, and

• the surrounding geology lacks significant limestone or sulphur-containing minerals (such as pyrite), because these could interfere with the formation of the iron-oxyhydroxide mineral sediments.

The red rocks of McGraths Flat open an entirely new chapter in our understanding of how exceptionally well-preserved fossil sites can form.

The next breakthrough in understanding ancient terrestrial life might not come from traditional shale or sandstone fossil beds, but from rusty-red rocks hidden beneath our feet.

The study’s authors acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and waterways on which McGraths Flat is located, the Wiradjuri Nation people.

Tara Djokic, Scientific Officer, Palaeontology, Australian Museum; UNSW Sydney

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

For decades, small grooves on ancient human teeth were thought to be evidence of deliberate tool use – people cleaning their teeth with sticks or fibres, or easing gum pain with makeshift “toothpicks”. Some researchers even called it the oldest human habit.

But our new findings, published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, challenge this long-held idea about human evolution. We found these grooves also appear naturally in wild primates, with little support for tooth-picking as the cause.

Even more striking, in more than 500 wild primates, across 27 species both living and fossil, we found no trace of a common modern dental disease: deep, V-shaped gumline notches called abfraction lesions.

Together, these findings can help reshape how we interpret the fossil record and raise fresh questions about the uniquely human ways our teeth are affected today.

Why teeth matter in human evolution

Teeth are the most durable part of the skeleton and often survive long after the rest of the body has decayed. Anthropologists rely on them to reconstruct ancient diets, lifestyles and health.

Even tiny marks can carry important meaning. One recurring feature is the thin groove across exposed tooth roots, especially between teeth. Since the early 20th century, these have been labelled “toothpick grooves” and interpreted as signs of tool use or dental hygiene.

They have been reported across our recent evolutionary history, from 2-million-year-old fossils through to Neanderthals. But until now, no one had really checked whether other primates also have them.

A different condition, abfraction, looks very different – deep wedge-shaped notches near the gumline. These are very common in modern dentistry and often linked to tooth grinding, forceful brushing, or acidic drinks. Their absence in the fossil record has long puzzled researchers. Do other primates really never suffer from them?

What we did

To test these assumptions, we analysed more than 500 teeth from 27 primate species, both extinct and living. The sample included gorillas, orangutans, macaques, colobus monkeys, fossil apes and more.

Crucially, all specimens came from wild populations, meaning their tooth wear could not have been influenced by toothbrushes, soft drinks or processed foods.

We looked for non-carious cervical lesions – a name for tissue loss at the tooth neck not caused by decay. Using microscopes, 3D scans and tissue-loss measurements, we documented even the smallest lesions.

What we found

About 4% of individuals had lesions. Some looked almost identical to the classic “toothpick grooves” of fossil humans, complete with fine parallel scratches and tapering shapes.

Others were shallow and smooth, especially on front teeth, likely caused by acidic fruits that many primates consume in large amounts.

But one absence stood out. We found no abfraction lesions at all. Despite studying species with extremely tough diets and powerful chewing forces, not a single primate showed the wedge-shaped defects so commonly seen in modern dental clinics.

What does this mean?

First, grooves that resemble “toothpick” marks don’t necessarily prove tool use. Natural chewing, abrasive foods, or even swallowed grit can produce similar patterns. In some cases, specialised behaviours like stripping vegetation with the teeth may also contribute. We therefore need to be cautious about interpreting every fossil groove as deliberate toothpicking.

Second, the complete absence of abfraction lesions in primates strongly suggests these are a uniquely human problem, tied to modern habits. They are far more likely caused by forceful brushing, acidic drinks and processed diets than by natural chewing forces.

This places abfraction alongside other dental issues, such as impacted wisdom teeth and misaligned teeth, which are rare in wild primates but common in humans today. Together, these insights are shaping a growing subfield known as evolutionary dentistry, using our evolutionary past to understand the dental problems of the present.

Why it matters today

At first glance, grooves on fossil teeth may sound trivial. But they matter for both anthropology and dentistry.

For evolutionary science, they show why we must check our closest relatives before assuming a specific, or unique, cultural explanation. For modern health, they highlight how profoundly our diets and lifestyles alter our teeth in ways that set us apart from other primates.

By comparing human teeth with those of other primates, we can tease apart what’s universal (the inevitable wear and tear of chewing) and what’s uniquely human – the result of modern diets, behaviours and dental care.

What’s next?

Future research will expand to larger primate samples, investigate diet-wear links in the wild, and apply advanced imaging to see how lesions form. The aim is to refine how we interpret the past while finding new ways on how to prevent dental disease today.

What may look like a fossil human tooth-picking groove could just as easily be the by-product of everyday chewing. Equally, it might reflect other cultural or dietary behaviors that leave similar marks. To untangle these possibilities, we need much larger comparative datasets of lesions in wild primates, only then can we begin to trace broader patterns and refine our interpretations of the fossil record.

Meanwhile, the absence of abfraction lesions in primates suggests that some of our most common dental problems are uniquely human. It’s a reminder that even in something as everyday as toothache, our evolutionary history is written in our teeth, but shaped as much by modern habits as by ancient biology.

Ian Towle, Research Fellow in Biological Anthropology, Monash University and Luca Fiorenza, Senior Lecturer in Anatomical Sciences, Monash University

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

You don’t need a gym membership, dumbbells, or expensive equipment to get stronger.

Since the beginning of time, we’ve had access to the one piece of equipment that is essential for strength training – our own bodies.

Strength training without the use of external forces and equipment is called “bodyweight training”.

From push-ups and squats to planks and chin-ups, bodyweight training has become one of the most popular ways to exercise because it can be done anywhere – and it’s free.

So, what is it, why does it work and how do you get started?

What is bodyweight training?

Bodyweight training simply means you use your own body weight as resistance, instead of external weights such as barbells and dumbbells.

Common exercises include push-ups, squats, lunges and sit-ups.

But bodyweight training can also use static holds that challenge your body without moving, like planks or yoga poses.

Bodyweight training can be used for any muscle group. Typically, we can break down the exercises by movement type and/or body region:

• upper body: push-ups, pull-ups, handstands
• lower body: squats, lunges, step-ups, glute bridges
• core: sit-ups, planks, mountain climbers
• whole body: burpees, bear crawls, jump squats.

Bodyweight training can also be done with equipment: calisthenics is a style of bodyweight training that uses bars, rings and outdoor gyms.

What are the main forms?

Types of bodyweight training include:

• calisthenics: often circuit-based (one exercise after another with minimal rest), dynamic and whole-body focused. Calisthenics is safe and effective for improving functional strength, power and speed, especially for older adults
• yoga: more static or flowing poses with an emphasis on flexibility and balance. Yoga is typically safe and effective for managing and preventing musculoskeletal injuries and supporting mental health
  
• Tai Chi: slower, more controlled movements, often with an emphasis on balance, posture and mindful movement
• suspension training: using straps or rings so your body can be supported in different positions while using gravity and your own bodyweight for resistance. This type or training is suitable for older adults through to competitive athletes
• resistance bands: although not strictly bodyweight only, resistance bands are a portable, low-cost alternative to traditional weights. They are safe and effective for improving strength, balance, speed and physical function.

What are the pros and cons?

There are various pros and cons to bodyweight exercises.

Pros:

• builds strength: a 2025 meta-analysis of 102 studies in 4,754 older adults (aged 70 on average) found bodyweight training led to substantial strength gains - which were no different from those with free weights or machines. These benefits aren’t just for older adults, though. Using resistance bands with your bodyweight workout can be as effective as traditional training methods across diverse populations
• boosts aerobic fitness: a 2021 study showed as little as 11 minutes of bodyweight exercises three times per week was effective for improving aerobic fitness
• accessible and free: bodyweight training avoids common barriers to exercise such as access to equipment and facilities, which means it can be done anywhere, without a gym membership
• promotes functional movement: exercises like squats and push-ups mimic everyday actions like rising from a chair or getting up from the floor.

Cons:

• difficulty progressing over time: typically, we can add weight to an exercise to increase difficulty. For bodyweight training, you need to be creative, such as slowing your tempo or progressing to unilateral (one-sided or single-limb) movements
• plateau risk: heavy external loads are more effective than bodyweight training for increasing maximal strength. This means if you stick to bodyweight training alone, your strength gains are more likely to plateau than if you use machines or free weights.

Tips for getting started (safely)

As with any form of exercise, it’s always best to speak to a medical professional before starting.

If you are ready to get going, here’s some tips:

• start small: pick simple moves to begin and progress them as you gain strength, confidence and experience
• focus on form: think quality over quantity. Completing movements with good control and body position is more important than how many you can do with poor control
• progress gradually: vary the number of sets or repetitions to make your exercise more challenging. You can progress the movements from easier (push-ups on your knees) to harder (decline push-ups) as you get stronger and need more of a challenge
• mix it up: use a variety of types of bodyweight training as well as targeting different muscle groups and movements
• seek guidance: reach out to your local exercise professionals or use apps like the Nike Training Club to help guide your planning and progress.
  

Bodyweight training means you don’t need expensive equipment to improve your health. Whether it’s squats in the park, push-ups at your children’s football game, or yoga at home, your body is a portable gym.

With consistency, creativity and time, bodyweight exercises can help you build strength and fitness.

Dan van den Hoek, Senior Lecturer, Clinical Exercise Physiology, University of the Sunshine Coast and Jackson Fyfe, Senior Lecturer, Strength and Conditioning Sciences, Deakin University

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

Do your gums look red and often bleed when you brush them, but they’re not painful? If so, you could have the gum disease gingivitis.

Gingivitis is one of the most common inflammatory oral diseases. It affects an estimated 50–100% of adults and children at some point in their lives.

Luckily, gingivitis can be treated if caught in time. However, if left untreated, it can lead to more severe disease that could mean losing your teeth.

Here are some tell-tale signs of gingivitis and how you can work with a dental professional to treat it.

What does gingivitis look like?

The term gingivitis tells us what to expect. It’s when the gums (the gingiva) are inflamed (-itis). It’s essentially the body’s immune response to microbes in the sticky biofilm or plaque on the tooth surface.

You might notice subtle redness of the gums, close to where they meet the teeth, or of the part of the gums between the teeth. You might notice mild-to-moderate swelling of the gums. Or your gums might bleed when you brush or floss.

It can affect the gums close to a few or multiple teeth. Sometimes, it can lead to bad breath (halitosis).

Gingivitis generally develops over time. And you’ll see the most common form starting to develop if you haven’t brushed your teeth well (and have not removed the plaque) for a few days. Gingivitis is painless to start with.

But if it’s not treated it may lead to a more severe form of disease called periodontitis. This is when you also lose some of the bone that holds teeth in place. If periodontitis is left untreated, your teeth loosen and may fall out.

How did I get it?

Several factors increase the chances and severity of gingivitis, beyond poor oral hygiene.

For instance, changes in sex hormones during puberty, the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and oral contraceptive use can increase the severity of gingivitis. This is due to increased blood flow or a change in plaque’s microbial composition.

Other conditions that can worsen gingivitis include diabetes, leukaemia, if you don’t produce much saliva, and certain medications.

An infectious disease could also be behind gingivitis. Bacterial infections (such as streptococcal disease, syphilis and tuberculosis); viral infections (herpes, human papillomavirus, hand-foot-and-mouth disease); and fungal infections (candida thrush) can all involve gingivitis. But unlike the more common type, gingivitis related to infectious disease can also come with fever and enlarged lymph nodes.

A new growth – whether benign (non-cancerous), precancerous (could develop into cancer) or cancer – can present as localised lesions with inflamed gums.

Finally, gingivitis can be traumatic. That is, if you brush your teeth too hard, use cocaine or other drugs, or burn your mouth while eating or drinking hot food and drink, you might see acute inflammation of the gums.

Can I manage it at home?

Only to a limited extent. If you get in at the early stage (one to three days of symptoms), brushing your teeth well will help remove plaque, and so some of the microbes that cause the inflammation.

But if you leave it any longer and the plaque begins to calcify, a dentist or a dental hygienist will need to remove these hardened, rough, surface deposits known as calculus.

They use tools called ultrasonic scalers or manual scalers to remove the calculus and overlying plaque. After this treatment, signs of gingivitis usually resolve.

However, if there are underlying health issues that contribute to gingivitis, they will need to be addressed to see any improvement.

For instance, this could be treating an infection before, during or after scaling. You might also be prescribed a special mouthwash to help healing or relieve symptoms.

If you have a growth, or are diagnosed with periodontitis, you’ll be referred for specialist treatment.

Can mouthwash help?

Mouthwash often helps reduce the bacterial load in plaque. But you can’t rely on it as your only treatment. It is, however, often recommended after your gingivitis has been treated professionally, during the healing phase.

Your dental health professional may recommend chlorhexidine mouthwash twice daily for up to two weeks. You can buy this in the supermarket or pharmacy.

But using mouthwash long term to manage gingivitis (or for other reasons) is not advised. Prolonged use of chlorhexidine mouthwash can lead to side effects such as staining of the teeth and an altered sense of taste.

Some mouthwash also contains a small percentage of alcohol, which might not be the best option for people with a dry mouth as alcohol can be dehydrating. You might also want to avoid these in children, who might not like the burning sensation. There are alcohol-free versions, which are just as effective.

How do I prevent gingivitis returning?

You can prevent gingivitis, and most oral diseases, by brushing your teeth well twice a day and flossing once a day.

Regular dental check-ups also give dental professionals a perfect opportunity to detect and manage most gingivitis (and tooth decay) before it progresses.

Dileep Sharma, Professor and Head of Discipline - Oral Health, University of Newcastle

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

In the chilling final scene of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 masterpiece, The Godfather, the door to Michael Corleone’s office is closed in the face of his wife, Kay. It simultaneously signified the opening of many more doors for the career of actor Diane Keaton.

In that film, so heavily dominated by male actors, Keaton more than holds her own. For someone who would become known for her daffy, comic style, it showed us she also had serious dramatic acting chops.

The multi-award-winning actor, producer and director has died at the age of 79. She leaves behind a legacy of memorable roles in films that include classics such as The Godfather and Annie Hall, spanning genres from comedy to drama.

First steps on stage

Keaton started life in Los Angeles as Diane Hall on January 5 1946. The eldest child of Dorothy and Jack Hall, she was the only one of her siblings – brother Randy and sisters Robin and Dorrie – to show interest in the theatre. It came about in an unconventional way.

When she was “eight or nine”, she told NPR’s Fresh Air in 2004, her mother won “Mrs Los Angeles”

I remember sitting down [in the audience] watching her being crowned. It was that she was the perfect homemaker. […] I did not want to be a happy homemaker, that did not appeal to me. But I did want to go on stage. I saw that that was something that did appeal to me. There she was in the theatre, and I saw the curtain open and there was my mother. And I thought, ‘I think I like that for myself’.

Her career began as a teenage Blanche in Santa Ana High School’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

In her 2011 memoir, Then Again, she remembers her father coming backstage:

I could tell he was surprised by his awkward daughter – the one who’d flunked algebra and smashed the new Ford station wagon. For one thrilling moment, I was his Seabiscuit, Audrey Hepburn, and Wonder Woman rolled into one.

She began drama studies at nearby Santa Ana College but soon dropped out, took her mother’s maiden name – Keaton – and travelled to New York to study at the Neighbourhood Playhouse.

In 1968, after a stint in summer stock, she was cast as an understudy in Hair on Broadway. She was 19 and famously refused to do the nude scene.

“It wasn’t for any sort of philosophical reason,” she told the New York Times in 1972, “It was just that I was too scared.”

Silver screen breakout

Her heart was set on the big screen which, of course, meant starting out on the small screen in shows like The FBI (“The worst thing I have ever done,” she told the New York Times. “I was unanimously, resoundingly bad!”) and Night Gallery.

Instead, it was theatre that led to her breakout screen roles.

In 2023, Francis Ford Coppola revealed to Hollywood Reporter he had seen Keaton in Hair.

He later told Keaton he cast her in The Godfather because,

although you were to play the more straight/vanilla wife, there was something more about you, deeper, funnier, and very interesting. (I was right).

Then she auditioned for a new theatrical comedy, Play it Again, Sam, by up-and-coming comedian Woody Allen. That turned out to be what’s known in romantic comedies as a meet cute.

It led not only to their much-publicised relationship, but to a significant collaboration in eight films including the 1977 hit Annie Hall.

For that role, Keaton won the Oscar for best actress. And her costume, designed by Ruth Morley, made her a fashion icon of the 70s. She also gave us the whimsical phrase, “la di dah”.

It’s often thought that Annie Hall was about her relationship with Allen, but as she told the New York Times, “It’s not true, but there are elements of truth in it”.

A force

For the next five decades, Keaton would become a Hollywood force.

She had comic roles in films like The First Wives Club (1996), Something’s Gotta Give (2003) and the Father of the Bride franchise. Alongside these comedies were remarkable dramatic roles in Looking for Mister Goodbar (1977), Reds (1981), The Little Drummer Girl (1984), Crimes of the Heart (1986), Marvin’s Room (1996) and two more Godfather films.

She was also a notable director of films like Unstrung Heroes (1995), Hanging Up (2000), Heaven (1987) and even an episode of Twin Peaks.

In addition to Annie Hall’s Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe, she received Oscar nominations for Reds, Marvin’s Room and Something’s Gotta Give (for which she won her second Golden Globe). She was also nominated for a Tony, two Emmys and another seven Golden Globes.

Despite much-publicised relationships with Al Pacino, Woody Allen and Warren Beatty, Keaton chose to remain single her whole life. In her 50s, she adopted two children, Dexter and Duke.

A rich creative life

Keaton made comedy look easy but told the New York Times in 1977 that “both comedy and drama are equally difficult”.

She later told Fresh Air,

You’re constantly battling with yourself when you’re acting in a [dramatic] part, at least I am. Because it’s just not that easy for me. I think I’m more inclined to live comfortably in the world of humour.

Either way, we were the richer for her creative life and are the poorer for her loss.

Chris Thompson, Lecturer in Theatre, Australian Catholic University

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

After Christmas dinner in 2021, our family was glued to the television, watching the nail-biting launch of NASA’s US$10 billion (AU$15 billion) James Webb Space Telescope. There had not been such a leap forward in telescope technology since Hubble was launched in 1990.

En route to its deployment, Webb had to successfully navigate 344 potential points of failure. Thankfully, the launch went better than expected, and we could finally breathe again.

Six months later, Webb’s first images were revealed, of the most distant galaxies yet seen. However, for our team in Australia, the work was only beginning.

We would be using Webb’s highest-resolution mode, called the aperture masking interferometer or AMI for short. It’s a tiny piece of precisely machined metal that slots into one of the telescope’s cameras, enhancing its resolution.

Our results on painstakingly testing and enhancing AMI are now released on the open-access archive arXiv in a pair of papers. We can finally present its first successful observations of stars, planets, moons and even black hole jets.

Working with an instrument a million kilometres away

Hubble started its life seeing out of focus – its mirror had been ground precisely, but incorrectly. By looking at known stars and comparing the ideal and measured images (exactly like what optometrists do), it was possible to figure out a “prescription” for this optical error and design a lens to compensate.

The correction required seven astronauts to fly up on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1993 to install the new optics. Hubble orbits Earth just a few hundred kilometres above the surface, and can be reached by astronauts.

By contrast, Webb is roughly 1.5 million kilometres away – we can’t visit and service it, and need to be able to fix issues without changing any hardware.

This is where AMI comes in. This is the only Australian hardware on board, designed by astronomer Peter Tuthill.

It was put on Webb to diagnose and measure any blur in its images. Even nanometres of distortion in Webb’s 18 hexagonal primary mirrors and many internal surfaces will blur the images enough to hinder the study of planets or black holes, where sensitivity and resolution are key.

AMI filters the light with a carefully structured pattern of holes in a simple metal plate, to make it much easier to tell if there are any optical misalignments.

Hunting blurry pixels

We wanted to use this mode to observe the birth places of planets, as well as material being sucked into black holes. But before any of this, AMI showed Webb wasn’t working entirely as hoped.

At very fine resolution – at the level of individual pixels – all the images were slightly blurry due to an electronic effect: brighter pixels leaking into their darker neighbours.

This is not a mistake or flaw, but a fundamental feature of infrared cameras that turned out to be unexpectedly serious for Webb.

This was a dealbreaker for seeing distant planets many thousands of times fainter than their stars a few pixels away: my colleagues quickly showed that its limits were more than ten times worse than hoped.

So, we set out to correct it.

How we sharpened Webb’s vision

In a new paper led by University of Sydney PhD student Louis Desdoigts, we looked at stars with AMI to learn and correct the optical and electronic distortions simultaneously.

We built a computer model to simulate AMI’s optical physics, with flexibility about the shapes of the mirrors and apertures and about the colours of the stars.

We connected this to a machine learning model to represent the electronics with an “effective detector model” – where we only care about how well it can reproduce the data, not about why.

After training and validation on some test stars, this setup allowed us to calculate and undo the blur in other data, restoring AMI to full function. It doesn’t change what Webb does in space, but rather corrects the data during processing.

It worked beautifully – the star HD 206893 hosts a faint planet and the reddest-known brown dwarf (an object between a star and a planet). They were known but out of reach with Webb before applying this correction. Now, both little dots popped out clearly in our new maps of the system.

This correction has opened the door to using AMI to prospect for unknown planets at previously impossible resolutions and sensitivities.

It works not just on dots

In a companion paper by University of Sydney PhD student Max Charles, we applied this to looking not just at dots – even if these dots are planets – but forming complex images at the highest resolution made with Webb. We revisited well-studied targets that push the limits of the telescope, testing its performance.

With the new correction, we brought Jupiter’s moon Io into focus, clearly tracking its volcanoes as it rotates over an hour-long timelapse.

As seen by AMI, the jet launched from the black hole at the centre of the galaxy NGC 1068 closely matched images from much-larger telescopes.

Finally, AMI can sharply resolve a ribbon of dust around a pair of stars called WR 137, a faint cousin of the spectacular Apep system, lining up with theory.

The code built for AMI is a demo for much more complex cameras on Webb and its follow-up, Roman space telescope. These tools demand an optical calibration so fine, it’s just a fraction of a nanometre – beyond the capacity of any known materials.

Our work shows that if we can measure, control, and correct the materials we do have to work with, we can still hope to find Earth-like planets in the far reaches of our galaxy.

Benjamin Pope, Associate Professor, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Macquarie University

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

As your youth fades further into the past, you may start to fear growing older.

But research my colleague and I have recently published in the journal Intelligence shows there’s also very good reason to be excited: for many of us, overall psychological functioning actually peaks between ages 55 and 60.

And knowing this highlights why people in this age range may be at their best for complex problem-solving and leadership in the workforce.

Different types of peaks

There’s plenty of research showing humans reach their physical peak in their mid-twenties to early thirties.

A large body of research also shows that people’s raw intellectual abilities – that is, their capacity to reason, remember and process information quickly – typically starts to decline from the mid-twenties onwards.

This pattern is reflected in the real world. Athletes tend to reach their career peak before 30. Mathematicians often make their most significant contributions by their mid-thirties. Chess champions are rarely at the top of their game after 40.

Yet when we look beyond raw processing power, a different picture emerges.

From reasoning to emotional stability

In our study, we focused on well-established psychological traits beyond reasoning ability that can be measured accurately, represent enduring characteristics rather than temporary states, have well-documented age trajectories, and are known to predict real-world performance.

Our search identified 16 psychological dimensions that met these criteria.

These included core cognitive abilities such as reasoning, memory span, processing speed, knowledge and emotional intelligence. They also included the so-called “big five” personality traits – extraversion, emotional stability, conscientiousness, openness to experience, and agreeableness.

We compiled existing large-scale studies examining the 16 dimensions we identified. By standardising these studies to a common scale, we were able to make direct comparisons and map how each trait evolves across the lifespan.

Peaking later in life

Several of the traits we measured reach their peak much later in life. For example, conscientiousness peaked around age 65. Emotional stability peaked around age 75.

Less commonly discussed dimensions, such as moral reasoning, also appear to peak in older adulthood. And the capacity to resist cognitive biases – mental shortcuts that can lead us to make irrational or less accurate decisions – may continue improving well into the 70s and even 80s.

When we combined the age-related trajectories of all 16 dimensions into a theoretically and empirically informed weighted index, a striking pattern emerged.

Overall mental functioning peaked between ages 55 and 60, before beginning to decline from around 65. That decline became more pronounced after age 75, suggesting that later-life reductions in functioning can accelerate once they begin.

Getting rid of age-based assumptions

Our findings may help explain why many of the most demanding leadership roles in business, politics, and public life are often held by people in their fifties and early sixties. So while several abilities decline with age, they’re balanced by growth in other important traits. Combined, these strengths support better judgement and more measured decision-making – qualities that are crucial at the top.

Despite our findings, older workers face greater challenges re-entering the workforce after job losses. To some degree, structural factors may shape hiring decisions. For example, employers may see hiring someone in their mid-fifties as a short-term investment if retirement at 60 is likely.

In other cases, some roles have mandatory retirement ages. For example, International Civil Aviation Organisation sets a global retirement age of 65 for international airline pilots. Many countries also require air traffic controllers to retire between 56 and 60. Because these jobs demand high levels of memory and attention, such age limits are often considered justifiable.

However, people’s experiences vary.

Research has found that while some adults show declines in reasoning speed and memory, others also maintain these abilities well into later life.

Age alone, then, doesn’t determine overall cognitive functioning. So evaluations and assessments should focus on individuals’ actual abilities and traits rather than age-based assumptions.

A peak, not a countdown

Taken together, these findings highlight the need for more age-inclusive hiring and retention practices, recognising that many people bring valuable strengths to their work in midlife.

Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species at 50. Ludwig van Beethoven, at 53 and profoundly deaf, premiered his Ninth Symphony. In more recent times, Lisa Su, now 55, led computer company Advanced Micro Devices through one of the most dramatic technical turnarounds in the industry.

History is full of people who reached their greatest breakthroughs well past what society often labels as “peak age”. Perhaps it’s time we stopped treating midlife as a countdown and started recognising it as a peak.

Gilles E. Gignac, Associate Professor of Psychology, The University of Western Australia

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

In the chilling final scene of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 masterpiece, The Godfather, the door to Michael Corleone’s office is closed in the face of his wife, Kay. It simultaneously signified the opening of many more doors for the career of actor Diane Keaton.

In that film, so heavily dominated by male actors, Keaton more than holds her own. For someone who would become known for her daffy, comic style, it showed us she also had serious dramatic acting chops.

The multi-award-winning actor, producer and director has died at the age of 79. She leaves behind a legacy of memorable roles in films that include classics such as The Godfather and Annie Hall, spanning genres from comedy to drama.

First steps on stage

Keaton started life in Los Angeles as Diane Hall on January 5 1946. The eldest child of Dorothy and Jack Hall, she was the only one of her siblings – brother Randy and sisters Robin and Dorrie – to show interest in the theatre. It came about in an unconventional way.

When she was “eight or nine”, she told NPR’s Fresh Air in 2004, her mother won “Mrs Los Angeles”

I remember sitting down [in the audience] watching her being crowned. It was that she was the perfect homemaker. […] I did not want to be a happy homemaker, that did not appeal to me. But I did want to go on stage. I saw that that was something that did appeal to me. There she was in the theatre, and I saw the curtain open and there was my mother. And I thought, ‘I think I like that for myself’.

Her career began as a teenage Blanche in Santa Ana High School’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

In her 2011 memoir, Then Again, she remembers her father coming backstage:

I could tell he was surprised by his awkward daughter – the one who’d flunked algebra and smashed the new Ford station wagon. For one thrilling moment, I was his Seabiscuit, Audrey Hepburn, and Wonder Woman rolled into one.

She began drama studies at nearby Santa Ana College but soon dropped out, took her mother’s maiden name – Keaton – and travelled to New York to study at the Neighbourhood Playhouse.

In 1968, after a stint in summer stock, she was cast as an understudy in Hair on Broadway. She was 19 and famously refused to do the nude scene.

“It wasn’t for any sort of philosophical reason,” she told the New York Times in 1972, “It was just that I was too scared.”

Silver screen breakout

Her heart was set on the big screen which, of course, meant starting out on the small screen in shows like The FBI (“The worst thing I have ever done,” she told the New York Times. “I was unanimously, resoundingly bad!”) and Night Gallery.

Instead, it was theatre that led to her breakout screen roles.

In 2023, Francis Ford Coppola revealed to Hollywood Reporter he had seen Keaton in Hair.

He later told Keaton he cast her in The Godfather because,

although you were to play the more straight/vanilla wife, there was something more about you, deeper, funnier, and very interesting. (I was right).

Then she auditioned for a new theatrical comedy, Play it Again, Sam, by up-and-coming comedian Woody Allen. That turned out to be what’s known in romantic comedies as a meet cute.

It led not only to their much-publicised relationship, but to a significant collaboration in eight films including the 1977 hit Annie Hall.

For that role, Keaton won the Oscar for best actress. And her costume, designed by Ruth Morley, made her a fashion icon of the 70s. She also gave us the whimsical phrase, “la di dah”.

It’s often thought that Annie Hall was about her relationship with Allen, but as she told the New York Times, “It’s not true, but there are elements of truth in it”.

A force

For the next five decades, Keaton would become a Hollywood force.

She had comic roles in films like The First Wives Club (1996), Something’s Gotta Give (2003) and the Father of the Bride franchise. Alongside these comedies were remarkable dramatic roles in Looking for Mister Goodbar (1977), Reds (1981), The Little Drummer Girl (1984), Crimes of the Heart (1986), Marvin’s Room (1996) and two more Godfather films.

She was also a notable director of films like Unstrung Heroes (1995), Hanging Up (2000), Heaven (1987) and even an episode of Twin Peaks.

In addition to Annie Hall’s Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe, she received Oscar nominations for Reds, Marvin’s Room and Something’s Gotta Give (for which she won her second Golden Globe). She was also nominated for a Tony, two Emmys and another seven Golden Globes.

Despite much-publicised relationships with Al Pacino, Woody Allen and Warren Beatty, Keaton chose to remain single her whole life. In her 50s, she adopted two children, Dexter and Duke.

A rich creative life

Keaton made comedy look easy but told the New York Times in 1977 that “both comedy and drama are equally difficult”.

She later told Fresh Air,

You’re constantly battling with yourself when you’re acting in a [dramatic] part, at least I am. Because it’s just not that easy for me. I think I’m more inclined to live comfortably in the world of humour.

Either way, we were the richer for her creative life and are the poorer for her loss.

Chris Thompson, Lecturer in Theatre, Australian Catholic University

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

On October 16, 1975, five journalists were killed in the remote Timorese town of Balibo. To this day, no one has been charged with their deaths.

Known as the “Balibo Five”, the men were reporting on the covert Indonesian invasion of Timor-Leste. They were Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart from Australia, Malcolm Rennie and Brian Peters from the United Kingdom, and Gary Cunningham from New Zealand.

Several months later, another Australian journalist, Roger East who went to investigate their disappearance, was executed. His body was never recovered.

Fifty years on, the case remains one of the most egregious examples of atrocities committed against war correspondents. It’s also a chilling case of a state failing to prosecute the murder of its own citizens.

The 1975 invasion

In 1975, Portugal abruptly decolonised Timor-Leste. The left-leaning FRETILIN party declared Timorese independence that November.

Indonesia, motivated by high estimates of oil and gas in the Timor Sea, launched a covert invasion under the pretext of anti-colonial stability.

Indonesian authorities felt they could operate with impunity because of the country’s strategic importance to the West’s fervent anti-communism agenda.

Indeed, it had done so in the previous decade, with mass killings of political dissidents in the 1960s.

It’s against this backdrop that the journalists, or the “Mártires de Balibo” (the Martyrs of Balibo), as they’re called in Timor, arrived to report on the illegal incursion of Indonesian forces. They had been guided to the town by the current Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta, then in his 20s.

They famously painted the Australian flag on a nearby building they took shelter in, hoping it would protect them from attack. This failed plea remains in Balibo today.

President Ramos-Horta has said in a statement the Balibo tragedy “remains a symbol of the sacrifice of journalists in conflict zones and the struggle for accountability and justice for war crimes”.

Honouring them as “national martyrs”, the President posthumously awarded the Collar of the Order of Timor-Leste – the nation’s highest honour – to Greg Shackleton (in 2014) and which will be declared to Cunningham, Stewart, Rennie, and Peters at a commemoration service at Balibo today – the Timorese national day for press freedom.

A ‘deliberate killing’

From the perspective of international law, the killings of the Balibo Five constitute a clear set of violations. Journalists are protected under the Geneva Conventions. They were unarmed and identifiable as foreign journalists.

An inquest by the New South Wales coroner in 2007 concluded the journalists had been “deliberately killed” by the Indonesian army to prevent them from reporting on the impending invasion.

This presaged the atrocities to come. While death tolls during Indonesia’s 24-year occupation of Timor-Leste are contested, we know hundreds of thousands of people died, many from forced starvation. Many scholars say Indonesia perpetrated a genocide.

Despite contradictory evidence, Indonesia maintains the five men were killed in crossfire.

Diplomacy over accountability

While the immediate facts of their execution by Indonesian Forces are now widely accepted by others and available in National Archives of Australia records, the subsequent legal and diplomatic story reveals a profound failure of international justice.

The pathway to justice for the Balibo Five has been systematically obstructed by the geopolitical calculus of Australia-Indonesia relations. For decades, the Australian government, regardless of political affiliation, prioritised maintaining a stable and cooperative relationship over pursuing legal accountability, including resisting calls for a full, transparent inquiry.

At the time of the killings, the Australian government had a clear picture of Indonesian intentions and military movements. Yet, it chose not to intervene to protect the journalists and, in the aftermath, has actively downplayed evidence of Indonesian responsibility to preserve diplomatic relations.

Australia also had an economic incentive to work with Indonesia. The two countries signed the Timor Gap Treaty in 1989, allowing both to explore the area’s oil and gas reserves. It’s likely pursuing justice for the Balibo Five would have risked this economic benefit.

Decades of obstruction

Obstructions have been on both sides. In 2003, the United Nations-sponsored Serious Crimes Unit in Timor-Leste indicted former Indonesian officers for the Balibo killings.

But Indonesia refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the Timorese courts over its nationals.

The Rudd government promised a shift in Australia’s response, calling for a robust inquiry. It officially endorsed the findings of the New South Wales coroner in 2007 and opened an Australian Federal Police investigation.

But without Indonesia’s cooperation, an Australian prosecution was impossible as the suspects in Indonesia could not be extradited. Rudd’s actions ultimately collided with the same geopolitical reality that had constrained all previous governments.

This decades-long impunity sends a dangerous message: powerful states can shield their military personnel from accountability for grave international crimes, provided they maintain sufficient strategic importance to their allies.

Australia continues to lag on press freedom, even threatening prosecution of reporters for investigating allegedly unlawful killings by Australian special forces in Afghanistan.

Protecting press freedom

Attacks against journalists globally are increasing at an alarming rate. Even as the Balibo case was re-opening in 2007, the comparison to the deaths of journalists in Palestine was already being made.

More than 210 journalists have since been killed in the recent Gaza crisis. At least 56 of them were intentionally targeted, according to Reporters Without Borders.

With this in mind, alongside the Balibo Five anniversary, there must be a renewed and unwavering commitment to protect journalists. They are the eyes and ears of the international community, especially in conflict zones. Their work is protected under international law, not as a privilege, but as a necessity.

Half a century on, the Balibo Five are remembered as martyrs for press freedom, yet justice remains elusive.

For the Timorese, the unresolved case symbolises the unfinished business of their struggle. It’s a painful reminder that while their nation is now free, the full truth and reconciliation with its past and powerful neighbours remain incomplete.

Shannon Brincat, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of the Sunshine Coast

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

More than 5,400 cases of malnutrition develop in Australian hospitals each year. This means a patient doesn’t get enough nutrients during their stay for their body’s needs.

Malnutrition delays recovery, increases the risk of complications and readmission, and ultimately pushes older adults into aged care. It’s estimated to cost the health-care system A$240 million each year.

In the community, malnutrition affects about 10% of adults aged 65 and older. But in hospitals, this jumps to around 30–40%.

So, why does this happen? It may be because the food is low quality. But malnutrition can also develop when patients are dissatisfied with hospital meals and simply eat less.

In our recent study, we interviewed 30 older patients from Anglo and other cultural backgrounds about their experiences of hospital food.

We found a lack of familiar options can mean people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds don’t eat properly. Here’s why this matters, and what we can do about it.

Patients are diverse – but menus aren’t

Australia’s ageing population is growing fastest among migrants aged 65 and over, especially those from Asia, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Yet hospital meals often fail to reflect their cultural preferences. Australia’s national service standards for health care explicitly mention meeting patients’ nutritional needs, but don’t reference cultural differences.

Public hospital meals are typically “Western-style”: cereals, sandwiches, meat-based mains and desserts. Non-Anglo staples such as rice, pita bread, noodles and even pasta – as well as non-Anglo sauces and desserts – are often missing.

Given the scale of malnutrition in hospitals, understanding older patients’ cultural barriers to eating hospital food is crucial.

Here’s what older patients told us

We interviewed 30 older patients in a large public hospital in Adelaide. Of these, 15 were Anglo-Australian (with an average age of 83) and 15 came from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (average age 78).

We found both groups shared a “no complaints” attitude and felt the food was “good enough”. People in both groups acknowledged the difficulties hospitals had catering for diverse groups.

But many from non-English speaking backgrounds expressed deeper cultural disconnects that affected how they ate:

Actually it is good. But the problem is that I am not used [to] it. (Ana*, 83, Indo-Fijian)

I just can’t swallow down the flavour. (Sam, 86, Greek)

I prefer if they give me some noodles, but they don’t have any noodles. (Susan, 73, Filipino)

English language barriers also made it hard for some to express dietary needs. Many relied on family members to bring in food from home.

Patients in both groups suggested adding options, rather than changing the whole menu, would help:

It would be nice, just have one option which is coming from different country […] because there’s plenty of people here, not born in Australia. (Jack, 75, Polish)

However some also told us they needed more help to eat:

It’s hard to carry up the food […] because my hand shaking and I lose the food. (Tom, 78, Congolese)

Food satisfaction affects how well you recover

In another study from 2024, we surveyed patients in New South Wales about hospital food and their health.

We spoke to 21,900 adults (with an average age of 60) across 75 public hospitals.

Those who rated hospital food poorly were:

• 2.7 times more likely to be dissatisfied with overall care

• 1.4 times more likely to develop medical complications

• 1.9 times more likely to have delayed discharge.

For non-English speaking patients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, the risks were even higher. They were:

• ten times more likely to be dissatisfied with care

• three times more likely to have delayed discharge.

So, what would help?

Based on our research, here are four practical steps that could improve care for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds:

1. Offer more culturally familiar meals: rotate menus and include at least one culturally diverse option per meal.

2. Improve communication: include food service staff from similar cultural backgrounds as in-person interpreters or AI interpreting tools to help patients with limited English express their dietary needs.

3. Train staff to engage: encourage proactive, friendly communication to invite patient feedback and meet cultural and nutritional needs.

4. Screen older people: proactively identify who might be at risk – for example, at GP clinics and during hospital admission – to prevent rather than simply treat malnutrition.

The bottom line

Hospital food isn’t just about nutrition – it’s about care. Making meals more inclusive can improve recovery and reduce costs.

Importantly, it can also enhance quality of life. As one patient in Adelaide told us:

Even when you are in hospital, you are sick, you not only eat to be alive, but eat to have some pleasure. (Jack, 75, Polish)

*Names have been changed to protect patients’ privacy.

Zhaoli Dai-Keller, Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of Pharmacy, University of Sydney; Nutritional Epidemiologist and Lecturer, School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney and Yogesh Sharma, Associate Professor, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University

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

A long-awaited expert update on the dietary changes needed to support both human and planetary health comes out clearly in favour of a plant-based approach.

The EAT-Lancet Commission says a shift towards its planetary health diet, released last week, could prevent 40,000 early deaths a day across the world and cut agricultural methane emissions by 15% by 2050.

The diet promotes more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes and nuts, with only modest amounts of meat, fish, poultry and dairy.

If you imagine a plate, half would be filled with vegetables and fruit (with more vegetables than fruit). Most of the remaining half would be whole grains and plant proteins. There’s room for small amounts of animal products and healthy fats, but very little added sugar. Notably, butter doesn’t get a mention.

The most contentious aspect is the commission’s recommendation on meat: just 14 grams per day of red meat and 29 grams per day of poultry – that’s roughly one small steak, one lamb chop, or two chicken drumsticks per week.

New Zealand’s traditional diet is a long way off this recommendation. But my recent study of teenage girls across the country suggests a shift is underway, with most embracing a predominantly plant-based diet.

How we know what’s best to eat

Many factors influence food choices – hunger, emotions, health, culture, media, taste, habits and family traditions.

Evidence-based dietary guidance, such as national food and nutrition guidelines, also plays a role.

In New Zealand, people may be familiar with the “5+ a day” message promoting fruit and vegetable consumption. That recommendation has since shifted to “7+ a day” as new evidence has emerged.

Over the past decade, nutritional guidelines have increasingly incorporated environmental sustainability, acknowledging that around 30% of global emissions come from growing, processing and transporting food.

The EAT-Lancet Commission took this sustainability focus further in its first release of the planetary health diet in 2019. It argued that by changing what we eat, reducing food waste and improving food production systems, we could feed a growing global population while minimising environmental damage.

Less meat is a win-win

This approach is a significant departure from traditional diets in Aotearoa New Zealand. The British-influenced “meat and three veg” (often with potatoes as one of the vegetables) and the Māori hāngi of pork, seafood, kumara and local greens don’t align neatly with the EAT-Lancet recommendations.

One criticism of the original report was its limited consideration of indigenous food systems. In my view, the minimal inclusion of starchy vegetables such as potatoes, cassava, kumara, maize and millet is hard to justify. These are staple foods – affordable, widely available and important sources of energy for many communities.

But most New Zealand adults consume nearly twice the recommended amount of protein. Reducing meat is therefore unlikely to lead to inadequate protein intakes.

Currently, about 40% of New Zealanders’ protein comes from animal sources (meat, dairy, fish). The remaining 60% comes from plants.

The belief that only animal proteins are of high quality – due to their amino acid profile and digestibility – is outdated. It’s a common misconception that some amino acid are only available through meat. Plants contain all essential amino acids, albeit in varying proportions.

For most adults, a diet with smaller amounts of meat would be a win-win: better for their health and better for the planet.

So, should New Zealand embrace the planetary health diet?

In many ways, we already are. My study of teenage girls found those following an omnivorous diet got 69% of their energy from plant-based foods (ranging from 43% to 92%), while vegetarians averaged 83% (ranging from 51% to 100%).

However, New Zealanders still consume more saturated fat than recommended and not enough dietary fibre. Shifting further toward the planetary health diet could help address these imbalances and reduce the risk of premature death from heart disease and cancer, our leading causes of mortality.

A diet for people and the planet

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the meat industry has been pushing back against the commission’s recommendations ever since the first release of the planetary health diet.

A recent report published by the Changing Markets Foundation identifies a network of influential pro-meat voices in industry, academia and governments actively working to discredit the commission’s findings.

Some nutrition academics have raised concerns about the relatively low quantity of meat and fish. Some experts argue the low amount of meat may not meet the nutritional needs of certain groups such as pregnant women and young children, who would benefit from the iron and zinc found in red meat because it is easier to absorb than from vegetable sources.

Adding to the complexity is the global obsession with protein – often associated with meat. While fat and carbohydrates have been vilified, protein enjoys a nutritional halo.

The updated guidelines place greater emphasis on environmental sustainability and, importantly, acknowledge the need to respect and empower diverse food cultures and uphold the universal human right to food.

As we face the twin challenges of climate change and rising rates of diet-related disease, I argue the planetary health diet offers a recipe for a healthier, more sustainable future.

It’s not about eliminating entire food groups or enforcing a one-size-fits-all approach. Rather, it’s about making thoughtful, evidence-based choices that nourish both people and the planet.

Sheila Skeaff, Professor of Human Nutrition, University of Otago

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

The 2025 Nobel prize in chemistry has been awarded for the development of metal–organic frameworks: molecular structures that have large spaces within them, capable of capturing and storing gases and other chemicals.

The prize is shared by Susumu Kitagawa from Kyoto University, Omar M. Yaghi from the University of California, Berkeley, and an Australian professor – Richard Robson from the University of Melbourne.

Robson first discovered the metal–organic frameworks, known as MOFs for short, in 1989, with his close collaborator Bernard Hoskins.

At a time when the value of research is being questioned, Robson’s story is a powerful reminder of how scientific research leads to real-world impact after years of sustained effort and support.

A personal connection

Like many other Australian scientists, I was inspired to pursue research in MOFs because of professor Richard Robson. He’s still working in the lab at nearly 90, mentoring students, teaching and collaborating with many of us. This recognition honours Richard’s decades of dedication as a researcher and educator in coordination and inorganic chemistry.

I’ve had the great fortune of being among his many collaborators, and he’s left an indelible mark. With Richard and his close colleague, University of Melbourne professor Brendan Abrahams, we have explored how electrons move around inside MOFs.

As young chemists, we first learnt about Richard’s discovery in undergraduate lectures. It’s an inspiring story of the deep connection between teaching and research in our universities.

While the work that led to these materials was fundamental science, Richard’s achievement shows that deep, curiosity-driven research has critically important real-world impacts.

What began as scientific curiosity for Richard as he prepared models of chemicals to demonstrate to his undergraduate chemistry students, has grown into a transformative innovation. MOFs are now helping solve some of the world’s biggest challenges, from greenhouse gas capture to drug delivery and medical imaging.

So, what are MOFs?

Metal–organic frameworks are incredibly porous crystalline materials that are made up of metal ions, linked by organic bridges.

Think of a sponge where the holes are on the atomic scale. One teaspoon of one of these materials can have a surface area of a football field.

The shapes, sizes and functionality of these tiny pores can be changed, much like an architect designing a building where the rooms each have different functions and can carry out different tasks.

There are now tens of thousands of MOFs. Some are used to capture water from desert air. Others have been designed to remove greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Yet others can clean Earth’s waterways by capturing and removing potentially harmful chemicals.

The long road to real-world applications

While there are now companies scaling MOFs to help address major global problems, Richard began this work many decades ago.

In 2018, in a plenary lecture at the 6th global MOFs conference in Auckland, New Zealand, he described how he was preparing molecular models for a lecture when the idea struck him.

Richard reasoned that metal ions such as copper could be connected in a systematic and controlled way to other atoms such as carbon and nitrogen using coordination chemistry. It’s essentially like molecular Lego, where one piece can only click into the other in a particular way.

With his colleague Bernard Hoskins, they recognised that the geometric structure was ordered and contained innumerable cavities. Over the following decade, fellow Nobel recipients Kitagawa and Yaghi made subsequent discoveries that showed how these materials could be made stable, and designed in a controlled way.

Of the tens of thousands of MOFs now known, a number are making it through to commercial application. For example, Richard’s work with Brendan Abrahams has shown these materials can remove excesses of anesthetic greenhouse gases from operating room theatres. These greenhouse gases are many tens of thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide.

MOFs are also being used to pull water out of thin air, especially important in dry and arid environments where there is water scarcity.

At a time when Australia is debating the contribution of research, the value of higher education and universities, and how to increase productivity, Richard’s legacy highlights the profound value of education and research, and the way they are deeply interconnected.

But to truly thrive, they require sustained support over many years, far beyond the short-term horizon of political cycles.

Fundamental science, often driven by curiosity and without an immediate application, lays the groundwork for breakthroughs that can help solve the pressing challenges we face today and those yet to come.

Richard Robson now joins just 11 other Australian scientists whose work has been recognised with a Nobel prize. All Australians can be very proud of Richard’s achievement on the world stage.

Correction: this article has been amended to correct Brendan Abrahams’ name.

Deanna D'Alessandro, Professor & Director, Net Zero Institute, University of Sydney

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

The 2025 Nobel prize in Physics has been awarded to three scientists for the discovery of an effect that has applications in medical devices and quantum computing.

John Clarke, Michel Devoret and John Martinis conducted a series of experiments around 40 years ago which would go on to shape our understanding of the strange properties of the quantum world. It’s a timely award, since 2025 is the 100th anniversary of the formulation of quantum mechanics.

In the microscopic world, a particle can sometimes pass through a barrier and appear on the other side. This phenomenon is called quantum tunnelling. The laureates’ experiments demonstrated tunnelling in the macroscopic world – in other words, the world that’s visible to the naked eye. They showed that it could be observed on an experimental electrical circuit.

Quantum tunnelling has potential future applications in improving memory for mobile phones and has been important for the development of “qubits”, which store and process information in quantum computers. It also has applications in superconducting devices, those that conduct electricity with very little resistance.

British-born John Clarke is Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Michel Devoret was born in Paris and is the F. W. Beinecke Professor of Applied Physics at Yale University. John Martinis is Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

What is quantum tunnelling?

Quantum tunnelling is a counter-intuitive phenomenon where the tiny particles which make up everything we can see and touch can appear on the other side of a solid barrier, which you would otherwise expect to stop them.

Since it was first proposed in 1927, it has been observed for very small particles and it is responsible for our explanation of the radioactive decay of large atoms into smaller atoms and something else called an alpha particle. However, it was also predicted that we might be able to see this same behaviour for larger things. We call this macroscopic quantum tunnelling.

How can we see quantum tunnelling?

The key to observing this macroscopic tunnelling is something called a Josephson junction, which is essentially a fancy broken wire. The wire is not a typical wire which you might use to charge your phone, instead it is a special type of material known as a superconductor. A superconductor has no resistance, which means that a current can flow through it forever without losing any energy. They are used, for example, to create the very strong magnetic fields in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners.

So how does this help us to explain this strange quantum tunnelling behaviour? If we put two superconducting wires end to end, separated by an insulator, we create our Josephson junction. This is normally manufactured in a single device which, with a basic understanding of electricity, shouldn’t conduct electricity. However, thanks to quantum tunnelling we can see that current can flow across the junction.

The three prize winners demonstrated quantum tunnelling in a paper published in 1985 (it’s common to have such large gaps in time before Nobel prizes are awarded). Quantum tunnelling had previously been suggested to be caused by a breakdown in the insulator. The researchers started by cooling their experimental apparatus to within a fraction of a degree of absolute zero, the coldest temperature which can be achieved.

Heat can give the electrons in conductors just enough energy to get through the barrier. So it would make sense that the more the device is cooled, the fewer electrons would escape. If however quantum tunnelling is taking place, there should be a temperature below which the number of electrons which escape should no longer decrease. The three prize winners found exactly this.

Why is this important?

At the time, the three scientists were trying to prove this developing theory about macroscopic quantum tunnelling through experiments. Even during the announcement of the 2025 prize, Clarke downplayed the importance of this discovery, even though it has been pivotal in so many developments which are at the forefront of quantum physics today.

Quantum computing remains one of the most exciting opportunities which is promised for the near future, and is the source of significant investment worldwide. It comes with much speculation about the risks to our encryption technologies.

It will also ultimately solve problems which are outside the reach of even the largest of today’s supercomputers. The handful of quantum computers which are in existence today, rely on the work of the three 2025 physics Nobel laureates and no doubt will be the subject of another physics Nobel prize in the coming decades.

We are already exploiting these effects in other devices such as superconducting quantum interference devices (SQuIDs) which are used to measure small variations in magnetic fields from the Earth, allowing us to find minerals below the surface. SQuIDs also have uses in medicine since they can detect the extremely weak magnetic fields emitted from the brain. This technique, known as magnetoencephalography, or MEG, can be used for example to find the specific area of the brain from which epileptic seizures emanate.

We can’t predict if and when we will have quantum computers in our homes, or indeed in our hands. One thing that is for certain, though, is that the speed of development of this new technology is thanks in no small part to the winners of the 2025 Nobel prize in physics, demonstrating macroscopic quantum mechanical tunnelling in electric circuits.

Rob Morris, Professor of Physics, School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University

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

Three scientists have been awarded the 2025 Nobel prize in chemistry for discovering a new form of molecular architecture: crystals that contain large cavities.

Susumu Kitagawa from Kyoto University, Japan, Richard Robson from the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Omar M. Yaghi from the University of California, Berkeley, in the US, will share a prize sum of 11 million Swedish kronor (£870,000).

The prize recognises the pioneering contributions of the three scientists in the development of something called metal-organic frameworks (Mofs). Mofs are a diverse class of crystalline materials that have attracted much attention in chemistry due to the presence of microscopic open cavities in their structures. They are helping to revolutionise green technology, such as harvesting water from desert air and capturing CO₂.

The widths of the cavities can range from a few angstroms (an angstrom is a unit of length equal to one hundred-millionth of a centimetre) to several nanometres (a millionth of a millimetre). That means they are far too small to see with the naked eye or even with most forms of microscopes. But they’re the perfect size for housing various molecules.

The development of Mofs can be traced back to the late 1950s when researchers started to discover “coordination polymers”. These are materials made up of linked chains of metal ions (atoms that have lost or gained electrons) and carbon-based bridging molecules known as linkers. These materials did not contain cavities, but they were based on the same metal-organic chemistry that would later give rise to Mofs.

In the late 1980s, Robson’s research group reported that some coordination polymers could be prepared as framework-like structures where, crucially, the carbon-based linkers formed three-dimensional arrangements around clusters of liquid solvent molecules. As mentioned in Robson’s research article, this revealed “an unusual situation in which approximately two-thirds of the contents of what is undoubtedly a crystal are effectively liquid”.

In the mid-late 1990s, Yaghi’s group demonstrated that it was possible to prepare coordination polymers that retained their structures even after the solvent molecules were removed from the cavities. This was a surprising result, which dispelled the prevailing assumption that such frameworks are fragile and would collapse if the solvent was removed.

In 1997, Kitigawa’s research group showed that the open cavities could be used to absorb gas molecules. He also showed that, in many cases, the framework itself expands as gas molecules are absorbed into it and contracts as they are released. These coordination polymers with permanent, open cavities came to be known as Mofs.

The discoveries by the three scientists effectively marked the birth of modern Mof chemistry, with many thousands of research articles published on them since.

Wide range of applications

Why are Mofs so interesting for chemists? The microscopic cavities within Mofs provide a unique and controllable location for chemistry to take place. A key application of Mofs is gas storage. In many cases, these materials can hold gases at much higher densities than in their free gaseous state.

This offers significant advantages for green technologies such as fuel-cell-powered vehicles, in which hydrogen fuel has to be transported as efficiently as possible. Many Mofs work particularly well for specific gases, which means they can also help separate gas mixtures in exhaust streams, or capture CO₂ from the air to mitigate the effects of global warming.

Mofs can also act as effective catalysts for chemical reactions taking place in the cavities. One of the key advantages of Mofs as catalysts is that it is relatively straightforward for chemists to switch and swap the metals and carbon-based linkers in order to tune the properties for a particular purpose.

As well as gas molecules, Mofs can also accommodate other small molecules, such as pharmaceuticals. This means they can be used to store and deliver drugs to a particular target, where their porous nature allows for controlled release of therapeutic chemicals.

In recent years, Mofs have shown promise for many other applications, including batteries, thermal energy storage and chemical sensors (devices that can monitor and detect chemicals such as contaminants). Excitingly, there remain many other applications that have yet to be explored.

Despite having been discovered over three decades ago, Mofs remain one of the hottest research areas in materials chemistry and will no doubt do so for many years to come.

John Griffin, Professor in Materials Chemistry, Lancaster University

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

We’re beginning to build a better picture of just how many people are affected by intimate partner violence – a crisis that disproportionately impacts women and girls.

Around one in six Australian women and one in 18 men report they have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner at some point since age 15. About one in four women and one in seven men have experienced emotional abuse by a partner since age 15.

But what do we know about the perpetrators?

Two major studies recently found people with an insecure attachment – meaning they’re less likely to trust others and often have difficulties with intimacy – are at higher risk of perpetrating intimate partner violence than others.

But not everyone with insecure attachment will perpetrate this kind of violence. So, we suspected there must be additional risk factors.

In our recently published research, we analysed the findings of 46 other studies on the topic, to see who had a greater risk of perpetrating violence against a partner. Our study identified seven risk factors – and two were more important than the others.

Let’s take a look.

First, what is insecure attachment?

Several social factors contribute to intimate partner violence, including high rates of unemployment and poverty, living in regional and remote areas, and weak social policies and law.

But the perpetrator’s individual psychology also plays a role.

According to attachment theory, the emotional bonds we form early in life affect our behaviour within romantic relationships as adults.

As young children, if we experience our parents as consistently there for us when we are upset, we learn that other people we’re close to will be there for us too. In this case, we become securely attached.

However, if we experience our parents as unavailable, unresponsive, dismissive or neglectful, we learn we cannot count on people we’re close to for support. In that case, we become insecurely attached.

Insecurely attached individuals tend to show two main patterns in relationships – anxiety and/or avoidance.

Anxiously attached individuals may constantly worry their partner will leave them. Avoidantly attached individuals often remain cold and aloof with partners, because they’re uncomfortable with intimacy.

Importantly, your attachment style isn’t your destiny. But it can be a starting point to understand how you relate to others.

While an estimated one in two of us is insecurely attached, not everyone with this attachment style will go on to perpetrate intimate partner violence.

Still, there is a link between insecure attachment and intimate partner violence – and we wanted to know why.

We found 7 risk factors

Our study analysed the findings of 46 international and Australian studies about insecure attachment and intimate partner violence. In these, we identified seven factors that increase insecurely attached people’s risk for perpetrating intimate partner violence.

These included:

• experiencing negative emotions towards a partner (jealousy, anger and distrust)
• emotion dysregulation (having low ability to manage emotions)
• destructive communication styles (for example, refusing to talk to a partner)
• maladaptive personality traits, such as narcissism
• maladaptive beliefs about relationships (such as expecting your partner can read your mind).

But two other factors had the largest effect. Intimate partner violence was most likely when insecurely attached people experienced relationship dissatisfaction and/or a desire for dominance over their partner.

The desire to dominate a partner is more common among those who were anxiously attached (who are usually concerned with keeping their partner close).

Relationship dissatisfaction is more common among people who are avoidantly attached (who are uncomfortable with intimacy).

So, does this change how we tackle violence?

Our findings suggest understanding two risk factors for insecurely attached people in particular – relationship dissatisfaction and the desire for dominance – should be a part of therapies for intimate partner violence perpetrators.

Many of the current interventions for intimate partner violence have been shown to be ineffective or only slightly effective in reducing perpetration.

Most address the risk factors – for example, a desire for dominance – without considering a person’s attachment style.

One treatment that does address attachment is emotionally-focused therapy. This therapy helps partners understand each other’s unexpressed attachment needs and fosters more security in the relationship. But the focus is emotion dysregulation and destructive communication patterns, which our study found were less important risk factors.

Our results suggest interventions that address insecure attachment along with associated risk factors could be more effective at reducing violence. For example, interventions could help insecurely attached people understand why they experience a desire for dominance or relationship dissatisfaction, and how it is linked to their early experiences of caregivers.

We also need more research and long-term studies to confirm the strength of the links we found. The more we understand perpetrators’ risk factors, the better we can tackle the epidemic of intimate partner violence in Australia.

For information and advice about family and intimate partner violence contact1800 RESPECT(1800 737 732). If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, contact 000.Men’s Referral Service(call 1300 766 491) offers advice and counselling to men looking to change their behaviour.

Iana Wong, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Psychology, University of Sydney and Tom Denson, Professor of Psychology, UNSW Sydney

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

Baby boy Cassian is an internet sensation. He was born earlier this year in the United States weighing 5.8 kilograms. But after his mum and the hospital shared the news recently, it wasn’t long before headlines about the “giant” baby spread around the world. These included:

‘Are you OK’?: Woman breaks record with giant newborn baby

Record-breaking baby tips the scales at almost double the average size of a newborn

While baby Cassian was born heavier than average, he’s not unique. There have been other examples in the news of babies born heavier. That includes a baby boy born in Brazil in 2023 who weighed 7.3kg.

These stories might make women all over the world cross their legs. But how common are big babies, and does their birth always lead to complications?

What are big babies?

Macrosomia describes babies born over 4kg or 4.5kg, depending on the definition.

A big baby can also be defined as having a birth weight over the 90th percentile at a particular gestational age. In other words, more than 90% of babies have a lower birth weight at this particular stage of the pregnancy. The term “large for gestational age” is probably a more accurate term as the weeks of gestation is used alongside the weight.

There has been little change overall in the percentage of large babies in the past decade in Australia. While stories of such births hit the media, their proportion hovers around 9–10% of births.

What are the problems for big babies and their mums?

We don’t know the specific circumstances of Cassian’s birth, his health or that of his mother. And we don’t know whether common reasons for larger babies are relevant in this situation.

But, generally speaking, birth complications can be higher for mothers and babies when the baby is big, especially if more than 4.5kg. This is certainly not always the case, however.

There is an increased need for interventions during the birth, such as forceps or vacuum delivery, or a caesarean section the bigger the baby is. Having these interventions can impact a women’s recovery after the birth, and options for the next birth.

For the baby there are higher risks of the shoulders getting stuck in the birth canal during the birth (known as shoulder dystocia).

Midwives and obstetricians also may need to make extra manoeuvres for the baby to be safely delivered. For instance, they may need to try and bring down one shoulder if it’s stuck behind the mother’s pubic bone.

These manoeuvres can damage the baby or lead to oxygen restrictions, with the baby needing to be resuscitated. However, these complications are rare and can occur when a big baby was not expected.

What leads to a big baby?

Big babies are most often healthy babies, and there are a number of reasons for them.

Genetic factors mean babies are always big in some families.

Babies that go over their due dates tend to be a bit bigger as they have more time to grow inside their mothers.

Having diabetes, especially if this is poorly controlled, can lead to larger babies. This is because the mother’s higher blood sugar leads to the baby receiving more energy than it needs, so it stores this extra energy as fat.

Babies of mothers with diabetes diagnosed for the first time in pregnancy (gestational diabetes) are at increased risk of being obese and developing diabetes in the future.

Mothers who are larger before pregnancy, or when pregnant, may also be more likely to have big babies. This is mostly due to the increased likelihood of developing diabetes in pregnancy, and perhaps poorer nutrition choices.

Can you predict a big baby?

Estimations of babies’ weights before they are born are imprecise. That’s why so many women are told they are going to have a big baby and don’t, and others are surprised by a big baby when it arrives.

Midwives and obstetricians routinely feel a woman’s growing uterus when they provide antenatal check-ups. They are looking at the position the baby is lying in the uterus as well as where the top of the uterus is compared to the woman’s belly button. This gives an idea of whether the baby is growing as you would expect at that time.

They also measure from the top of a woman’s belly to the top of her pubic bone with a tape measure. The weeks of pregnancy usually correspond to the measurement within a couple of centimetres.

For example, at 36 weeks of pregnancy the tape measurement would be somewhere between 34cm and 38cm. If there is more or less than a 3cm difference between the measurement and the numbers of weeks of pregnancy then an ultrasound would be offered to look at how the baby’s growing and to estimate the size.

But ultrasounds are poor predictors of actual birth weight. The Big Baby Trial was published earlier this year. It randomised nearly 3,000 women in the United Kingdom to being induced at 39 weeks if suspected to be having a big baby (according to an ultrasound) or waiting for labour to start.

There was little difference in birth weight or poor outcomes, such as shoulder dystocia for the baby, leading to the trial being stopped early. Around 60% of babies screened as being big babies were not actually big at birth, showing the inaccuracy of ultrasounds in predicting birth weight.

What can women do?

The best health advice for women is to try to be a healthy weight (under a BMI of 30) before getting pregnant.

Eat a balanced diet and limit your intake of foods and drinks high in saturated fats and sugar. Try not to put too much weight on during pregnancy and exercise regularly. Talk to your midwife or obstetrician for advice and support about this.

If you have diabetes, or if this has been diagnosed during the pregnancy, close monitoring of your blood sugar and baby’s growth is important.

Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery, Associate Dean Research and HDR, Midwifery Discipline Leader, Western Sydney University

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

Few can doubt the courage María Corina Machado has shown in fighting for a return to democracy in Venezuela.

The 58-year-old politician and activist is the undisputed leader of the opposition to Nicolás Maduro – a man widely seen as a dictator who has taken Venezuela down the path of repression, human rights violations and increasing poverty since becoming president in 2013.

Maduro is widely believed to have lost the 2024 presidential election to rival Edmundo González, a candidate substituting Machado, yet still claimed victory.

Machado has been in hiding since the fraudulent vote. And her courage in having participated in an unfair contest and in exposing Maduro’s fraud by publishing the true vote tallies on the internet, surely made Machado stand out to the Nobel committee.

Indeed, in making Machado the 2025 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, organizers stated they were recognizing her “tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

But as a scholar of Venezuela’s political process, I know that is only part of the story. Machado is in many ways a controversial pick, less a peace activist than a political operator willing to use some of the trade’s dark arts for the greater democratic good.

Joining a controversial list of laureates

Of course, many Nobel Peace Prize awards generate controversy.

It has often been bestowed on great politicians over activists. And sometimes the prize’s winners can have complex pasts and very non-peaceful resumes.

Past recipients include Henry Kissinger, who as U.S. secretary of state and Richard Nixon’s security adviser was responsible for the illegal bombing of Cambodia, supporting Indonesia’s brutal invasion of East Timor and propping up dictators in Latin America, among many other morally dubious actions. Similarly, former Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin were both awarded the prize, in 1994 and 1978 respectively, despite their past association with violent activities in the Middle East.

The Nobel Committee often seems to use these awards not to celebrate past achievements but to affect the future course of events. The nods to Begin and Arafat were, in this way, used for encouragement of the Middle East peace process.

In fact, sometimes, the peace prize is seemingly bestowed as a sign of approval for a break from the past.

Barack Obama won his in 2009 despite only being nine months into his presidency. It was taken by many as a rejection of the previous presidency of George W. Bush, rather than recognition of Obama’s limited achievements at that time.

In 2016, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just days after his peace plan was rejected in a referendum. In that instance, the committee seemed to want to give his efforts a push just after a major setback.

Democratic path or dark arts?

So what should be made of the Nobel Peace Prize committee’s decision to recognize opposition to Maduro now?

Certainly Machado’s profile is ascendant. In her political career, she has participated in elections – winning a seat in the National Assembly in 2010 – but boycotted many more. She also boycotted negotiation processes, suggesting instead that foreign intervention was the only way to remove Maduro.

In 2023 she returned to the electoral path and steadfastly mobilized the Venezuelan population for opposition primaries and presidential elections, even after her candidacy was disqualified by the government-controlled electoral authority, and innumerable other obstacles were put in her path.

The campaign included spearheading caravans and events across the country at significant personal risk.

However, much of her fight since then has been via less-democratic means.

Machado has shunned local and regional elections suggesting there was no sense in participating until the government honored the results of the 2024 presidential election. She has also again sought international intervention to remove Maduro.

Over the past year she has aggressively promoted the discredited theory that Maduro is in control of the Tren de Aragua gang and is using it to invade the United States – a narrative gladly accepted and repurposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

In addition to being the expressed motivation for a U.S. military buildup off the coasts of Venezuela, this theory has also been the central justification cited by the Trump administration for using the Alien Enemies Act to deport, without due process, 238 Venezuelan men to a horrific prison in El Salvador.

Relations with Trump

The Nobel Peace Prize could help unify the Venezuelan opposition movement, which over the past year has begun to fray over differences in strategy, especially with respect to Machado’s return to electoral boycotts.

And it will certainly draw more international attention to Venezuelans’ struggle for democracy and could galvanize international stakeholders to push for change.

What it will mean in terms of Trump’s relationship to Machado and Venezuela is yet to be seen. Her main connection with the administration is through Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has aggressively represented her views and is pushing for U.S. military intervention to depose Maduro

Awarding Machado the prize could strengthen Trump’s resolve to seek regime change in Venezuela. Or, if he feels snubbed by the Nobel committee after very vocally lobbying to be awarded the peace prize himself, it could be a wedge between the U.S. president and Machado.

Machado seems to understand this. After not mentioning him in her first statement after the award was announced, she has since mentioned him multiple times, even dedicating the prize to both the Venezuelan people and Trump.

Trump has subsequently called to congratulate her.

A game changer? Perhaps not

To the degree that the Nobel Peace Prize is not just a model of change but a model for change, the decision to award it to Machado could conceivably affect the nature of Venezuela’s struggle against authoritarianism, leading her to continue to seek the restoration of democracy with a greater focus on reconciliation and coexistence among all Venezuelans, including the still politically relevant followers of the late Hugo Chávez.

Whatever the impact, it probably will not be game-changing. As we have seen with other winners, the initial glow of public recognition is quickly consumed by political conflict.

And in Venezuela, there is no easy way to translate this prize into real democratic progress.

While Machado and other Venezuelan democrats may have more support than ever among global democrats, Nicolás Maduro controls all of Venezuela’s institutions including the armed forces and the state oil company, which, even when sanctioned, provides substantial resources. Maduro also has forged strategic alliances with China, Russia and Iran.

The only way one can imagine the restoration of democracy in Venezuela, with or without military action, is through an extensive process of negotiation, reconciliation, disarmament and justice that could lay the groundwork for coexistence. This Nobel Peace Prize could position Machado for this task.

David Smilde, Professor of Sociology, Tulane University

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

[…]we took the freedom of speech away.

We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military[…]

They’re poisoning the blood of our country.

Stand back and stand by.

The president has been saying it out loud all along.

During his first administration, in 2019, US President Donald Trump said the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want”. Five years later, the Supreme Court affirmed that view when it ruled the president has quasi-regal powers of immunity for “official acts”.

And then last week at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, Trump’s existential threat to American democracy escalated significantly.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had assembled around 800 of the United States military’s top leaders. Hegseth convened the conference in an attempt to impose an ex-National Guard major’s authority on America’s professional military leadership. He reduced professionalism to physical appearance and fitness standards dressed up as “the warrior ethos” and “lethality”.

His speech was a charge of far-right talking points. Obesity and beards are out. Hyper-masculinisation and misogyny are in.

No more identity months, DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) offices, dudes in dresses, no more climate change worship, no more division, distraction or gender delusions – we are done with that shit.

Trump commandeered the event. The president’s stream-of-consciousness, campaign-style speech took an even more radical turn.

His disdain for the admirals and generals was clear from the outset. “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room – of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.”

From both Hegseth and Trump, the message was clear. The military leaders in the room – who have all sworn an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution (not, it should be noted, the commander-in-chief) – should consider themselves nothing more than obedient servants of the president.

That in itself would represent a radical shift in civil-military relations.

But Trump, as he always does, took things even further.

He said:

I told Pete [Hegseth] we should use some of these dangerous cities [Washington DC, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Portland] as training grounds for our military.

The president of the United States has decided that the US military, which is now meant to be more focused than ever on “lethality”, should include American cities and the people who live in them in their operational plans.

‘Do whatever the hell you want’

Trump’s main audience for this speech, as usual, was not really the people in the room. It was his MAGA (Make America Great Again) base, a movement that he knows well and plays like a virtuoso. The same base he told to “stand back and stand by” in 2020, just before the January 6 insurrection.

We can bet they are listening. That base knows, instinctively – as does the leadership of the movement – that Trump’s promise of no consequences extends beyond the military. He showed them that when he pardoned those that had tried to overthrow a democratically elected government on his behalf.

This context matters, because Trump, Hegseth and the rest are reshaping not just the military but the entire federal government in their ideological image. Through mass layoffs and recruitment – all laid out in Project 2025 – they are consolidating their power everywhere.

The cities Trump wants the military to use as “training grounds” are the same cities being targeted by violent, oppressive enforcement of the Trump administration’s “mass deportations” policy, led by the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In practice, those operations include the arbitrary arrest and detention of American citizens and the denial of legal rights and due process. In Chicago, where Trump has just deployed the National Guard, raids have reportedly included pulling children naked from their beds in the middle of the night and separating them from their mothers. Those same agencies using these practices are clashing with protesters in increasingly violent confrontations, and the National Guard is being deployed as reinforcement.

At times during his speech, Trump spoke directly to “border patrol, ICE” saying that if they were spat at or had bricks thrown at their vehicles, “you get out of that car and you can do whatever the hell you want to do”.

The president then went on to immediately compare this to the administration’s attacks on Venezuelan boats in international waters, which the New York City Bar Association has described as “unlawful executions”. As Trump put it: “we take them out.”

ICE is currently engaged in a program of mass recruitment, spending $30 billion to find 10,000 new deportation officers, even going so far as to offer $50,000 bonuses. In July, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said that recruits were needed because “Together, we must defend the homeland”.

This blood-and-soil style violent nationalism infuses everything the administration is doing, from its recruitment to its firings, from its promises to crackdown on the “radical left” to its suppression of free speech.

The president has repeatedly told the movement behind him, and the military and law enforcement agencies, directly and indirectly, that they are free to impose this radical vision for America violently – without fear of consequence.

An American tragedy

Trump has long mused about using the military against his own people. According to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, during his first administration, enraged at Black Lives Matter protests, Trump reportedly asked “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?”

On Thursday US time, NBC reported that officials in the White House were having “increasingly serious discussions” about invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow the President to deploy the military domestically for civilian law enforcement. That process is now, according to an unnamed source, on its way up “an escalatory ladder”.

As has been noted many times, Trump is now surrounded by people who are all-in on his agenda. The guardrails have been dismantled.

What Trump suggested in Quantico would mean the use of unaccountable, unsanctioned force against American citizens delivered by the all-volunteer personnel of the US military.

None of the assembled generals or admirals walked out when he said that.

In the absence of resistance, this transforms the US military into a domestic political tool of the executive and turns American military leaders into the enforcers of presidential political will against the American people themselves.

The meeting at Quantico was a transformation point in the second Trump presidency. It turned the assembled admirals and generals into a de facto enemy of the people.

It transforms the United States into an autocracy and the presidency into a dictatorship.

This is the tragedy of Trump’s America.

Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

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