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.

When The Buggles’ music video “Video Killed the Radio Star” aired on August 1, 1981, it marked a historic moment for both television and music. The day marked the launch of the Music Television channel (MTV).

MTV rapidly became a trendsetter and remained one for over two decades by offering something revolutionary: a nonstop stream of music videos, visual storytelling, and youth culture.

Just like The Buggle’s iconic song, MTV’s innovation disrupted radio. It became the tastemaker long before YouTube, TikTok, and artificial intelligence-based recommendations ever existed.

Everyone looked forward to the countdown and the MTV awards — shared rituals that shaped youth culture, music tastes, and even communities.

But that’s it for MTV. Last week, it announced its various UK music channels would be shutting down later this year. Only one reality show-based channel — MTV HD — will remain.

MTV wasn’t immune to the overall decline of TV viewership. Video jockeys (VJs) that once guided audiences through playlists have been replaced by algorithms. Consumers’ endless scrolling habits take away the excitement of waiting for the next fixed show.

MTV’s decline goes beyond a mere business downturn or the shutdown of some television channels. It is the end of an era when music videos brought people together in the same beat.

The golden age

MTV sparked excitement upon its launch. At the time, the public was captivated by how it transformed music into something that could no longer just be heard, but also seen and felt through videos.

Musicians also took advantage of the opportunity to show off through videos: combining music, fashion, and visual performance. The “King of Pop”, Michael Jackson, was a perfect example of what MTV’s influence did for his career.

Track songs like Thriller, Beat It, and Billie Jean brought Michael Jackson to the pinnacle of fame. Other artists such as Duran Duran and Madonna also got their long-lasting popularity from MTV.

Its dominance took shape after Viacom Inc. (now Paramount Global) acquired it for US$667.5 million in 1985.

Together with Paramount, MTV presented various variety of genre-based programs, such as Yo! MTV Raps and Headbangers Ball, which targeted youth cultural segments and fostered a sense of shared identity.

MTV created something more than just a television network. It also symbolised a shared culture, reflecting how people listened to music, dressed, and imagined their futures.

Its expansion turned out to be a massive success. Paramount polished MTV into one of the world’s most influential channels for decades. At some point, MTV annual revenue touched US$400 million and reached 112 million viewers in just one year.

Lost and slow adaptation

Technological advancements began disrupting the entertainment landscape at the start of the 21st century. The digital revolution beat up traditional television, and of course MTV itself.

People who used to watch TV shifted their attention to the internet. The emergence of music and video entertainment platforms offering on-demand services made MTV’s music channel outdated.

Through Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube, people have instant and unlimited access to music without having to schedule their days.

This shift in viewing habits stems from changes in consumer behaviour, corporate pressures, and the evolution of digital media. The demise of MTV and the new disruption wave of on-demand platforms reflect a major shift in the global cultural landscape.

The pressure also came from MTV itself. Former MTV UK Head of Digital Matthew Kershaw said the management’s reluctance to break away from its old business model contributed to its downfall.

MTV’s vast network of channels was once seen as innovative. But its increasingly corporate approach shifted the focus toward reality shows like Jersey Shore, MTV Cribs, and Jackass. While these programs were popular for a time, MTV drifted away from its music roots.

But these innovations weren’t relevant anymore. Back then, these channels united audiences because everyone watched the same music videos, talked about them in school, and formed a collective identity.

Now, people enjoy music in more personal and customised ways — thanks to algorithms and AI.

As of July 2025, MTV Music only attracted around 1.3 million viewers. There is a huge gap from its heyday in the 1980s-90s which reached hundreds of millions.

Did nothing — and it Backfired

MTV’s downfall is a reminder that in the digital age, technological adaptation, time management and the ability to adapt to consumer behavior are crucial.

MTV certainly made history as a disruptor of the old model. Yet over time, MTV has now become the one being disrupted by the very thing it once used: technology.

People can now watch whenever and wherever they want with the current innovation. There’s no need to wait for a fixed schedule to enjoy the music from their favourite artists.

Still, Even today’s disruptors must stay vigilant. Slowly but surely, TikTok is the phantom manace. This Chinese social media platform has successfully captured the popular trend of dancing combine with music.

MTV basically has resources, even more, than platforms that now dominate music entertainment like Spotify and YouTube. It is all about consumer behaviour and needs mismatch. MTV’s lack of agility to meet next generation needs just paid off.

MTV was once a phenomenon built on the slogan “video killed the radio star.” Now it must admit that streaming has killed the video star.

Farhan Mutaqin, PhD Researcher, University of Edinburgh and Naufal Rafiansyah, Marketing science, University of Edinburgh

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

Like many star-crossed lovers, Elaine Goodale and Charles Alexander Eastman came from different worlds.

Goodale, born in 1863 to a family claiming Puritan roots, grew up on a farm in a remote part of western Massachusetts. In 1858, a baby first named Hakadah, later called Ohíye S’a, who then became widely known as Charles Alexander Eastman for most of his adult life, was born near Redwood Falls, Minnesota. A Wahpeton Santee Dakota, he fled to Manitoba, Canada, with tribal members during the 1862 Dakota War between the U.S. military and several bands of Dakota collectively known as the Santee Sioux.

In December 1890, the two unexpectedly met each other while working at the Pine Ridge Agency in the newly declared state of South Dakota. Even more improbably, they fell in love.

Just weeks later, booming Hotchkiss rifles 15 miles away signaled the start of the Wounded Knee Massacre. Federal troops ended up killing at least 250 Lakota Sioux men, women and children; the traumatic event, historian David Martínez writes, sparked “the abrupt transformation of Indian nations from geopolitical powers … to symbols of conquest.”

It also transformed Goodale and Eastman’s nascent relationship: They resolved to marry and to work together for Native American causes.

Wounded Knee, however, would also prove an unfortunate metaphor for their marriage.

In the research for my new dual biography, “Love and Loss After Wounded Knee: A Biography of an Extraordinary Interracial Marriage,” I dove into letters, photographs and hundreds of newspaper articles documenting this high-profile, late-19th-century relationship.

I came to understand that their marriage failed not only because of interpersonal tensions and a clash of values, but also because of some of the ways in which ideas about gender, race and Indigenous identity were rapidly changing in the U.S.

From writer to teacher

At 13, Goodale started publishing poetry in St. Nicholas Magazine, a popular children’s periodical. Her poems generated attention from the press, in addition to fan mail from notable men of letters, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. By the time she was 20, she had published five books.

But because poets without family fortunes needed other means to support themselves – and because women in the late 1800s had few career options – Goodale turned to teaching. She accepted a job at Virginia’s Hampton Institute, a boarding school that was founded to teach newly emancipated Black students. It later became part of the government’s program to assimilate Native Americans.

Goodale became convinced that Indigenous children would benefit more from schools in their own communities, rather than at government- or church-run boarding schools. She traveled to the Dakota Territory and opened a day school. She also turned from poetry to prose, documenting her observations of “Indian life and education” in dozens of articles.

By the time she came to Pine Ridge Agency, the administrative offices at the Oglala Lakota Indian Reservation, she had been appointed the first supervisor of education for the Dakotas.

The ideal ‘assimilated Indian’

Ohíye S’a’s early years were marked by family trauma and U.S. government policies aimed at seizing land and displacing and assimilating Native people. His mother died shortly after he was born, and during the Dakota War it was widely believed that his father and brothers had perished. His grandmother and uncle raised him until his mid-teenage years.

In 1873, the 15-year-old was surprised to discover that his father was, in fact, alive. Jacob Eastman had taken a European-American name and converted to Christianity. He was convinced that only a formal English-language education could provide a path forward for Native people.

At his father’s urging, Ohíye S’a became “Charles Eastman,” and he also converted to Christianity. He attended a series of boarding schools before landing at Dartmouth College and then Boston University Medical School.

His white mentors saw Eastman – the only Native person in his class at either institution – as the ideal “assimilated Indian.” His achievements often appeared in newspapers with headlines like “He’s a Winner: Sioux Indian Who Got a Boston University Degree,” an allusion to the fact that “Ohíye S’a” translated to “winner.”

It isn’t clear whether Eastman ever thought of himself in that way. But throughout his life, he straddled the world in which he was raised and the one in which he was educated. His first job, as agency physician at Pine Ridge, placed him at the nexus of these two cultures.

An unlikely pair, a media sensation

After the shots rang out near Wounded Knee Creek, Eastman’s medical education was put to the test. Called into service as a nurse, Goodale also tended the wounded and dying in the makeshift hospital at a nearby church.

Six months later, Elaine and Charles were married in New York City in June 1891, much to the consternation of her family.

The couple’s nuptials appeared in hundreds of newspapers, partially due to the rarity of an interracial marriage in the 19th century. Much of the coverage was rife with racist stereotypes.

The Watertown Times in New York proclaimed, “Poetess Marries a Big Injun’”; the San Francisco Examiner ran a front-page story declaring “Fair Bride of An Indian: Elaine Goodale Weds the Red Man of Her Choice.”

Sometimes, articles focused on Charles’ educational background, often misrepresenting it by suggesting he had attended Cornell, Harvard or Yale. He was referred to as a “specimen,” with racialized language discussing his physical attributes: “He is of medium height … with all the peculiarities of his people in his features. His eyes are small and glittering, his face and nose are broad and his cheek bones very pronounced,” according to the San Francisco Examiner.

This type of media coverage – highlighting the differences between Elaine and Charles’ backgrounds, while pointedly describing Charles in stereotyped ways – would dog them throughout their marriage.

Professional travails, personal problems

Charles attempted to set up his own medical practice in St. Paul, Minnesota. But white patients proved reluctant to see “an Indian doctor,” while Native patients were hesitant to patronize a physician dispensing unfamiliar medicines. The practice failed.

Financial pressures increased over the next decade as Elaine and Charles became parents of six children. They moved frequently: Charles took on a series of jobs, including recruiting for the YMCA, lobbying on behalf of the Santee Sioux, and working as an “outing agent” at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, which involved finding summer placements for Native students with white families in a further attempt to Americanize them.

Because Charles left behind few personal papers, it’s difficult to know if he believed in this program. But it’s easy to see how it could have created an identity crisis of sorts.

At other points in his life, Charles seemed to put his Dakota identity front and center. For example, he was one of the co-founders of the Society of American Indians, an organization that worked on behalf of self-determination for Native Americans. He even served as its president in 1918. Meanwhile, his wife remained a staunch believer in assimilation.

At Elaine’s urging – and likely, under her editorial stewardship – Charles began publishing stories and then books about his “Indian Boyhood.” While Elaine continued writing and was able to publish a few books, his literary career took off and hers stalled out.

Even their children weren’t spared from the headlines. An article in the St. Paul Globe wrote, of one of the Eastman children, “… the child had not inherited any of the attractiveness of the mother. It was a veritable old squaw miniature.”

In her personal writing, Elaine never acknowledged her children as biracial. The public stereotyping and private dismissal of the Eastman children’s identities were undoubtedly another stressor in an already-stressed marriage.

Pictures worth a thousand words

After many moves, the Eastmans landed in Amherst, Massachusetts. But Charles did not stay put, embarking upon a vigorous new career on the lecture circuit.

He became one of the best-known Native Americans of his era, as well as one of the most photographed.

Sometimes Charles chose to appear in a Victorian suit and cravat. Other times he posed in traditional Sioux regalia. Often the coverage of his talks focused more on what he was wearing than the content of his lecture. Historian Kiara Vigil suggests that Charles knew that his dress functioned as an advertisement for his work, arguing that his choice of attire was strategic: “Eastman’s ability to dress up as an Indian, or not, enabled him to address diverse audiences and their expectations.”

He was away from home more than he was present, further fueling Elaine’s resentment. In personal letters, she described her bitterness at Charles leaving the children and household to her sole care, and her belief that he was reinforcing the gender roles she’d railed against. While she certainly understood that his posing in buckskin and feathered headdress was good marketing, she probably never realized what reclaiming his Indigenous identity meant to Charles; she, too, thought of him as the product of successful assimilation.

It all falls apart

The personal and professional pressures on the Eastmans continued through the early years of the 20th century.

They reached a breaking point after their second daughter, Irene Taluta, died in the 1918 influenza pandemic. The tragic loss of a beloved child continued to unravel an already frayed marriage.

Elaine and Charles separated in 1921, though they never formally divorced.

I’ve been interested in the Eastmans and their unlikely marriage since I first learned of it years ago. As I pieced together parts of this complex relationship, I became convinced that while their compelling story reveals much about late 19th and early 20th century America, it’s also a story for today.

At a time of profoundly unsettling controversies around race, immigration and identity, the marriage of Elaine Goodale and Charles Eastman underscores why it can be so challenging for people from different backgrounds to truly understand each other.

But their story – how their mutual commitment to improve life for Native American people brought them together, how their quest to educate the nation about a marginalized people gave them purpose, and the ways in which they melded the personal and the political – also suggests the importance of trying.

Julie Dobrow, Distinguished Senior Lecturer of Child Study and Human Development, Tufts University

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

Last week, OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Atlas, a web browser that promises to revolutionise how we interact with the internet. The company’s CEO, Sam Altman, described it as a “once-a-decade opportunity” to rethink how we browse the web.

The promise is compelling: imagine an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant that follows you across every website, remembers your preferences, summarises articles, and handles tedious tasks such as booking flights or ordering groceries on your behalf.

But beneath the glossy marketing lies a more troubling reality. Atlas is designed to be “agentic”, able to autonomously navigate websites and take actions in your logged-in accounts. This introduces security and privacy vulnerabilities that most users are unprepared to manage.

While OpenAI touts innovation, it’s quietly shifting the burden of safety onto unsuspecting consumers who are being asked to trust an AI with their most sensitive digital decisions.

What makes agent mode different

At the heart of Atlas’s appeal is “agent mode”.

Unlike traditional web browsers where you manually navigate the internet, agent mode allows ChatGPT to operate your browser semi-autonomously. For example, when prompted to “find a cocktail bar near you and book a table”, it will search, evaluate options, and attempt to make a reservation.

The technology works by giving ChatGPT access to your browsing context. It can see every open tab, interact with forms, click buttons and navigate between pages just as you would.

Combined with Atlas’s “browser memories” feature, which logs websites you visit and your activities on them, the AI builds an increasingly detailed understanding of your digital life.

This contextual awareness is what enables agent mode to work. But it’s also what makes it dangerously vulnerable.

A perfect storm of security risks

The risks inherent in this design go beyond conventional browser security concerns.

Consider prompt injection attacks, where malicious websites embed hidden commands that manipulate the AI’s behaviour.

Imagine visiting what appears to be a legitimate shopping site. The page, however, contains invisible instructions directing ChatGPT to scrape personal data from all open tabs, such as an active medical portal or a draft email, and then extract the sensitive details without ever needing to access a password.

Similarly, malicious code on one website could potentially influence the AI’s behaviour across multiple tabs. For example, a script on a shopping site could trick the AI agent into switching to your open banking tab and submitting a transfer form.

Atlas’s autofill capabilities and form interaction features can become attack vectors. This is especially the case when an AI is making split-second decisions about what information to enter and where to submit it.

The personalisation features compound these risks. Atlas’s browser memories create comprehensive profiles of your behavior: websites you visit, what you search for, what you purchase, and content you read.

While OpenAI promises this data won’t train its models by default, Atlas is still storing more highly personal data in one place. This consolidated trove of information represents a honeypot for hackers.

Should OpenAI’s business model evolve, it could also become a gold mine for highly targeted advertising.

OpenAI says it has tried to protect users’ security and has run thousands of hours of focused simulated attacks. It also says it has “added safeguards to address new risks that can come from access to logged-in sites and browsing history while taking actions on your behalf”.

However, the company still acknowledges “agents are susceptible to hidden malicious instructions, [which] could lead to stealing data from sites you’re logged into or taking actions you didn’t intend”.

A downgrade in browser security

This marks a major escalation in browser security risks.

For example, sandboxing is a security approach designed to keep websites isolated and prevent malicious code from accessing data from other tabs. The modern web depends on this separation.

But in Atlas, the AI agent isn’t malicious code – it’s a trusted user with permission to see and act across all sites. This undermines the core principle of browser isolation.

And while most AI safety concerns have focused on the technology producing inaccurate information, prompt injection is more dangerous. It’s not the AI making a mistake; it’s the AI following a hostile command hidden in the environment.

Atlas is especially vulnerable because it gives human-level control to an intelligence layer that can be manipulated by reading a single malicious line of text on an untrusted site.

Think twice before using

Before agentic browsing becomes mainstream, we need rigorous third-party security audits from independent researchers who can stress-test Atlas’s defenses against these risks. We need clearer regulatory frameworks that define liability when AI agents make mistakes or get manipulated. And we need OpenAI to prove, not simply promise, that its safeguards can withstand determined attackers.

For people who are considering downloading Atlas, the advice is straightforward: extreme caution.

If you do use Atlas, think twice before you enable agent mode on websites where you handle sensitive information. Treat browser memories as a security liability and disable them unless you have a compelling reason to share your complete browsing history with an AI. Use Atlas’s incognito mode as your default, and remember that every convenience feature is simultaneously a potential vulnerability.

The future of AI-powered browsing may indeed be inevitable, but it shouldn’t arrive at the expense of user security. OpenAI’s Atlas asks us to trust that innovation will outpace exploitation. History suggests we shouldn’t be so optimistic.

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

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

Earlier this year, the consumer watchdog fined three retailers, Michael Hill, MyHouse and Hairhouse Online, almost A$20,000 each for advertising “site-wide discounts” that allegedly never applied to all items on the website.

At first glance, this might look like a straightforward case of using allegedly misleading advertising for an economic benefit. Yet the implications go further.

Years of exposure to constant promotions have trained shoppers to chase a bargain, promoting “clickbaiting”: tactics designed to lure consumers into browsing.

Businesses spend heavily to secure the spot on your social media feed, and that investment has to be recouped. The most effective way is through personalised, persistent ad campaigns that quietly push consumers to buy more.

The way these ad campaigns currently collect data leaves consumers exposed. They also feed into broader concerns about overproduction, which in turn drives overconsumption. That benefits the retailers, but it fuels waste.

Bargains and the data you give away

When you click on an ad, whether it is on a brand’s website or its social media feed, you are not just interacting with the campaign. Behind the scenes, these platforms are collecting your data, analysing your behaviour, and using it to shape personalised ads designed just for you.

Australia’s discount season kicks off in November and extends through to January. With Australians ready to consume, buying gifts for family and themselves, marketing teams go into overdrive. They flood websites and social media feeds with discount banners.

Every time a consumer clicks on an ad, they are revealing something about their shopping patterns. This information is collected through data harvesting (gathering user data) and data mining (analysing patterns in that data). The platform records and shares this information with the business to show the effectiveness of the campaign and whether it led to a conversion (a purchase, sign-up, or other intended action).

Behind this, tracking runs much deeper. Ads use “cookies”, which are tiny digital files that remember your browsing activity such as which sites you visit and how often. “Tracking pixels” quietly collect details such as your IP address, geo-location, time zone, and the type of device used. Together, these build a profile that helps predict your preferences and target you with similar ads later.

A long list of companies have access to your data

Advertisers also gather demographic and behavioural data, such as, your age, gender, interests and browsing history. They can tap data from other apps in your phone that share information through “third parties”. This is one of the vaguest terms in privacy policies. It sounds harmless, but usually hides a long list of unnamed companies getting access to your data.

This information creates a pool of bigger data which allows brands to “re-target” consumers, showing the same or related ads repeatedly. This triggers what psychologists call the “mere exposure effect”: the more you see something, the more familiar and trustworthy it feels. Over time that familiarity can nudge consumers towards buying, not because they needed it but simply because they had seen it so often. This subconsciously promotes overconsumption.

Although marketing campaigns are designed to make consumers buy, even if they do not, they still give away something of great value. Every click, scroll, or view generates data that is later used or sold to monetise; shaping targeted advertising, influencing consumer behaviour and creating economic value.

Did we really consent to this?

A government survey in 2023 showed that Australians do not fully understand the data privacy implications.

The Privacy Act 1988 forms Australia’s main legal framework, and is currently under review. But it only applies to businesses with an annual turnover above A$3 million. While most large retailers easily surpass the threshold, what’s less clear is whether the third parties in the privacy policies do.

In Australia, implied consent is often considered sufficient. If a website states in its privacy policy that it collects data, simply browsing the site is considered consent. A site provides little control over individual cookies unless the user manually adjusts their browser settings. Clicking an ad on social media can also be taken as agreeing to data collection.

In Australia, you either do not see a consent box at all or instead encounter a line stating that “by browsing this site, you agree to our privacy policy”. In both cases, consent is implied.

Stricter rules

In contrast, a website regulated under European Union regulations must clearly explain what data it collects. Only essential cookies are active by default. Marketing and tracking cookies are switched off unless consumers actively choose to allow them.

The difference is stark. The EU imposes stricter rules on data ownership, profiling and behavioural tracking, with no tolerance for vague implied consent. In Australia, behavioural tracking and targeted advertising depend on implied consent, typically hidden in lengthy, jargon-heavy privacy polices that few consumers can navigate.

While data privacy laws are still catching up, educating consumers is crucial to helping them understand how their data is used to influence them into overconsuming.

So now you know what really happens behind every click or “agree” button; the question is, will you still fall for the trick?

Aayushi Badhwar, Lecturer in Enterprise and Technology, RMIT University

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

One of the earliest figures known to have faked an illness for personal advantage was Odysseus.

Odysseus was the hero of Homer’s Odyssey, which was probably written around the 8th century BC, but based on much older legends.

According to one version of the story, Odysseus pretended to be mentally ill to avoid taking part in the war of the Greeks against Troy.

To show he was not sane enough to go to war, Odysseus ploughed sand instead of soil, and did other wild deeds. However, his lie was exposed.

Palamedes, one of the leading figures on the Greek side of the war, threw Odysseus’ baby son, Telemachus, in front of Odysseus’ plough. Odysseus stopped to protect his son, showing he was not mentally ill.

Pretending to be ill to gain some personal benefit – such as trying to avoid work or war – is something ancient and modern people have in common.

As we’ll see, “taking a sickie” has a long history.

The Roman slave with a ‘sore knee’

The Greek physician Galen of Pergamum (129–216 AD) was familiar with the phenomenon of people pretending to be sick.

In one of his many books, he provides the most detailed ancient account we have of a doctor with a patient who fakes an illness.

Galen describes how a Roman slave boy tries to get out of doing his work by claiming he has severe pain in his knee.

As part of his deception, the slave smears poisonous ointment over his knee to make it look like it is swollen and bruised:

The slave boy had a large swelling at the knee which would frighten people who know nothing about medicine, but someone with medical expertise knows clearly that it was produced by the drug called ‘thapsia’.

This was Thapsia garganica, a poisonous plant that causes inflammation and swelling.

Galen could also tell this was a fake injury from the slave’s contradictory accounts of his pain. The slave said, at one point:

‘I feel tension in my whole joint’ and at another: ‘I feel a throbbing inside it’, and yet another: ‘it feels like there is an arrow stuck in it’ or: ‘it feels like it was pricked with needles’ or: ‘it feels heavy like a stone’, then ‘I feel pain in my whole leg in this way’ and then ‘the bone feels weak’.

Galen also gives the slave a fake cure to see how he responds:

I said to him: ‘I am going to rub a drug on your knee, and the pain you have will stop immediately’. I then rubbed a drug on it that does not at all relieve pain but usually only cools the heat generated by the thapsia. That slave confirmed after just a short while that his pain had gone completely. Had this pain really been caused by a hot swelling brought about by an internal cause, this cooling medicine would have intensified the pain and certainly not relieved it.

After the slave boy’s lie was exposed, he had to go back to work.

How to spot a faker

Galen also advised doctors on how to find out whether a patient was faking their illness. This included instructing doctors to tell their patients what they would have to give up to get better:

Some people are fond of drinking wine, some are fond of food, […] some are fond of bathing at the baths and some are fond of sex.

Clearly, Galen thought people wouldn’t want to pretend to be sick if they had to give up doing their favourite things or eating their favourite foods and drinks while receiving treatment.

Is faking an illness ever justified?

People in ancient times are shown faking all kinds of illnesses for personal advantage, mainly to get out of work, military service, or to conceal an affair.

However, in extreme cases lying may have been justified.

In Xenophon of Ephesus’ novel The Ephesian Tale (2nd–3rd century AD), the heroine Anthia avoids being sold into prostitution by faking an epileptic fit.

She then lies by saying she has always suffered from epilepsy, and is set free.

Modern sickies

In modern times, “taking a sickie” has become a well known phenomenon.

We’ve all seen the stories about people calling in sick and then their bosses seeing them on TV or social media boozing at the cricket or footy.

If the phenomenon of “taking a sickie” tells us anything, it’s that illness generates sympathy, and sympathy causes us to allow sick people time away from their duties – but this sympathy can be exploited for personal gain.

Galen knew that well, some 2,000 years ago.

Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

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

The Milky Way is a rich and complex environment. We see it as a luminous line stretching across the night sky, composed of innumerable stars.

But that’s just the visible light. Observing the sky in other ways, such as through radio waves, provides a much more nuanced scene – full of charged particles and magnetic fields.

For decades, astronomers have used radio telescopes to explore our galaxy. By studying the properties of the objects residing in the Milky Way, we can better understand its evolution and composition.

Our study, published today in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, provides new insights into the structure of our galaxy’s galactic plane.

Observing the entire sky

To reveal the radio sky, we used the Murchison Widefield Array, a radio telescope in the Australian outback, composed of 4,096 antennas spread over several square kilometres. The array observes wide regions of the sky at a time, enabling it to rapidly map the galaxy.

Between 2013 and 2015, the array was used to observe the entire southern hemisphere sky for the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA (or GLEAM) survey. This survey covered a broad range of radio wave frequencies.

The wide frequency coverage of GLEAM gave astronomers the first “radio colour” map of the sky, including the galaxy itself. It revealed the diffuse glow of the galactic disk, as well as thousands of distant galaxies and regions where stars are born and die.

With the upgrade of the array in 2018, we observed the sky with higher resolution and sensitivity, resulting in the GLEAM-eXtended survey (GLEAM-X).

The big difference between the two surveys is that GLEAM could detect the big picture but not the detail, while GLEAM-X saw the detail but not the big picture.

A beautiful mosaic

To capture both, our team used a new imaging technique called image domain gridding. We combined thousands of GLEAM and GLEAM-X observations to form one huge mosaic of the galaxy.

Because the two surveys observed the sky at different times, it was important to correct for the ionosphere distortions – shifts in radio waves caused by irregularities in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Otherwise, these distortions would shift the position of the sources between observations.

The algorithm applies these corrections, aligning and stacking data from different nights smoothly. This took more than 1 million processing hours on supercomputers at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Western Australia.

The result is a new mosaic covering 95% of the Milky Way visible from the southern hemisphere, spanning radio frequencies from 72 to 231 MHz. The big advantage of the broad frequency range is the ability to see different sources with their “radio colour” depending on whether the radio waves are produced by cosmic magnetic fields, or by hot gas.

The emission coming from the explosion of dead stars appears in orange. The lower the frequency, the brighter it is. Meanwhile, the regions where stars are born shine in blue.

These colours allow astronomers to pick out the different physical components of the galaxy at a glance.

The new radio portrait of the Milky Way is the most sensitive, widest-area map at these low frequencies to date. It will enable a plethora of galactic science, from discovering and studying faint and old remnants of star explosions to mapping the energetic cosmic rays and the dust and grains that dominate the medium within the stars.

The power of this image will not be surpassed until the new SKA-Low telescope is complete and operational, eventually being thousands of times more sensitive and with higher resolution than its predecessor, the Murchison Widefield Array.

This upgrade is still a few years away. For now, this new image stands as an inspiring preview of the wonders the full SKA-Low will one day reveal.

Silvia Mantovanini, PhD Candidate, Astronomy, Curtin University and Natasha Hurley-Walker, Radio Astronomer, Curtin University

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

Beyond ghoulish costumes and mountains of lollies, Halloween is rooted in celebrating nature. It originated in the Celtic pagan tradition of Samhain, marking the bounty of the autumnal harvest and transition to the dark depths of winter.

Fast forward to 2025, and Halloween is a commercial juggernaut expected to exceed $A19 billion in spending in the US alone.

It’s also one that can cause serious environmental harm, generating masses of plastic and food waste, and disturbing and harming wildlife.

This year, let’s celebrate nature’s spookiest and most gruesome wildlife with an environmentally-friendly Halloween.

Move aside werewolves, headless horsemen, witches and warlocks, here are ten of the most marvellous and macabre animals that will truly turn heads.

1. Vampire and ghost bats

Dracula had nothing on vampire bats. These flying mammals use razor-sharp teeth to puncture their prey’s bodies and grooved tongues then lap up the blood. Vampire bats are restricted to Central and South America.

But Australia has the aptly-named ghost bat, although they don’t drink blood. This species hunts mammals, birds, lizards, frogs, and other prey, but is itself sadly listed as vulnerable to extinction.

2. Horned lizards

Rather than being blood suckers, some animals squirt blood to protect themselves!

Horned lizards can control and constrict the blood flow in their heads, causing pressure to build up and, ultimately, rupture blood vessels around their eyes.

Rapid and repeated squirts of blood — laced with noxious chemicals from their venomous ant prey — are shot with remarkable precision over several feet at unsuspecting would-be predators, including coyotes.

3. Dementor wasps

The dementor wasp is truly the stuff of nightmares, especially if you’re a cockroach. They inject venom into cockroach brains, turning them into compliant zombies.

Once in control, wasps lead the zombie cockroaches back to their nests, lay their eggs in or on them, and the young wasps eat them alive.

4. Goblin sharks

The ocean depths are renowned for bizarre animals, including the wolf-fish, the fang-tooth fish, the vampire squid … and the goblin shark!

These sharks have distinctly goblin-like pointed snouts and long sharp teeth. Perhaps their most shocking feature is their mouth, which can be rapidly shot out from their head when feeding.

5. Assassin bugs

Assassin bugs kill ants for a living. But that’s not all.

Once they’ve liquefied and sucked their prey dry, they pile the lifeless bodies onto their backs. This is thought to be a way to confuse living ants and avoid their attack.

6. Slow lorises

Beware cute first appearances. The slow loris is capable of turning living creatures into visions of the walking dead.

Glands in their armpits produce a noxious oil, which oozes out and is licked by the loris. Combining this oil with their saliva produces a powerful cocktail that can be delivered through strong jaws and grooved teeth capable of piercing bone.

A bite from a slow loris can cause flesh to gradually rot away.

7. Sea cucumbers

The film The Exorcist is famous for its vomiting scene, but the humble sea cucumber delivers a far more unnerving performance.

When threatened they self-evisercate, spilling their guts out of their head or rear end (cloaca) and putting off would-be predators who prefer “live prey” from their meals.

Some have additional sticky and toxic filaments able to entangle, immobilise and even kill some attackers. Once danger has passed they can retreat and over several days they will remarkably regenerate their internal organs.

8. Skipper caterpillars

Living in confined spaces can pose many problems, including how to avoid soiling your home. Skipper caterpillars that live in curled leaves have a solution – explosive defecation!

They fire their waste via a hatch and under elevated blood pressure, meaning their flung dung can travel as far as 1.5 metres. It’s believed this trick has evolved to reduce scent building up that could attract predatory wasps.

9. Gordian worms

Gordian worms are another body-snatching species.

When their encysted larvae are eaten by unsuspecting grasshoppers or crickets, they develop inside their host and ultimately control their behaviour.

They lead them to water and cause them to drown themselves, whereupon the worm that has been growing inside them hatches out and completes the parasite’s life cycle. Ridley Scott’s iconic chest-bursting scene in Aliens comes to mind.

10. Shrews

Like the slow loris, cute and furry can hide a darker side for shrews. Many shrew species are venomous, using their bite to subdue their prey.

But they don’t always eat their victims immediately. Instead, they engage in “live hoarding”, where they stow their incapacitated, comatose meals away until hunger calls.

Halloween horrors

Far scarier than any animal’s appearance or bizarre behaviour, is the toll Halloween takes on the environment.

Halloween sees a surge in the sale of single-use polyester and plastic costumes and decorations, as well as individually-wrapped sweets.

One of the most popular but dangerous Halloween decorations are fake spider webs. These synthetic fibres regularly entangle and kill wildlife. They’re often blown away, ending up in waterways – where they can cause the same issues for aquatic life.

Halloween bright lights and loud noises also confuse and disorient nocturnal animals.

Making Halloween wildlife and environmentally friendly

This Halloween, try these ideas to celebrate without harming animals and the environment.

1. Instead of buying lollies, bake Halloween-themed biscuit treats. (Make sure people with allergies know the ingredients).

2. Use biodegradable and recyclable materials like twigs, feathers, leaves and paper to make decorations. Cardboard makes excellent nature-inspired Halloween cutouts and stencils.

3. Carve a pumpkin! But eat what you scoop out to reduce food waste and compost your pumpkin afterwards to prevent adding to landfill, methane production and climate change.

4. Visit your local opportunity shop or repurpose old clothes to make a Halloween costume. It’s better to reuse and recycle than give in to fast fashion.

Why not let some of our wonderful native wildlife, like ghost bats or peacock spiders, inspire your Halloween costume and theme this year!

Euan Ritchie, Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University

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

We all know how commercial Halloween has become, with expensive dress-ups, trick-or-treat “candy” and fake cobwebs (please don’t – they kill birds!).

But if you’ve ever dismissed Halloween as an American invention, you might want to rethink that.

For at least the past couple of millennia, the changing of the seasons has been marked among Celtic peoples with festivals at recognised times of year.

One of these was known by the Irish and Scottish Gaels as Samhain (pronounced “sah-win”), celebrated at the onset of winter. In the northern hemisphere, this falls around the end of October, although the tradition predates our modern calendar.

Samhain and the rhythms of the farming year

At Samhain, the harvest would be over, the last livestock would be brought back from the summer pastures, and people would prepare for the winter.

The old Gaelic saying “Oidhche Shamhna theirear gamhna ris na laoigh” (on Samhain night, calves become stirks) shows us how closely the idea of Samhain is tied to the rhythms of the farming year. (A stirk is a beast aged between six and 12 months.)

Summer in Gaelic culture meant outdoor life – young family members staying up in the hills watching the grazing livestock, renewal of the thatch on the family home, growing and harvesting crops.

Winter meant long hours inside the house, rationing the food that had been stored.

Samhain became an opportunity for one last celebration of nature before the long period indoors.

Seasonal duties were completed. Beasts unlikely to survive would be butchered, with part of the meat preserved and part used in a shared meal.

Bonfires would be lit for a last outdoor party, also providing warmth, invoking protection and fertility.

Fires were probably a way of mimicking the warmth and light of the Sun – holding back the winter darkness a little longer, protecting against evil by appeasing the old gods or new saints.

There’s also a long-held Celtic belief that at liminal times like Samhain – on the cusp between summer and winter – the veil between the human and spirit worlds was especially thin.

This meant otherworldly beings or spirits, particularly those of the ancestors, might be found roaming in our world.

The forerunners of our modern trick-or-treaters

Various Samhain activities, recorded from the early 18th century, reflect uneasiness about the possibility of encountering spirits, but also the fun of the bonfire party.

Many involved divination: attempts to predict a future spouse or otherwise foretell the future, are particularly widely recorded.

Acts of mischief by perpetrators unknown (likely teenagers), not all of them benevolent, were also common at Samhain in parts of Scotland and Ireland.

Gates might be removed and hidden, meaning livestock might stray. Chimneys might be blocked with turnips, trapping smoke in the house. Houses might be pelted with vegetables, wheels taken from carts, boats pulled up above the waterline, or chamber pots tied to doors.

Some people carved ghoulish faces into turnips, into which a light (usually a smouldering peat or ember in the rural areas, but sometimes a candle) would be inserted. It may originate from the practice of carrying a smouldering peat to light the way, or it may originate from the idea of pre-emptive frightening of any spirits wandering abroad. This is the likely origin of today’s pumpkin carving.

Perhaps the peculiar combination of uneasiness and fun led to the most widespread Samhain activity: guising.

Guisers might be considered the forerunners of our modern trick-or-treaters, but this was not a matter of dressing as your favourite character, or donning a fetching witch’s hat.

Guisers could be genuinely terrifying, especially for young children.

On the island of South Uist, for example, masks made from sheepskin with features painted on them were often paired with wigs of straw and old clothes or animal skins that concealed the form of the person inside. Sometimes a sheep’s skull might be added.

Guisers would visit neighbouring houses, challenging the householders to guess their identities, perhaps reciting rhymes, riddles or songs, before accepting a scone or other food and going on their way.

There are two explanations of why guising began.

One is that by obscuring their identities, guisers would evade any hostile spirits seeking to harm them.

The other is that guisers were themselves imitating the ancestor spirits, and trying to frighten others.

Both are possibly true. The idea that the evening would morph into a sharing of songs, stories and food, surely holds the kernel of modern trick-or-treating.

All traditions change over time

In the 18th and 19th centuries, during the infamous Highland Clearances and Great Irish Famine, a great deal of the rural populations of Scotland and Ireland were relocated – often against their will – to North America.

In those relocated settlements, what could be more natural than to reproduce these familiar, and perhaps comforting, rituals of home?

The name Halloween refers to the Christian tradition of All Souls’ Day falling on November 1: the night before is All Souls’ (or All Hallows’) Eve, which became Halloween. As happened with many other significant dates, it seems to have been layered with the pre-existing festival of Samhain.

Halloween as we now know it has certainly been heavily influenced by North America, but if we look closely enough, we can still see the traces of much older Celtic beliefs.

We can embrace the idea of marking the turning of the seasons without having to adopt the whole package.

Pamela O'Neill, Sir Warwick Fairfax Lecturer in Celtic Studies, University of Sydney

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

Today marks 60 years since English photographic model Jean Shrimpton, dubbed “The Shrimp”, caused a stir among conservative racegoers at the Melbourne Cup.

On October 30 1965, the then 22-year-old wore a “swinging 60s” minidress that would go on to become the stuff of legend.

Shrimpton ventured to Flemington Racecourse in a simple dress, minus the trappings of 1960s conservative female attire: hat, gloves and stockings. She was also flashing a few extra inches of bare thigh which would have been deemed unseemly for the occasion.

This dress, a mere 10cm above the knee, would hardly turn heads in 2025.

Shrimpton was one of the world’s most photographed faces at the time, and her Derby Day appearance has been credited with driving a cultural shift in Australian sartorial style – one that marked the dawn of casual dressing and the rise of youth fashion culture.

However, as my research highlights, Shrimpton did not come to Australia with the intention to shock or disrupt. In fact, her influence on fashion was more a result of the reach of one particular big business.

Why did Jean Shrimpton come to Australia?

Ahead of the 1965 Melbourne Cup, the Victoria Racing Club (VRC) invited a number of locally active textile fibre producers to bring an international model to the event dressed in their product.

The VRC hoped a bit of extra glamour and pizzazz (at no cost to them) might stem waning attendance numbers and generate more interest in the relatively new Fashions on the Field event.

But apart from the Australian Wool Board, the only party to take up the offer was multinational chemical and textile giant DuPont de Nemours Inc (DuPont). DuPont hired Shrimpton under a sponsorship contract, and arranged to fly her to Australia to wear and promote one of its synthetic fibres called Orlon.

At the time, Orlon’s reputation in the fashion market was practically non-existent. What better way to increase its profile than to have it associated with a famous face?

Rumours of a tussle over fabric

Shrimpton was sent lengths of woven Orlon fabric in advance, and given free rein in having her racewear made in designs of her choice in London.

Stories abound about her having insufficient fabric to work with – hence the short hemline. In her 1990 autobiography, Shrimpton blamed DuPont for shortchanging the fabric allowance, but then affirmed she would have worn similar styles to any other race meeting in the world, as short skirts were “in” in 1965. DuPont also knew about those “mini” London styles Shrimpton was famous for wearing.

If the company had erred, or if Shrimpton had really craved a more traditional hemline, supplying additional fabric would not have been a problem for the large, well-resourced multinational.

When Shrimpton and her boyfriend, English actor Terence Stamp, touched down at Essendon Airport on Derby Day, they were 24 hours late.

A welcome party planned for the evening before Derby Day at Melbourne’s Top of the Town restaurant was cancelled at the last minute when DuPont got word around 6pm that the guest of honour was still in Sydney. The “big shrimp” ice carving prepared as a party centrepiece was left to melt.

Shrimpton was lucky to have made it to the Derby Day meeting at all. With no time to freshen or change, DuPont representatives hastily bundled her and Stamp into waiting vehicles at the airport, and headed straight to Flemington Racecourse.

What happened next is, shall we say, history.

Fallout from a fashion faux pas

Many have recalled the indignation among racegoers when Shrimpton entered the members’ enclosure on Derby Day — as well as the furore that erupted later and was enthusiastically fanned by the media.

Strict dress codes ruled supreme in the members’ enclosure. It was a space of conspicuous consumption, and one where haute couture traditionally took centre stage.

The promotional buildup to Shrimpton’s Australian arrival had been robust thanks to DuPont’s marketing efforts, so some of the public’s indignation and anger was likely tinged with disappointment.

The magic of a much-anticipated celebrity appearance was quickly dashed by the reality of a young model with unruly, windswept hair, wearing a simple, synthetic dress.

Critics blasted Shrimpton’s supposed lack of etiquette, manners and fashion choice, while Australia’s provincialism was called out internationally.

And while Shrimpton maintained her right to dress in her own style, she went home nursing bruised feelings over her public dressing-down. Meanwhile, DuPont’s involvement in the incident was all but forgotten.

Six decades on, Shrimpton retains her status as an icon who delivered Australian youth from the stifles of conservative dressing. But it’s also worth remembering the big business sponsorship behind her famous appearance.

After DuPont’s initial attempt at damage control – which involved supplying Shrimpton a hat and stockings for the Cup Day meeting – the company’s marketers quickly embraced the controversy as “absolutely sensational!”

It seems they followed the logic of 19th century showman P.T. Barnum, who reportedly said “there is no such thing as bad publicity”.

Pauline Hastings, Affiliate, School of Philosophical, Historical & Indigenous Studies (SOPHIS), Monash University

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

Monopoly is the best-selling licensed board game of all time, popular since its 1935 release when “the new craze” swept the world.

It has remained a staple, with over 390,000 copies sold in Australia to date.

Its transformation from an economic critique to a capitalist icon highlights its historical evolution and adaptability.

A game with a message

Monopoly’s roots trace back to The Landlord’s Game (1903), created by Elizabeth Magie to critique monopolistic land ownership.

It featured two sets of rules – one emphasising wealth accumulation, the other wealth distribution. The aim was to demonstrate how different policy levers, taxing income versus taxing land, affect economic outcomes of players.

It was based on economist Henry George’s proposition for a “land value tax” or “single tax”. Under this regime, people would keep all they earned, with public funds raised from land ownership instead.

The two sets of rules in the Landlord’s Game demonstrate how wealth is either concentrated in the hands of landlords (taxing income) or is more fairly distributed across society (taxing land).

In 1935, a man named Charles Darrow removed the game’s socialist critique (the version that taxed land), renamed it Monopoly and sold it to Parker Brothers. The game was now focused on the accumulation of real estate until one player remained, having bankrupted their fellows.

The game thrived during the Great Depression, offering an escapist fantasy of financial success.

In 1935, Parker Brothers paid Magie US$500 (US$11,800 today) for the rights to her game, ensuring their ownership of Monopoly was unchallenged. As part of the deal, they released her original game, but it failed to gain traction with players.

Not everyone welcomed its capitalist themes – Fidel Castro famously ordered all Monopoly sets in Cuba destroyed in 1959

Playability and house rules

Philip Orbanes, former vice president of research at Parker Brothers, argued a good board game must have clear rules, social interaction and an element of luck. Monopoly ticks all three boxes.

Despite this, Monopoly is notorious for causing arguments. Hasbro (who bought out Parker Brothers in 1991, acquiring Monopoly in the process) found that nearly half of Monopoly games end in disputes, often over rule interpretations. Monopoly is the game most likely to be banned, or see a particular player banned, on game nights.

Monopoly’s rules have been adjusted and manipulated as players have sought to overcome the inequities in the game. Another of Hasbro’s surveys found 68% of players admitting to not having read the rules in their entirety, and 49% said they had made up their own rules.

These “house rules” include things like cash bonuses on Free Parking or modifying auctions to make the game more engaging.

Identity and nostalgia

Monopoly’s use of real-world locations makes it adaptable to local markets.

The original version reflected Atlantic City’s socio-economic hierarchy. When Waddingtons released the English version in 1936 under license (the same version which would go on to be released in Australia in 1937), Atlantic City’s wealthy Boardwalk and working class Mediterranean Avenue became London’s Mayfair and Old Kent Road, respectively.

The game can also serve as a bridge to former geographies. The 1980s Yugoslav edition remains a link to the past for those who lived through that era, recording changing political geographies and cultural shifts.

Monopoly is a flagship brand for Hasbro, worth an estimated US$272m in 2018. Part of Monopoly’s success lies in its licensing strategy. The board layout is extremely flexible, allowing for localised adaptations to be made to suit different markets, without any substantial change to the game play.

There are believed to be over 3,400 different versions of Monopoly issued, from classic city street layouts to popular culture imaginings.

It is this aspect that attracts collectors; world record holder Neil Scanlon owns 4,379 sets of Monopoly (he is still searching for the Cronulla Sharks set).

Monopoly reflects the world’s economic systems, embodying both the dream of wealth and the realities of financial inequality.

It has been studied by economists and educators as a tool for understanding capitalism, wealth accumulation and market control.

The game originally meant to critique monopolistic practices became a celebration of them. Each player has the opportunity to accumulate vast wealth, reflecting the promise of capitalism: where anyone can enjoy riches as long as they work hard enough.

Magie’s message was leveraged by Federal MP Andrew Leigh in his 2023 critique of the growing concentration of business monopolies in Australia. Leigh noted how monopolies affected Australian families and how the Albanese government had “increased penalties for anti-competitive conduct, and banned unfair contract terms” with the aim of creating a fairer society.

Enduring popularity

In 2025, Hasbro introduced digital banking versions – though many players lament the feel of physical wads of cash.

The game continues to be a favourite, ranking as the top childhood game among Baby Boomers, Gen X and Millennials – and fourth for Gen Z. The sense of nostalgia was strong among all groups, not surprising as board games were found to be an integral part of family bonding.

Monopoly has evolved from an anti-capitalist critique into a commercial juggernaut. While it has faced criticism for erasing its socialist origins and its reliance on luck, its ability to reinvent itself has ensured its lasting appeal.

As both a cultural artefact and a competitive game, Monopoly remains firmly embedded in board game culture.

Lisa J. Hackett, Senior Lecturer, Sociology & Criminology, University of New England

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

The Mercury prize almost always produces surprises – among them, Gomez not The Verve in 1998, and English Teacher not Charli XCX in 2024 – but perhaps the biggest surprise is that the prize has survived for so many years. That it has been won this year by Sam Fender in his native Newcastle speaks very much of the time that has passed in those 34 years.

Conceived as a kind of credible alternative to the Brit Awards – a prize for those beyond the razzamatazz of mainstream pop music – the (then) Mercury Music prize was introduced in 1992.

This was the year of a general election which, while won by the Conservative party, did not see the re-election of Margaret Thatcher. But Thatcher’s work had been done: the introduction of neoliberal policies which ravaged many UK industries and the regions in which they were located.

Fender can be understood as a voice of that ravaged Britain. He was born two years after John Major’s election victory, and grew up in a disintegrating family in a disintegrating former industrial region. He survived the chaos and has written about that collective suffering with great skill and passion over three albums.

It is telling, too, that the (renamed) Mercury Prize lost its corporate sponsorship along the way. Being publicly allied with music is no longer the marketing “must have” it once was. This year’s award event was paid for jointly by Newcastle City Council and the regional authority.

As Britain attempts to cope with the evaporation of major industries and the suffering that permanent loss of employment infrastructure induces, many UK regions now foreground the creative abilities of their residents as a reason to invest in their particular area. Demand for music, and for the creativity it carries and expresses, has become a key feature of social and economic as well as cultural life.

This begs the question: what is it that creative people actually contribute? The 2025 Mercury prize shortlist gives us some clues, especially if we look at three of the nominees who missed out on the prize: Pulp, Wolf Alice and Martin Carthy. Both Pulp and Wolf Alice are previous winners (1996 and 2018 respectively), but Carthy has won very few awards over the 84 years of his life.

“Notable” musicians tend to be of their time. This is partly because their choice of instruments and combinations of keys, notes and tempos resonate with the moments they and their audiences are living through. But there is more to being a musician than this.

Real, affecting performance draws on and mobilises symbolic information far beyond musical soundmaking – even though that demands skill and ability. Fender, for example, is unequivocally a Geordie, even as he fits the mould of a kind of Bruce Springsteen for his times.

Both Pulp and Wolf Alice are challenging to discuss. Where Jarvis Cocker is concerned, the word “uncompromising” comes to mind, but what does that mean? Here is someone who is unique – yet what his vision of the world is, is never quite apparent. Cocker is “about something”, and he is about it so strongly that people stand back and admire him for it.

Wolf Alice are something different: a successful rock band in a time when rock bands have gone into decline. It is almost the band’s own self-awareness that, somehow, “they shouldn’t be” that gives them their energy – mining rock’s extensive back catalogue to support essentially introspective lyrics about (mainly singer Ellie Rowsell) self-adjusting to the demands of an evermore turbulent world.

In this, there are shades of Cocker. And with Fender singing about negotiating this turbulence too (only with a more explicit set of references to a world beyond his interior), so the core strengths of contemporary music begin to emerge.

Popular musicians go on providing a soundtrack for our lives because they express themselves through the idioms of the moment. If we take Fender’s previous album, Seventeen Going Under, as a point of reference, every aspect of the recording and its video speaks to his growing up in the northeast of England and his continuing loyalty to the place.

His moving acceptance speech and rapport with the audience were evidence of this. His performance of People Watching was almost pure Bruce Springsteen – mainstream rock inflected and defined by a hometown sensibility.

Which brings us to Martin Carthy. It is impossible to capture Carthy’s significance in words, because his voice cannot be heard on the page – and it is so powerfully distinctive that it needs to be heard.

Carthy was the soul of English folk music in the 1960s and ’70s. His brand of folk music speaks to a resilience through suffering – the suffering of pre-industrial society articulated through song. Now, Fender is speaking to the suffering of post-industrial society. They both should have won.

Mike Jones, Course Director MA (Music Industries), University of Liverpool

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

As the seasons turn and the nights draw in, the countryside of the British Isles seems alive with omens: an owl’s screech, or a bat above the hedgerows.

For centuries, such creatures were cast as messengers of fate, straddling the boundary between the natural and the supernatural. Yet today, the omens these animals bring are no longer warnings of ghosts or witchcraft, but of something far more tangible: their own survival.

The very species that once haunted our imagination and foretold ill-fated futures are now haunted by habitat loss, climate change and pressure from urbanisation. In the stories of these creatures, we glimpse both our fear of the wild past and our responsibility for the future. Now is the time to revisit some of Britain’s iconic “omen animals”, tracing their folklore and asking what their fate tells us about our shared environment.

Hedgehogs

Hedgehogs, though voted Britain’s favourite mammal, were previously deemed to be milk thieves.

A widespread folkloric belief of the early modern period, likely exacerbated by the European witch hunts, was that witches would transform into hedgehogs to steal milk from cows’ udders. This belief was so prevalent that a campaign to hunt and eradicate hedgehogs was backed by English parliament, with a bounty of a tuppence placed on the head of each hog.

Though their public image has recovered in recent years, hedgehogs are now classed as “vulnerable” to extinction in the UK. Their key threats are linked with habitat loss and fragmentation. Their natural prey, insects and invertebrates, are also in decline due to increased use of pesticides.

Declines in hedgehogs have been particularly steep in rural habitats, with populations reduced by 30–75% since 2000. Conservation priorities focus on restoring lost habitats for hedgehogs and understanding how best to protect them.

Adders

As the only venomous snake in the UK, it is unsurprising that the adder would attract some negative publicity over the years. The species is increasingly a conservation concern and now locally extinct across much of England due to habitat loss.

An “adder’s fork” was a spell ingredient listed by the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606). He invoked them too in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600) as a way for one character to accuse another of treachery and deceit.

Even more sinister, finding an adder on your doorstep was considered a death omen. It is now unlikely for your threshold to be crossed by an adder, as they are now mostly found in small, isolated populations. Even they could be lost by 2032.

Conservation efforts are focusing on the creation, restoration and management of suitable grassland, but are not currently widely implemented. Increasing public awareness and appreciation of the species is a key goal for adder preservation.

Wildcats

Once widespread across Britain, wildcats are now considered our most endangered animal species. They have a long reputation in Scottish folklore for being untameable, serving as the namesake of the Pictish province of Cataibh when it was formed in 800BC. They were often adopted as symbolic emblems or mascots in early clan lore due to their fierce fighting spirit. Their ominous cry is thought to have inspired ghost stories across the ages.

Deforestation and persecution, especially by Victorian gamekeepers, eradicated wildcats from England, Wales and much of Scotland. In 2019, experts concluded that breeding with feral domestic cats has compromised their genetic integrity and that the remnant populations are too small, isolated and genetically degraded to have a long-term future.

But some hope does remain for the wildcat. Saving Wildcats, a European partnership project dedicated to wildcat conservation, is leading efforts to breed the species in captivity. As of 2023, a number of wildcats have been reintroduced back into the wild in Scotland’s Cairngorms.

Mountain hares

The mountain hare is the UK’s only native member of the hare and rabbit family. Once widespread across Britain, mountain hares are now confined to upland regions of Scotland and the Peak District.

Hares have a long history of superstitious and folkloric attachments. They were seen as shape-shifters, or familiars of witches, which would bring doom and misfortune to any person unfortunate enough to have their path crossed. Their shape-shifting abilities were referenced in The Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh stories compiled in the 12th and 13th centuries, across Celtic folklore before. Numerous regional hare-witches were referenced across England.

While fear of wronging a witch historically offered hares some protection, they have faced decline and range reduction from competition with brown hares, hunting pressures and land use change. Recent surveys suggest a 70% crash in the Peak District population over just seven years. Under current rates of decline, the mountain hare will become extinct from the region within five years.

Nightjars

Summer visitors to the UK, nightjars were once thought to drink milk from goats and in doing so poison them and cause their udders to wither away. These birds were also said to snatch up lost souls wandering between worlds with their unearthly call.

Nightjars suffered a catastrophic population decline in excess of 50% and range contraction of around 51% during the latter half of the 20th century. However, surveys conducted in 1992 and 2004 saw welcome population increases of 50% and 36% respectively. Nightjar were recorded making use of new clear-felled and young conifer plantations and benefiting from long-term habitat management projects in their southern strongholds. Although recent recoveries offer hope, nightjars have reclaimed only a fraction of their former range – around 18%.

These species, and far more besides, have been instrumental in the stories people have woven across time. So the next time you hear the screech of an owl outside your bedroom window or glimpse the wings of a bat flapping over your garden, pause to think about the omens of our wild country – and how their stories might yet continue.

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Jessica Lloyd May, PhD Candidate in History, University of Nottingham and Matthew Jones, PhD Candidate in Conservation and Biodiversity, Nottingham Trent University

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

A new specimen of one of the most controversial species of dinosaur has the potential to overturn decades of research on the T rex.

Nanotyrannus, the “miniature T rex”, has been the centre of one of the fiercest debates in palaeontology. Scientists have long argued over whether the Nanotyrannus is a separate species or just a young T rex.

The controversy was ignited in 1999 when the only known fossil of a Nanotyrannus was found to belong to a juvenile. More complete fossils have since failed to produce any conclusive answers because they were all also found to be juvenile.

But the debate surrounding the identity of Nanotyrannus may finally be settled. A new fossil specimen, described in the journal Nature, is the smoking gun researchers have been looking for: an adult Nanotyrannus.

Known as the duelling dinosaurs, this fossil preserves an almost-complete Nanotyrannus and Triceratops entombed together. They seem frozen in combat (whether they were actually fighting when they became buried in the Earth’s sediment remains to be tested).

Although the fossil was discovered in Montana, US back in 2006, it was under private ownership until the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences purchased it in 2020. Now accessible to scientists, the true nature of this remarkable fossil can be revealed for the first time.

The researchers have confirmed that Nanotyrannus is a separate miniature type of tyrannosaur by demonstrating this specimen belonged to a near fully-grown adult. The age and maturity of dinosaurs can be assessed by looking at the inside of their bones.

Dinosaurs grew in cycles of faster and slower growth which produced distinct layers of bone. When cut open and examined under a microscope, these marks can be counted like rings in a tree.

Using this method, the researchers could determine that the Nanotyrannus in the duelling dinosaurs was at least 14 years old when it died. The researchers also found its rate of growth had slowed significantly in its final years, indicating that this individual was nearly at full body size.

So just how small was this miniature T rex? Nanotyrannus is only around one tenth of the size of a fully grown T rex. Being one of the largest predators to ever walk the Earth, however, T rex would make most animals look small. The duelling dinosaurs Nanotyrannus is over four metres long and estimated to have weighed over 700kg – that’s as heavy as some of the very largest polar bears.

Other specimens of Nanotyrannus are even bigger. The almost complete skeleton known as Jane, discovered in 2001 also in Montana, is estimated at over a ton, larger than any land predator alive today.

The researchers have found enough differences in the shape of bones in the skulls of the duelling dinosaurs fossil and the larger Jane to separate them into two different species: Nanotyrannus lancensis and the newly-named Nanotyrannus lethaeus.

Other than small size, another feature that the researchers have used to distinguish Nanotyrannus from T rex is the number of teeth. Despite its much smaller mouth, Nanotyrannus could no doubt pack a powerful bite with its over 60 teeth. T rex had 40-50 teeth in its jaws.

The teeth themselves are also different. Nicknamed “lethal bananas”, the teeth of T rex are curved and serrated like steak knives. These unique teeth are perfect for slicing into flesh and could crush bone. By contrast, some of the teeth of Nanotyrannus are straight, chisel-like and without serrations, more closely resembling those of other types of carnivorous dinosaur.

T rex had famously tiny arms, the source of many jokes and dinosaur impressions. Nanotyrannus does not share this feature. Its arms are almost the same size as those of T rex, despite belonging to an animal ten times smaller.

Nanotyrannus is overall more lanky than the stout T rex, with proportionally longer legs to match its longer arms. The foot bones of the small duelling dinosaurs Nanotyrannus are nearly as long as those of the largest known T rex. Research suggests that, while T rex couldn’t manage anything much faster than a walk, Nanotyrannus was well adapted to run and chase after its prey.

Aside from confirming the existence of this long-controversial dinosaur species, this discovery overturns decades of T rex research. Much of what scientists think about the life and growth of T rex is based on the assumption that many gangly “teen” tyrannosaurs fossils would have grown up into the well-known bulky giants. In light of this discovery, scientists must reevaluate what life was like for a young T rex and go back on the hunt for genuine juvenile T rex fossils.

It has been widely assumed that T rex was the only dinosaur of its type living in the US in the last days of the dinosaurs. Some researchers have proposed that T rex was so dominant that other large predators could not live alongside it, with its own juveniles outcompeting any other medium-sized predators. This total dominance is now called into question.

T rex has now been joined by not one but two species of smaller carnivorous dinosaur, hinting at a more complex and diverse ecosystem thriving in the US towards the end of the reign of the dinosaurs.

Despite being arguably the most well-known and best studied dinosaur, T rex and its close relatives continue to surprise us from beyond the grave. There is still much left to learn about the largest and fiercest predators ever to walk the Earth.

Abi Crane, Postgraduate Researcher in Palaeontology, University of Southampton

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

Continuous sleep is a modern habit, not an evolutionary constant, which helps explain why many of us still wake at 3am and wonder if something’s wrong. It might help to know that this is a deeply human experience.

For most of human history, a continuous eight-hour snooze was not the norm. Instead, people commonly slept in two shifts each night, often called a “first sleep” and “second sleep.” Each of these sleeps lasted several hours, separated by a gap of wakefulness for an hour or more in the middle of the night. Historical records from Europe, Africa, Asia and beyond describe how, after nightfall, families would go to bed early, then wake around midnight for a while before returning to sleep until dawn.

Breaking the night into two parts probably changed how time felt. The quiet interval gave nights a clear middle, which can make long winter evenings feel less continuous and easier to manage.

The midnight interval was not dead time; it was noticed time, which shapes how long nights are experienced. Some people would get up to tend to chores like stirring the fire or checking on animals. Others stayed in bed to pray or contemplate dreams they’d just had. Letters and diaries from pre-industrial times mention people using the quiet hours to read, write or even socialise quietly with family or neighbours. Many couples took advantage of this midnight wakefulness for intimacy.

Literature from as far back as ancient Greek poet Homer and Roman poet Virgil contains references to an “hour which terminates the first sleep,” indicating how commonplace the two-shift night was.

How we lost the ‘second sleep’

The disappearance of the second sleep happened over the past two centuries due to profound societal changes. Artificial lighting is one of them. In the 1700s and 1800s, first oil lamps, then gas lighting, and eventually electric light, began turning night into more usable waking time. Instead of going to bed shortly after sunset, people started staying up later into the evening under lamplight.

Biologically, bright light at night also shifted our internal clocks (our circadian rhythm) and made our bodies less inclined to wake after a few hours of sleep. Light timing matters. Ordinary “room” light before bedtime suppresses and delays melatonin, which pushes the onset of sleep later.

The Industrial Revolution transformed not just how people worked but how they slept. Factory schedules encouraged a single block of rest. By the early 20th century, the idea of eight uninterrupted hours had replaced the centuries-old rhythm of two sleeps.

In multi-week sleep studies that simulate long winter nights in darkness and remove clocks or evening light, people in lab studies often end up adopting two sleeps with a calm waking interval. A 2017 study of a Madagascan agricultural community without electricity found people still mostly slept in two segments, rising at about midnight.

Long, dark winters

Light sets our internal clock and influences how fast we feel time passing. When those cues fade, as in winter or under artificial lighting, we drift.

In winter, later and weaker morning light makes circadian alignment harder. Morning light is particularly important for regulating circadian rhythms because it contains a higher amount of blue light, which is the most effective wavelength for stimulating the body’s production of cortisol and suppressing melatonin.

In time-isolation labs and cave studies, people have lived for weeks without natural light or clocks, or even lived in constant darkness. Many people in these studies miscounted the passing of days, showing how easily time slips without light cues.

Similar distortions occur in the polar winter, where the absence of sunrise and sunset can make time feel suspended. People native to high latitudes, and long-term residents with stable routines, often cope better with polar light cycles than short-term visitors, but this varies by population and context. Residents adapt better when their community shares a regular daily schedule, for instance. And a 1993 study of Icelandic populations and their descendants who emigrated to Canada found these people showed unusually low winter seasonal affective disorder (SAD) rates. The study suggested genetics may help this population cope with the long Arctic winter.

Research from the Environmental Temporal Cognition Lab at Keele University, where I am the director, shows how strong this link between light, mood and time perception is. In 360-degree virtual reality, we matched UK and Sweden scenes for setting, light level cues, and time of day. Participants viewed six clips of about two minutes. They judged the two minute intervals as lasting longer in evening or low-light scenes compared with daytime or brighter scenes. The effect was strongest in those participants who reported low mood.

A new perspective on insomnia

Sleep clinicians note that brief awakenings are normal, often appearing at stage transitions, including near REM sleep, which is associated with vivid dreaming. What matters is how we respond.

The brain’s sense of duration is elastic: anxiety, boredom, or low light tend to make time stretch, while engagement and calm can compress it. Without that interval where you got up and did something or chatted with your partner, waking at 3am often makes time feel slow. In this context, attention focuses on time and the minutes that pass may seem longer.

Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) advises people to leave bed after about 20 minutes awake, do a quiet activity in dim light such as reading, then return when sleepy.

Sleep experts also suggest covering the clock and letting go of time measurement when you’re struggling to sleep. A calm acceptance of wakefulness, paired with an understanding of how our minds perceive time, may be the surest way to rest again.

Darren Rhodes, Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology and Environmental Temporal Cognition Lab Director, Keele University, Keele University

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

This weekend, the aged care sector will see a major shakeup that’s been a long time coming. The reforms include a statement of rights for older people who are receiving publicly funded care, as well as putting the system on a more sustainable financial basis, given the growing demands of an ageing population.

The Albanese government’s reforms have been broadly welcomed. But there are questions about the impact of the changes, including increased costs for better-off retirees.

To talk about how the new changes will affect older Australians, we’re joined by the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors, Sam Rae. He explains why the funding overhaul was needed, as well as what some pensioners will now have to pay for.

We’ve seen an 800% growth in government expenditure on in-home aged care over the last decade. And so as we transition to support at home, we bring in the co-contribution model.

Now, people who are already receiving care and who are part of that care system prior to September 2024 will have their arrangements grandparented, such that they won’t change.

But people who are newer to the system – that is, since September 2024 – they are going to be asked, where they have the means to do so, and that will be means-tested, to make a co-contribution to some of the care.

Now the government will continue to pay for 100% of the clinical care for every single Australian. But when it comes to independence-related care, a full pensioner will be asked to make a 5% percent co-contribution to the cost of those services provided. But we will have very strict and robust guardrails around that, including provision for hardship if people aren’t unable to make those payments to ensure they have continuity of care always.

Showering and gardening are among the “independence-related” care services that some pensioners will be asked to help pay for. Asked why showering isn’t being entirely funded as a necessity, Rae says:

We’ll be monitoring this very closely […] We want to make sure that every single older person gets the care that they need and that they deserve. So there are very modest co-contributions associated with some services, such as showering, that we are asking people who have the means to contribute to to do so.

On the long waiting list for home care packages, Rae says around 120,000 Australians were waiting for a package in September this year – and “that has been rising” over recent months.

Nevertheless, 99% percent of those people who are currently within the national priority system are either already receiving a home care package at a lower level than they are necessarily waiting for at this stage, or they’re eligible to receive home care assistance under the Commonwealth Home Support Program.

[…] Many of the people who are waiting for aged care assessments may not ever require home care. They may either require a lesser level of care or a greater level of care. There are also many who are already in the home care system, but who are also waiting for additional assessment for one reason or another, depending on their evolving circumstances.

Rae says the changes are designed to try to keep up with Australia’s ageing population.

Five years ago we had about 150,000 people receiving in-home care. We now have over 300,000 people receiving in-home care. So that’s a doubling in just five years.

As you would be aware, we’re in the process at the moment of rolling out 83,000 additional home care packages just this financial year, in order to try and address some of that increasing demand.

[…] One of the really important features of the new support at home program, which comes into effect from Saturday, is that it has an inbuilt growth component to it. So it draws upon the Treasury modelling of our ageing population and demand for in-home care and has an annualised growth component associated with it, so that we don’t have to rely on ad hoc increases to the supply of home packages. We will be able to meet that demand moving forward.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

Monopoly is the best-selling licensed board game of all time, popular since its 1935 release when “the new craze” swept the world.

It has remained a staple, with over 390,000 copies sold in Australia to date.

Its transformation from an economic critique to a capitalist icon highlights its historical evolution and adaptability.

A game with a message

Monopoly’s roots trace back to The Landlord’s Game (1903), created by Elizabeth Magie to critique monopolistic land ownership.

It featured two sets of rules – one emphasising wealth accumulation, the other wealth distribution. The aim was to demonstrate how different policy levers, taxing income versus taxing land, affect economic outcomes of players.

It was based on economist Henry George’s proposition for a “land value tax” or “single tax”. Under this regime, people would keep all they earned, with public funds raised from land ownership instead.

The two sets of rules in the Landlord’s Game demonstrate how wealth is either concentrated in the hands of landlords (taxing income) or is more fairly distributed across society (taxing land).

In 1935, a man named Charles Darrow removed the game’s socialist critique (the version that taxed land), renamed it Monopoly and sold it to Parker Brothers. The game was now focused on the accumulation of real estate until one player remained, having bankrupted their fellows.

The game thrived during the Great Depression, offering an escapist fantasy of financial success.

In 1935, Parker Brothers paid Magie US$500 (US$11,800 today) for the rights to her game, ensuring their ownership of Monopoly was unchallenged. As part of the deal, they released her original game, but it failed to gain traction with players.

Not everyone welcomed its capitalist themes – Fidel Castro famously ordered all Monopoly sets in Cuba destroyed in 1959

Playability and house rules

Philip Orbanes, former vice president of research at Parker Brothers, argued a good board game must have clear rules, social interaction and an element of luck. Monopoly ticks all three boxes.

Despite this, Monopoly is notorious for causing arguments. Hasbro (who bought out Parker Brothers in 1991, acquiring Monopoly in the process) found that nearly half of Monopoly games end in disputes, often over rule interpretations. Monopoly is the game most likely to be banned, or see a particular player banned, on game nights.

Monopoly’s rules have been adjusted and manipulated as players have sought to overcome the inequities in the game. Another of Hasbro’s surveys found 68% of players admitting to not having read the rules in their entirety, and 49% said they had made up their own rules.

These “house rules” include things like cash bonuses on Free Parking or modifying auctions to make the game more engaging.

Identity and nostalgia

Monopoly’s use of real-world locations makes it adaptable to local markets.

The original version reflected Atlantic City’s socio-economic hierarchy. When Waddingtons released the English version in 1936 under license (the same version which would go on to be released in Australia in 1937), Atlantic City’s wealthy Boardwalk and working class Mediterranean Avenue became London’s Mayfair and Old Kent Road, respectively.

The game can also serve as a bridge to former geographies. The 1980s Yugoslav edition remains a link to the past for those who lived through that era, recording changing political geographies and cultural shifts.

Monopoly is a flagship brand for Hasbro, worth an estimated US$272m in 2018. Part of Monopoly’s success lies in its licensing strategy. The board layout is extremely flexible, allowing for localised adaptations to be made to suit different markets, without any substantial change to the game play.

There are believed to be over 3,400 different versions of Monopoly issued, from classic city street layouts to popular culture imaginings.

It is this aspect that attracts collectors; world record holder Neil Scanlon owns 4,379 sets of Monopoly (he is still searching for the Cronulla Sharks set).

Monopoly reflects the world’s economic systems, embodying both the dream of wealth and the realities of financial inequality.

It has been studied by economists and educators as a tool for understanding capitalism, wealth accumulation and market control.

The game originally meant to critique monopolistic practices became a celebration of them. Each player has the opportunity to accumulate vast wealth, reflecting the promise of capitalism: where anyone can enjoy riches as long as they work hard enough.

Magie’s message was leveraged by Federal MP Andrew Leigh in his 2023 critique of the growing concentration of business monopolies in Australia. Leigh noted how monopolies affected Australian families and how the Albanese government had “increased penalties for anti-competitive conduct, and banned unfair contract terms” with the aim of creating a fairer society.

Enduring popularity

In 2025, Hasbro introduced digital banking versions – though many players lament the feel of physical wads of cash.

The game continues to be a favourite, ranking as the top childhood game among Baby Boomers, Gen X and Millennials – and fourth for Gen Z. The sense of nostalgia was strong among all groups, not surprising as board games were found to be an integral part of family bonding.

Monopoly has evolved from an anti-capitalist critique into a commercial juggernaut. While it has faced criticism for erasing its socialist origins and its reliance on luck, its ability to reinvent itself has ensured its lasting appeal.

As both a cultural artefact and a competitive game, Monopoly remains firmly embedded in board game culture.

Lisa J. Hackett, Senior Lecturer, Sociology & Criminology, University of New England

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

When you look at clouds, tree bark, or the front of a car, do you sometimes see a face staring back at you? That’s “face pareidolia” and it is a perfectly normal illusion where our brains spot faces in patterns that aren’t actually faces.

For most of us, these illusions are harmless. But my new research, published in Perception, suggests people with visual snow syndrome – a rare neurological condition that causes constant “visual static” – experience this phenomenon more strongly and more often.

This finding offers a unique window into how an overactive brain may amplify the erroneous illusory patterns it sees in the world. It also shows how perception isn’t a perfect mirror of reality.

What is visual snow syndrome?

Visual snow syndrome is characterised by the persistent perception of flickering dots, like television static, across the entire field of vision. People with the condition often report the dots never go away, even in the dark.

The cause of this syndrome remains unclear, but recent evidence points to hyperexcitability in the visual cortex, the region of the brain that interprets what we see. In essence, the neurons responsible for processing visual information may be firing too readily, flooding perception with noise.

Many individuals with visual snow syndrome also experience migraines, light sensitivity, afterimages or visual trails that linger after motion. These symptoms can make everyday visual experiences confusing and exhausting. Yet, despite growing awareness, the condition remains under-diagnosed and poorly understood.

Testing how ‘visual snow’ shapes perception

To test whether this hyperactive visual system changes how people interpret ambiguous visual input, our research team invited more than 250 volunteers to complete an online experiment.

Participants first completed a short questionnaire to determine whether they experienced symptoms of visual snow. They were then shown 320 images of everyday objects, from tree trunks to cups of coffee, and asked to rate, on a scale from 0 to 100, how easily they could see a face in each image.

In total, 132 people met the criteria for visual snow syndrome, while 104 formed a control group matched for age. We also tracked whether participants experienced migraines, allowing us to compare four subgroups.

The brain that sees too much

The results were striking. People with visual snow consistently gave higher “face scores” to each and every image than those without the condition. This suggests they were more likely to see faces in random textures and objects.

Those with both visual snow and migraines scored highest of all.

This pattern was remarkably consistent. In general, the groups agreed on which images looked most like faces, but the visual snow group reported seeing illusory faces more vividly.

In other words, the same objects triggered a stronger illusion.

The results align with earlier theories that the visual snow brain is hyper-responsive. Normally, our visual system generates quick, low-level “guesses” about what we’re seeing, followed by slower checks to confirm those guesses.

When that feedback loop is disrupted by excessive neural activity, an early “false alarm”, such as mistaking an object for a face, may be amplified rather than corrected.

Why migraine makes it stronger

Migraine and visual snow have been frequently linked, and both involve abnormally high levels of cortical activity. During a migraine, visual neurons can become hypersensitive to flicker, light and contrast.

Our data suggest that when migraine and visual snow occur together, the brain’s sensitivity to illusory faces increases even further. This may reflect a shared neural pathway underlying both conditions.

Future research could use this relationship to develop new diagnostic tools. Face pareidolia tests are quick, accessible, and could be adapted for children or nonverbal patients who can’t easily describe what they see.

A new way to understand perception

Face pareidolia isn’t a disorder — it’s a side effect of a perceptual system that prioritises social information. Evolution has biased our visual system to spot faces first and ask questions later.

For people with visual snow, that system may be dialled up too high. Their brains may “connect the dots” in visual noise, interpreting ambiguous input as meaningful patterns.

This finding supports the idea that visual snow is not just a vision problem but a broader disturbance in how the brain interprets visual input.

By understanding why some people see too much, we can learn more about how all of us see at all.

Why it matters

Visual snow syndrome is often dismissed or misdiagnosed, leaving patients frustrated. Linking the condition to a measurable illusion such as face pareidolia gives clinicians a tangible sign of the altered brain activity behind the symptoms.

It also humanises the experience. People with visual snow aren’t imagining their perceptions – their brains are genuinely processing the world differently.

Beyond diagnosis, this research contributes to a bigger question in neuroscience: how does the brain strike a balance between sensitivity and accuracy? Too little activity, and we miss the signal. Too much, and we start to see faces in the snow.

Jessica Taubert, Associate Professor, School of Psychology, The University of Queensland

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

A growing number of Australians want to stay at home rather than moving to a residential aged care facility when they need extra support.

But availability of home care packages has slipped far behind demand. As a result, more than 120,000 older Australians are already waiting to be assessed for aged care at home. Another 87,000 have approval but no package yet.

After a delayed start, a new Support at Home program will begin on November 1 2025. It aims to improve care at home, with more categories of support and 83,000 new places being added over the next year.

A contested component of the new system is that older Australians will be required to pay for more of their non-clinical care. This includes support for personal care such as showering, as well as everyday living costs such as cleaning, gardening and meal delivery.

Here’s what’s changing, what you will pay and how to prepare.

What’s changing?

Support at Home will have eight budget levels, called “classifications”. This is up from four package levels under the current system.

More levels should mean support that better matches needs, including for higher care needs.

You will receive quarterly budgets that can be used across three broad service groups:

1. clinical care. This includes services such as nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy

2. independence support. This includes personal care such as showering, getting dressed and help with hygiene, transport and social support such as assistance to participate in social interactions (in-person or online)

3. everyday living assistance. This is for cleaning, gardening, shopping assistance and meal delivery.

You can save any unused funds between quarters to cover unplanned needs. The carryover cap is 10% of your quarterly budget or A$1,000, whichever is higher.

In addition to the eight levels, there will also be three short-term, needs-based funding options:

• Restorative Care Pathway. This aims to help maintain or improve independence after an illness or injury, mainly through allied health support ($6,000 for 16 weeks, or up to $12,000 if eligible for extra support)

• End-of-Life Pathway. This helps older Australians remain at home in the last three months of life ($25,000 over 12 weeks)

• Assistive Technology and Home Modifications scheme. This is separate funding for products, equipment and home changes. It has three tiers: low (under $500), medium (up to $2,000) and high (up to $15,000). More may be available with a prescribed need.

The Department of Health has published the list of services that Support at Home will fund, and the items covered under the Assistive Technology and Home Modifications scheme.

So what will you have to pay for?

Clinical care will be fully funded by government. You will not pay for clinical care.

If you get a Support at Home package for the first time after November 1, you will contribute to any independence support and everyday living services you use.

These new fees replace the current basic daily fee and income-tested care fee.

Your percentage contribution will depend on your income and assets and on the type of service. Everyday living services will have the highest contribution amounts.

Around 75% of Support at Home recipients will be full pensioners. If you are one, you will contribute 5% toward independence support costs and 17.5% toward everyday living.

Around 4% of recipients will be self-funded retirees without Commonwealth Seniors Health Cards. If that is you, you will contribute 50% to independence support and 80% for everyday living.

There is a lifetime cap of $130,000 on your contributions across aged care to protect people who receive care for a long time. This cap includes non-clinical contributions in residential aged care.

What if I’m already receiving a home care package?

Current Home Care Package (HCP) recipients will move across automatically. From November 1, you will shift to a “transitioned Support at Home classification” and keep the same funding you receive now.

The ‘no worse off’ rule

If you already receive a Home Care Package or were approved for one before 12 September 2024, your fees under Support at Home will be the same or lower. You will not be worse off, even if you are later re-assessed as needing a higher Support at Home classification.

If you had no fees on your Home Care Package as at September 12 2024, you will never pay fees under Support at Home. Your lifetime Home Care Package cap of $82,018, indexed, will also remain.

5 ways to plan for these changes

The new system starts on 1 November 2025. Here are some simple steps to prepare now.

1) Know how your budget will be managed

Under Support at Home, your budget will be held by Services Australia, so you won’t need to manage expenses yourself. Your provider will work with you to decide how to use it across approved services.

2) See what your monthly statement will look like

Download the official Support at Home monthly statement template so you know how budgets, services and carryover will be shown.

3) Look at some case studies

The government has published some case studies for what cost contributions could look like for:

• new entrants who will pay contributions based on their income and assets

• people approved before September 12 2024 covered by the “no worse off” rule (see “Narelle” and “Harry”).

4) Estimate your own potential out-of-pocket costs

Use My Aged Care’s Support at Home fee estimator to see likely contributions based on your income and assets, to help budget ahead of time.

5) Check indicative service prices

The Department of Health has released a summary of indicative Support at Home prices for common services such as nursing, personal care and domestic assistance. This can help you understand typical hourly rates and compare what different providers charge.

If you can’t afford to pay your fees or contribute to your aged care costs, financial hardship arrangements are available.

Anam Bilgrami, Senior Research Fellow, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University

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

The government used to be quite cosy with independent ACT senator David Pocock. That was back at the start, when it needed his vote.

In its second term, Labor only requires the Greens or the Coalition to pass contested legislation in the upper house. Now Pocock has become an irritant for Labor, as he and other crossbenchers need to demonstrate their relevance in changed circumstances.

Pocock is calling out the government’s gross lack of transparency. “When the numbers were crunched on the last parliament they were more secretive than the Morrison government,” he says, describing this as “one of the most secretive governments in the last 30 years”.

On Wednesday Pocock led a spectacular revolt that united, in a rare display, the Coalition, Greens and other crossbenchers.

The immediate trigger issue was the government’s refusal to release a report by former public service commissioner Lynelle Briggs into jobs for mates. The government commissioned the report in 2023 – spurred by the fact one of the “teals”, Sophie Scamps, was planning a private member’s bill.

The report, titled Review of Public Sector Board Appointments Processes, was completed the same year. But it has been sat on ever since, presumably because it is embarrassing for Labor. Finance Minister Katy Gallagher says, improbably, that the government is still working on the report. If it is, it must have started the work very late and presumably will be accelerating it.

On Wednesday the non-government senators passed a motion to extend the Senate’s hour-long question time, until the issue is resolved, by about half an hour, with the additional questions all to be asked by non-Labor senators. (In a chaotic Thursday afternoon, question time ran three and a half hours.)

The government reacted furiously. The opposition said the Leader of the House of Representatives Tony Burke told Manager of Opposition Business Alex Hawke the government was considering depriving Coalition lower house members of their positions as deputy chairs on various committees.

Liberal frontbencher James Paterson said “the government’s response is more like that of a petty authoritarian government than a democratic one”.

Environment Minister Murray Watt lashed Pocock, on Thursday accusing him of “a dummy spit”. “David Pocock was always in here lecturing the rest of us about the importance of Senate tradition and Senate convention, and he’s just gone and chucked the toys out of the cot yesterday. So he should have a good, hard think about that.”

This incident is not just a bit of byplay. It’s a test of strength between the Senate and the executive. Politically it is important because it highlights a concerning feature of the Albanese government – its penchant for secrecy. While governments generally have secrecy as their default position, Labor came in promising to behave differently.

Observers believe Anthony Albanese is the main driver of limiting information. We know for certain he is not a fan of freedom of information – the current bill for changes to FOI that the government has before parliament would (further) inhibit access to information about what is happening at senior levels of government.

The inclination to secrecy is part of the government’s disappointing record more generally on integrity issues, highlighted this week by the Centre for Public Integrity, an independent research institute chaired by Anthony Whealy, a respected legal figure.

The CPI issued “The Albanese Government’s Integrity Report Card”, which showed poor results on various fronts.

The centre urges the government to “reset course – to honour its commitments to transparency, respect for parliament, robust checks and balances, and action to stamp out corruption and undue influence”.

The CPI accuses the government of “leaning into a culture of secrecy”, highlighting the flawed freedom of information bill.

It says the government has failed to rein in the power of lobbyists. One big thing that compromises both sides of politics is how political parties sell access to their senior figures, for large sums. Labor has its Federal Labor Business Forum; the Liberals their Australian Business Network. Companies sign up for meetings at party conferences and other events to get into decision-makers ears. It is surely a distortion of democracy.

For an opposition to hold a government to account requires resources. The CPI report criticises the government’s cut in the staff allocation it has provided to the opposition.

Albanese has been particularly arbitrary when it has come to resources for Senate crossbenchers. Instead of a general rule, some crossbenchers (including Pocock) have received more staff than others, according to prime ministerial preference. Labor defector Senator Fatima Payman was given minimal staff.

The CPI criticises that the scrutiny of Indigenous Affairs has been reduced by removing the previous dedicated day at Senate estimates to examine this area. The government also “continues to exempt major executive instruments from parliamentary review”.

On the issue of “frank and fearless advice” from the public service, the CPI points to the government ignoring key recommendations from the Thodey review, which reported under the Morrison government – notably recommending changes to the appointment and tenure of departmental secretaries. These would strengthen the independence of the public service, the CPI says.

And what of jobs for mates? The CPI says the government has made little progress on, and has little appetite for, “one of Australia’s most pressing integrity reforms”.

It quotes Gallagher’s words when she announced the Briggs inquiry – she said it was “all about putting an end to the jobs for mates culture that defined the previous Morrison government’s public sector appointments”.

Under the Albanese government “appointments continue to be made without sufficient guardrails”, the CPI says. It points to the recent choice of the new head of the Office of National Intelligence, Kathy Klugman, who went straight from the Prime Minister’s Office. (The government is enraged by this, seeing it as a slur, because she was a deputy secretary in the Department of Foreign Affairs seconded to the Prime Mnister’s Office.)

The CPI also notes legislation for the Australian Centre for Disease Control “establishes a major public office with no provision for merit-based appointment”.

The CPI calls for the release of the Briggs report and for the government to “legislate transparent, merit-based appointment processes across the public sector”.

The ball’s in the government’s court.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

Earlier this year, the consumer watchdog fined three retailers, Michael Hill, MyHouse and Hairhouse Online, almost A$20,000 each for advertising “site-wide discounts” that allegedly never applied to all items on the website.

At first glance, this might look like a straightforward case of using allegedly misleading advertising for an economic benefit. Yet the implications go further.

Years of exposure to constant promotions have trained shoppers to chase a bargain, promoting “clickbaiting”: tactics designed to lure consumers into browsing.

Businesses spend heavily to secure the spot on your social media feed, and that investment has to be recouped. The most effective way is through personalised, persistent ad campaigns that quietly push consumers to buy more.

The way these ad campaigns currently collect data leaves consumers exposed. They also feed into broader concerns about overproduction, which in turn drives overconsumption. That benefits the retailers, but it fuels waste.

Bargains and the data you give away

When you click on an ad, whether it is on a brand’s website or its social media feed, you are not just interacting with the campaign. Behind the scenes, these platforms are collecting your data, analysing your behaviour, and using it to shape personalised ads designed just for you.

Australia’s discount season kicks off in November and extends through to January. With Australians ready to consume, buying gifts for family and themselves, marketing teams go into overdrive. They flood websites and social media feeds with discount banners.

Every time a consumer clicks on an ad, they are revealing something about their shopping patterns. This information is collected through data harvesting (gathering user data) and data mining (analysing patterns in that data). The platform records and shares this information with the business to show the effectiveness of the campaign and whether it led to a conversion (a purchase, sign-up, or other intended action).

Behind this, tracking runs much deeper. Ads use “cookies”, which are tiny digital files that remember your browsing activity such as which sites you visit and how often. “Tracking pixels” quietly collect details such as your IP address, geo-location, time zone, and the type of device used. Together, these build a profile that helps predict your preferences and target you with similar ads later.

A long list of companies have access to your data

Advertisers also gather demographic and behavioural data, such as, your age, gender, interests and browsing history. They can tap data from other apps in your phone that share information through “third parties”. This is one of the vaguest terms in privacy policies. It sounds harmless, but usually hides a long list of unnamed companies getting access to your data.

This information creates a pool of bigger data which allows brands to “re-target” consumers, showing the same or related ads repeatedly. This triggers what psychologists call the “mere exposure effect”: the more you see something, the more familiar and trustworthy it feels. Over time that familiarity can nudge consumers towards buying, not because they needed it but simply because they had seen it so often. This subconsciously promotes overconsumption.

Although marketing campaigns are designed to make consumers buy, even if they do not, they still give away something of great value. Every click, scroll, or view generates data that is later used or sold to monetise; shaping targeted advertising, influencing consumer behaviour and creating economic value.

Did we really consent to this?

A government survey in 2023 showed that Australians do not fully understand the data privacy implications.

The Privacy Act 1988 forms Australia’s main legal framework, and is currently under review. But it only applies to businesses with an annual turnover above A$3 million. While most large retailers easily surpass the threshold, what’s less clear is whether the third parties in the privacy policies do.

In Australia, implied consent is often considered sufficient. If a website states in its privacy policy that it collects data, simply browsing the site is considered consent. A site provides little control over individual cookies unless the user manually adjusts their browser settings. Clicking an ad on social media can also be taken as agreeing to data collection.

In Australia, you either do not see a consent box at all or instead encounter a line stating that “by browsing this site, you agree to our privacy policy”. In both cases, consent is implied.

Stricter rules

In contrast, a website regulated under European Union regulations must clearly explain what data it collects. Only essential cookies are active by default. Marketing and tracking cookies are switched off unless consumers actively choose to allow them.

The difference is stark. The EU imposes stricter rules on data ownership, profiling and behavioural tracking, with no tolerance for vague implied consent. In Australia, behavioural tracking and targeted advertising depend on implied consent, typically hidden in lengthy, jargon-heavy privacy polices that few consumers can navigate.

While data privacy laws are still catching up, educating consumers is crucial to helping them understand how their data is used to influence them into overconsuming.

So now you know what really happens behind every click or “agree” button; the question is, will you still fall for the trick?

Aayushi Badhwar, Lecturer in Enterprise and Technology, RMIT University

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

Last week, OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Atlas, a web browser that promises to revolutionise how we interact with the internet. The company’s CEO, Sam Altman, described it as a “once-a-decade opportunity” to rethink how we browse the web.

The promise is compelling: imagine an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant that follows you across every website, remembers your preferences, summarises articles, and handles tedious tasks such as booking flights or ordering groceries on your behalf.

But beneath the glossy marketing lies a more troubling reality. Atlas is designed to be “agentic”, able to autonomously navigate websites and take actions in your logged-in accounts. This introduces security and privacy vulnerabilities that most users are unprepared to manage.

While OpenAI touts innovation, it’s quietly shifting the burden of safety onto unsuspecting consumers who are being asked to trust an AI with their most sensitive digital decisions.

What makes agent mode different

At the heart of Atlas’s appeal is “agent mode”.

Unlike traditional web browsers where you manually navigate the internet, agent mode allows ChatGPT to operate your browser semi-autonomously. For example, when prompted to “find a cocktail bar near you and book a table”, it will search, evaluate options, and attempt to make a reservation.

The technology works by giving ChatGPT access to your browsing context. It can see every open tab, interact with forms, click buttons and navigate between pages just as you would.

Combined with Atlas’s “browser memories” feature, which logs websites you visit and your activities on them, the AI builds an increasingly detailed understanding of your digital life.

This contextual awareness is what enables agent mode to work. But it’s also what makes it dangerously vulnerable.

A perfect storm of security risks

The risks inherent in this design go beyond conventional browser security concerns.

Consider prompt injection attacks, where malicious websites embed hidden commands that manipulate the AI’s behaviour.

Imagine visiting what appears to be a legitimate shopping site. The page, however, contains invisible instructions directing ChatGPT to scrape personal data from all open tabs, such as an active medical portal or a draft email, and then extract the sensitive details without ever needing to access a password.

Similarly, malicious code on one website could potentially influence the AI’s behaviour across multiple tabs. For example, a script on a shopping site could trick the AI agent into switching to your open banking tab and submitting a transfer form.

Atlas’s autofill capabilities and form interaction features can become attack vectors. This is especially the case when an AI is making split-second decisions about what information to enter and where to submit it.

The personalisation features compound these risks. Atlas’s browser memories create comprehensive profiles of your behavior: websites you visit, what you search for, what you purchase, and content you read.

While OpenAI promises this data won’t train its models by default, Atlas is still storing more highly personal data in one place. This consolidated trove of information represents a honeypot for hackers.

Should OpenAI’s business model evolve, it could also become a gold mine for highly targeted advertising.

OpenAI says it has tried to protect users’ security and has run thousands of hours of focused simulated attacks. It also says it has “added safeguards to address new risks that can come from access to logged-in sites and browsing history while taking actions on your behalf”.

However, the company still acknowledges “agents are susceptible to hidden malicious instructions, [which] could lead to stealing data from sites you’re logged into or taking actions you didn’t intend”.

A downgrade in browser security

This marks a major escalation in browser security risks.

For example, sandboxing is a security approach designed to keep websites isolated and prevent malicious code from accessing data from other tabs. The modern web depends on this separation.

But in Atlas, the AI agent isn’t malicious code – it’s a trusted user with permission to see and act across all sites. This undermines the core principle of browser isolation.

And while most AI safety concerns have focused on the technology producing inaccurate information, prompt injection is more dangerous. It’s not the AI making a mistake; it’s the AI following a hostile command hidden in the environment.

Atlas is especially vulnerable because it gives human-level control to an intelligence layer that can be manipulated by reading a single malicious line of text on an untrusted site.

Think twice before using

Before agentic browsing becomes mainstream, we need rigorous third-party security audits from independent researchers who can stress-test Atlas’s defenses against these risks. We need clearer regulatory frameworks that define liability when AI agents make mistakes or get manipulated. And we need OpenAI to prove, not simply promise, that its safeguards can withstand determined attackers.

For people who are considering downloading Atlas, the advice is straightforward: extreme caution.

If you do use Atlas, think twice before you enable agent mode on websites where you handle sensitive information. Treat browser memories as a security liability and disable them unless you have a compelling reason to share your complete browsing history with an AI. Use Atlas’s incognito mode as your default, and remember that every convenience feature is simultaneously a potential vulnerability.

The future of AI-powered browsing may indeed be inevitable, but it shouldn’t arrive at the expense of user security. OpenAI’s Atlas asks us to trust that innovation will outpace exploitation. History suggests we shouldn’t be so optimistic.

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

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

Right now, more than 311,000 Australian Facebook users can apply for a slice of a A$50 million compensation fund from tech giant Meta – the largest ever payment for a breach of Australians’ privacy.

But the clock is ticking. Even if you’re eligible, you only have until December 31 2025 to make your claim. Similar payouts have already begun in the United States.

From who’s eligible, to how to make a claim, to how much the eventual payout might be: here’s what you need to know.

Why so many Australians can apply

The landmark settlement arose from Meta’s involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal: a massive data breach in the 2010s, when a British data firm harvested private information from 87 million Facebook profiles worldwide.

It led to a record-breaking US$5 billion penalty (about $A7.7 billion today) in the US against Meta as Facebook’s parent company, and the creation of a US$725 million (A$1.1 billion) compensation scheme for affected Americans.

Here in Australia, an investigation by the national privacy regulator – the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner – found Cambridge Analytica used the This Is Your Digital Life personality quiz app to extract personal information.

That investigation found just 53 Australian Facebook users installed the app. But another 311,074 Australian Facebook users were friends of those 53 people, meaning the app could have requested their information too.

In December 2024, the Information Commissioner announced she had settled a court case with Meta in return for an “enforceable undertaking”, including a record A$50 million payment program.

Claims opened on June 30 this year and close on December 31.

Who can apply?

You can apply if you:

• held a Facebook account between 2 November 2013 and 17 December 2015 (the eligibility period)

• were in Australia for more than 30 days during that period, and

• either installed the Life app or were Facebook friends with someone who did.

How to apply – but watch for scams

The Facebook Payment Program is being administered by consultants KPMG. (Meta has to pay KPMG to run it; that doesn’t come out of the $50 million fund.)

That website is where to go with questions or to lodge a claim.

Meta has sent all Australians it knows may be eligible this “token” notification within Facebook:

You may be entitled to receive payment from litigation recently settled in Australia. Learn more.

Try this link to see if the company has records of you or your friends logging into the Digital Life app. If there are, you should be able to use the “fast track” application.

If you didn’t get that notification but you think you were affected, you can make a claim using the standard process by proving:

• your identity, such as with a passport or driver’s licence
• you held a Facebook account and were located in Australia during the eligibility period.

But watch out for scammers pretending to be from Facebook or to be helping with claims.

Which payout could you be eligible for?

You need to choose to apply for compensation under one of two “classes”, requiring different types of proof.

Class 1: the harder option, expected to get higher payouts

To claim for “specific loss or damage”, you’ll need to provide documented evidence of economic and/or non-economic loss or damages. For example, this could include out-of-pocket medical or counselling costs, or having to move if your personal details were made public.

You’ll also need to show that damage was caused by the Cambridge Analytica data breach. For many people, proving extensive loss or damage may be difficult.

Class 1 claims will be decided first. There are no predetermined payout amounts; each will be decided individually.

If your class 1 claim is unsuccessful, but you’re otherwise eligible for a payout, you will be able to get a class 2 payout instead.

Class 2: the easier option, likely to get smaller payouts

Alternatively, you can choose to claim only for loss or damage based on “a generalised concern or embarrassment” caused by the data breach.

It’s a much easier process – but also likely to be a much smaller payment.

All class 2 claimants will receive the same amount, after the class 1 payouts.

These claimants only need to provide a statutory declaration that they have a genuine belief the breach caused them concern or embarrassment.

In Meta’s enforceable undertaking with the Information Commissioner, it states KPMG is able to apply a cap on payments to claimants. It also says if there is money left after all the payouts, KPMG will pay that amount to the Australian government’s Consolidated Revenue Fund.

Meta told The Conversation:

There is not a pre-determined cap on payments. The appropriate time to determine whether any cap should apply to payments made to claimants is following the end of the registration period [December 31].

So it’s not yet clear how much of the $50 million fund will go to Australian claimants versus how much could end up going to the federal government.

Payments are expected to be made from around August 2026.

How much are payouts likely to be?

Payouts from similar settlements by Meta elsewhere have been very small. For example, US Facebook users eligible for their US$725 million compensation scheme have expressed surprise at the size of their payouts. One report suggests the average US payment is around US$30 (A$45) each.

Here in Australia, a lot will depend on how many people bother to register between now and December 31.

Graham Greenleaf, Honorary Professor, Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University and Katharine Kemp, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law & Justice; Lead, UNSW Public Interest Law & Tech Initiative, UNSW Sydney

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

You call your teen’s name, but they don’t respond. They’re staring past you. You call again, louder this time. Nothing – how rude.

But what if they’re zoning out?

For some teens, this can be a sign of dissociation, a temporary disconnection from thoughts, feelings, body or surroundings. It’s the brain’s way of protecting itself from overwhelming stress or emotion.

Dissociation is often linked to trauma – experiences that feel deeply distressing or life-threatening.

But because dissociation is quiet and invisible, it often goes unnoticed. A withdrawn or “spacey” teen draws less attention than one who’s anxious or acting out. Misunderstanding this response can lead to frustration and strained relationships.

In two recent studies, we interviewed teens who dissociate, as well as their parents and clinicians. We wanted to understand better what it feels like when it happens – and what would help.

What is dissociation?

Dissociation is the brain’s safety switch. When emotions or memories feel too intense, the brain creates distance, like mentally stepping out of the room.

It’s common to experience mild forms of dissociation, such as zoning out during a boring meeting. But for teens who’ve experienced trauma, it can feel more intense and be more disruptive.

Many people underestimate how common trauma is for young people.

Worldwide, almost three in four teens have experienced at least one traumatic event, such as violence, serious accidents, or the death of a loved one. In Western countries, this may be closer to one in two.

Distressing content is also streamed directly to teens’ devices. Violent videos, cyberbullying or hate-based online abuse can all trigger overwhelmed feelings.

When feelings become too much to handle, dissociation offers immediate relief. But over-use of dissociation to cope can disrupt learning, relationships and daily life.

Surveys suggest this clinical form of dissociation affects 7–11% of high school students, making it as common as anxiety disorders.

Yet dissociation in young people is still not well understood, even by professionals.

What we wanted to find out

To better understand dissociation, our research team spoke with dissociating teens about what the experience feels like, what triggers it and what helps.

Seven teenagers who had experienced significant trauma and were receiving care at a Western Australian mental health service shared their experiences. Given dissociation can affect memory and awareness, we also interviewed each teen’s parent and primary clinician.

While our study involved a small number of teens, their reflections gave us powerful insight into the lived experience of dissociation in adolescence.

What teens told us

Teens described dissociation as feeling disconnected from their body or as though reality had gone blurry.

Lisa* (age 17) said:

I could look in the mirror and not feel like it was me […] I knew it was me, but I didn’t feel like it was me.

Verity* (age 14) explained:

I’m zoned out and don’t notice what’s going on around me. […] People could be calling my name or waving in my face, and like, I don’t notice.

Parents told us their teens could sometimes become completely unresponsive – unable to move or talk – or have emotional outbursts they later couldn’t remember.

Dissociation was most likely when teens felt strong emotions triggered by reminders of trauma, conflict or peer rejection.

What helps

Many teens said the most helpful thing was knowing a trusted person was nearby. They often didn’t want advice or questions – just reassurance someone would stay close.

Lisa said:

I like having company because I don’t cope on my own […] it’s helpful to have someone just wait with me until it’s over.

Sometimes, they wanted more active help with strategies.

Amy* (age 16) said calming techniques can help:

if someone else is there and they’re telling me what to do […] I can’t really do it on my own when I’m like that [dissociating].

Others said retreating to quiet spaces helped them come back to the present.

But when they didn’t feel able to reach out for support, some teens turned to less helpful strategies, like disappearing into fantasy worlds for hours.

Our research suggests that to reduce the chances of this, it’s important for teens to know you’re there.

What parents can do

Bullying, rejection or failure can all feel catastrophic to a developing mind. Teens may also experience traumas adults don’t know about.

If a teen seems distant or unresponsive, stay curious rather than frustrated. Ask yourself what might be happening beneath the surface.

When dissociation happens, stay physically present and calm. Offer to help them with activities like going for a walk, breathing slowly, or doing something sensory, such as holding a warm drink.

If dissociation happens frequently or severely, consider reaching out to a mental health professional or GP for support.

Why it matters

Dissociation isn’t bad behaviour – it’s a coping response to trauma and stress, and can be a sign a teen is overwhelmed. When adults recognise this, they can respond with empathy instead of frustration.

We’d like to see trauma-informed approaches in homes and schools. This means building safety and trust with young people and supporting collaboration.

Offering choice (for example, taking a short break or choosing where they sit in the classroom) can empower them to have some control over their environment. Calm, sensory-friendly spaces can also help kids feel safe and ready to learn.

Recognising dissociation and responding with patience and compassion can help your teen and strengthen your relationship in the process.

*Names have been changed to protect privacy.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline (ages 5–25 and parents) on 1800 55 1800.

Bronwyn Milkins, Postdoctoral Researcher in Youth Trauma and Dissociation, The Kids Research Institute Australia and Helen Milroy, Professor & Director, Centre for Aboriginal Medical and Dental Health (CAMDH), The University of Western Australia

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

Social media and lifestyle magazines have turned gluten – a protein in wheat, rye and barley – into a dietary villain.

Athletes and celebrities have promoted gluten-free eating as the secret to better health and performance.

But our review in The Lancet published today challenges that idea.

By examining decades of research, we found that for most people who think they react to gluten, gluten itself is rarely the cause.

Symptoms but not coeliac

Coeliac disease is when the body’s immune system attacks itself when someone eats gluten, leading to inflammation and damage to the gut.

But people with gut or other symptoms after eating foods containing gluten can test negative for coeliac disease or wheat allergy. They are said to have non-coeliac gluten sensitivity.

We wanted to understand whether gluten itself, or other factors, truly cause their symptoms.

What we did and what we found

Our study combined more than 58 studies covering symptom changes and possible ways they could arise. These included studying the immune system, gut barrier, microbes in the gut, and psychological explanations.

Across studies, gluten-specific reactions were uncommon and, when they occurred, changes in symptoms were usually small. Many participants who believed they were “gluten sensitive” reacted equally – or more strongly – to a placebo.

One landmark trial looked at the role of fermentable carbohydrates (known as FODMAPs) in people who said they were sensitive to gluten (but didn’t have coeliac disease). When people ate a low-FODMAP diet – avoiding foods such as certain fruits, vegetables, legumes and cereals – their symptoms improved, even when gluten was reintroduced.

Another showed fructans – a type of FODMAP in wheat, onion, garlic and other foods – caused more bloating and discomfort than gluten itself.

This suggests most people who feel unwell after eating gluten are sensitive to something else. This could be FODMAPs such as fructans, or other wheat proteins. Another explanation could be that symptoms reflect a disorder in how the gut interacts with the brain, similar to irritable bowel syndrome.

Some people may be truly sensitive to gluten. However, current evidence suggests this is uncommon.

People expected symptoms

A consistent finding is how expecting to have symptoms profoundly shapes people’s symptoms.

In blinded trials, when people unknowingly ate gluten or placebo, symptom differences almost vanished.

Some who expected gluten to make them unwell developed identical discomfort when exposed to a placebo.

This nocebo effect – the negative counterpart of placebo – shows that belief and prior experience influence how the brain processes signals from the gut.

Brain-imaging research supports this, showing that expectation and emotion activate brain regions involved in pain and how we perceive threats. This can heighten sensitivity to normal gut sensations.

These are real physiological responses. What the evidence is telling us is that focusing attention on the gut, coupled with anxiety about symptoms or repeated negative experiences with food, has real effects. This can sensitise how the gut interacts with the brain (known as the gut–brain axis) so normal digestive sensations are felt as pain or urgency.

Recognising this psychological contribution doesn’t mean symptoms are imagined. When the brain predicts a meal may cause harm, gut sensory pathways amplify every cramp or sensation of discomfort, creating genuine distress.

This helps explain why people remain convinced gluten is to blame even when blinded studies show otherwise. Symptoms are real, but the mechanism is often driven by expectation rather than gluten.

So what else could explain why some people feel better after going gluten-free? Such a change in the diet also reduces high-FODMAP foods and ultra-processed products, encourages mindful eating and offers a sense of control. All these can improve our wellbeing.

People also tend to eat more naturally gluten-free, nutrient-dense foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts, which may further support gut health.

The cost of going gluten-free

For the approximately 1% of the population with coeliac disease, avoiding gluten for life is essential.

But for most who feel better gluten-free, gluten is unlikely to be the true problem.

There’s also a cost to going gluten-free unnecessarily. Gluten-free foods are, on average, 139% more expensive than standard ones. They are also often lower in fibre and key nutrients.

Avoiding gluten long term can also reduce diversity in your diet, alter your gut microbes and reinforce anxiety about eating.

Is it worth getting tested?

Unlike coeliac disease or a wheat allergy, non-coeliac gluten sensitivity has no biomarker – there’s no blood test or tissue marker that can confirm it.

Diagnosis instead relies on excluding other conditions and structured dietary testing.

Based on our review, we recommend clinicians:

• rule out coeliac disease and wheat allergy first

• optimise the quality of someone’s overall diet

• trial a low-FODMAP diet if symptoms persist

• only then, consider a four to six-week dietitian-supervised gluten-free trial, followed by a structured re-introduction of gluten-containing foods to see whether gluten truly causes symptoms.

This approach keeps restriction targeted and temporary, avoiding unnecessary long-term exclusion of gluten.

If gluten doesn’t explain someone’s symptoms, combining dietary guidance with psychological support often works best. That’s because expectation, stress and emotion influence our symptoms. Cognitive-behavioural or exposure-based therapies can reduce food-related fear and help people safely reintroduce foods they once avoided.

This integrated model moves beyond the simplistic “gluten is bad” narrative toward personalised, evidence-based gut–brain care.

Jessica Biesiekierski, Associate Professor of Human Nutrition, The University of Melbourne

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

Unlike in the United States and New Zealand, it’s illegal in Australia to advertise prescription medicines directly to the public.

The main idea is to avoid demand for a drug that may not be appropriate, but which doctors may feel under pressure to prescribe.

But drug companies can get around this restriction by running “awareness” ads that indirectly promote their products.

For instance, we’re currently seeing ads raising awareness about weight loss that don’t mention the names of specific Ozempic-style drugs. Instead, these ads recommend you speak to your doctor about your weight.

The main argument for such awareness ads is they encourage people to seek help from their doctor, rather than suffer from symptoms they might have been embarrassed about, or have not been able to address themselves.

For instance, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly – which make weight-loss drugs – told the ABC recently their campaigns were trying to raise awareness of obesity as a chronic disease.

The main counterargument is that awareness ads act as drug promotion in disguise.

So, should pharmaceutical companies be allowed to run awareness ads for diseases or conditions their drugs treat?

We asked five experts. Four out of five said no. Here are their detailed answers.

Barbara Mintzes, Professor in Pharmaceutical Policy, School of Pharmacy and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney; David Menkes, Associate Professor in Psychological Medicine, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau; Fiona Willer, Lecturer, Dietitian and Bioethicist, Queensland University of Technology; Jennifer Power, Principal Research Fellow, Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, and Ray Moynihan, Senior Research Manager, University of Sydney and Honorary Assistant Professor, Bond University

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

A year ago, the Commonwealth government established a policy requiring most federal agencies to publish “AI transparency statements” on their websites by February 2025. These statements were meant to explain how agencies use artificial intelligence (AI), in what domains and with what safeguards.

The stated goal was to build public trust in government use of AI – without resorting to legislation. Six months after the deadline, early results from our research (to be published in full later this year) suggest this policy is not working.

We looked at 224 agencies and found only 29 had easily identifiable AI transparency statements. A deeper search found 101 links to statements.

That adds up to a compliance rate of around 45%, although for some agencies (such as defence, intelligence and corporate agencies) publishing a statement is recommended rather than required, and it is possible some agencies could share the same statement. Still, these tentative early findings raise serious questions about the effectiveness of Australia’s “soft-touch” approach to AI governance in the public sector.

Why AI transparency matters

Public trust in AI in Australia is already low. The Commonwealth’s reluctance to legislate rules and safeguards for the use of automated decision making in the public sector – identified as a shortcoming by the Robodebt royal commission – makes transparency all the more critical.

The public expects government to be an exemplar of responsible AI use. Yet the very policy designed to ensure transparency seems to be ignored by many agencies.

With the government also signalling a reluctance to pass economy-wide AI rules, good practice in government could also encourage action from a disoriented private sector. A recent study found 78% of corporations are “aware” of responsible AI practices, but only 29% have actually “implemented” them.

Transparency statements

The transparency statement requirement is the key binding obligation under the Digital Transformation Agency’s policy for the responsible use of AI in government.

Agencies must also appoint an “accountable [AI] official” who is meant to be responsible for AI use. The transparency statements are supposed to be clear, consistent, and easy to find – ideally linked from the agency’s homepage.

In our research, conducted in collaboration with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, we sought to identify these statements, using a combination of automated combing through websites, targeted Google searches, and manual inspection of the list of federal entities facilitated by the information commissioner. This included both agencies and departments strictly bound by the policy and those invited to comply voluntarily.

But we found only a few statements were accessible from the agency’s landing page. Many were buried deep in subdomains or required complex manual searching. Among agencies for which publishing a statement was recommended, rather than required, we struggled to find any.

More concerningly, there were many for which we could not find the statement even where it was required. This may just be a technical failure, but given the effort we put in, it suggests a policy failure.

A toothless requirement

The transparency statement requirement is binding in theory but toothless in practice. There are no penalties for agencies that fail to comply. There is also no open central register to track who has or has not published a statement.

The result is a fragmented, inconsistent landscape that undermines the very trust the policy was meant to build. And the public has no way to understand – or challenge – how AI is being used in decisions that affect their lives.

How other countries do it

In the United Kingdom, the government established a mandatory AI register. But as the Guardian reported in late 2024, many departments failed to list their AI use, despite the legal requirement to do so.

The situation seems to have slightly improved this year, but still many high-risk AI systems identified by UK civil society groups are still not published on the UK government’s own register.

The United States has taken a firmer stance. Despite anti-regulation rhetoric from the White House, the government has so far maintained its binding commitments to AI transparency and mitigation of risk.

Federal agencies are required to assess and publicly register their AI systems. If they fail to do so, the rules say they must stop using them.

Towards responsible use of AI

In the next phase of our research, we will analyse the content of the transparency statements we did find.

Are they meaningful? Do they disclose risks, safeguards and governance structures? Or are they vague and perfunctory? Early indications suggest wide variation in quality.

If governments are serious about responsible AI, they must enforce their own policies. If determined university researchers cannot easily find the statements – even assuming they are somewhere deep on the website – that cannot be called transparency.

The authors wish to thank Shuxuan (Annie) Luo for her contribution to this research.

José-Miguel Bello y Villarino, Senior Research Fellow, Sydney Law School, University of Sydney; Alexandra Sinclair, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, and Kimberlee Weatherall, Professor of Law, University of Sydney

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

Children’s screams echo off concrete walls as they navigate bright-painted monkey bars. Families huddle around a sausage sizzle. Teenagers lounge on borrowed towels near a palm grove. Washing machines hum quietly in the corner.

But we are inside the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Mike Hewson’s The Key’s Under the Mat is one of the most ambitious and intelligent works of public art created in Australia in recent years.

What makes this work so remarkable is how completely it succeeds on multiple registers simultaneously. It’s a functioning neighbourhood park, a sculptural tour de force, and a sophisticated meditation on what we mean by “public space”.

Hewson has thought through every detail with extraordinary care. Inside the gallery’s cavernous underground tank gallery, brass spoons are hammered into custom concrete pavers. Steel rails are hand-painted rather than powder-coated, giving them a casual, approachable quality. Trinkets and tiles are embedded throughout like hidden treasures. Look down at the ground and the pavers read like abstract paintings.

The craft is exquisite – but it doesn’t announce itself. Instead, it creates an environment where people feel genuinely welcome to cook, play, do laundry and linger.

And they do. Watching families engage with this space – not in hushed gallery tones but with the comfortable ease of a neighbourhood park – reveals the work’s most radical achievement: most people using it (primarily children under 12, on the day I visit) have no idea they’re in an artwork.

‘Hopeful embellishment’

The work emerged from the artist’s experience of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Witnessing the collapse of structures that had seemed permanent, Hewson became fascinated by provisional repair, improvised solutions, and the community-building gestures that emerge from disaster.

Hewson’s subsequent projects have celebrated what curator Justin Paton calls “defiant repair and hopeful embellishment”: the beauty of making-do with care and resourcefulness.

The Key’s Under the Mat brings this ethos into dialogue with institutional space in ways that are both generous and thought-provoking.

The vast tank at the Art Gallery of NSW was built urgently in 1942 to hold fuel for the war effort, then abandoned for decades before being drained, cleaned and opened to the public in 2022. Here, it becomes the perfect container for Hewson’s vision of repurposed, reimagined public infrastructure.

The work’s intelligence lies not just in what it provides, but in what it reveals about the nature of “public” space itself. The gallery is a public institution, and entry is free. Yet accessing the tank still requires certain conditions: geographic proximity, availability during gallery hours, cultural confidence to enter a major art institution, and the knowledge that this remarkable space exists at all.

By creating functioning public amenities – laundromat, barbecue, playground – Hewson makes visible something we often overlook: “public” always comes with conditions. Laundromats require proximity, mobility and often money. Park barbecues require time, transport and sometimes booking systems. No public space is universally accessible, even when it’s genuinely free and open.

The project illuminates this with remarkable clarity. In trying to create the most welcoming, functional and generous public space possible within a gallery, Hewson reveals both what institutions can achieve and where their reach inevitably stops. It’s a paradox the work holds lightly but meaningfully.

Institutional critique; joyful amenity

There’s something profound about how the work operates for different audiences.

Children climb and play without needing to understand they’re experiencing art. Art-literate visitors notice the handmade pavers, the embedded spoons, the deliberate aesthetic choices.

Both experiences are valid; both are intended. The work makes room for multiple ways of engaging – from pure use to deep analysis.

This multiplicity extends to a question Hewson leaves deliberately open: should there be more interpretive signage explaining the work’s intentions and extraordinary craft? The current approach lets the art disappear into life, functioning without demanding recognition. But it also means the labour and thought remain visible primarily to those already versed in contemporary art’s vocabularies. There’s no single right answer – and the work’s refusal to choose feels intentional.

Hewson has described children as his “first ambassadors and interpreters” for this work. Watching kids genuinely inhabit the space confirms his instinct. They don’t need permission or explanation – they simply use what’s there.

The Key’s Under the Mat achieves something rare: it is simultaneously a sophisticated institutional critique and a genuinely joyful public amenity.

The work’s title captures its spirit perfectly. It is an invitation, a gesture of trust and openness. That the mat sits within an institution with its own forms of access doesn’t negate the generosity of the gesture – it contextualises it. Hewson has created the most open, welcoming, thoughtfully crafted public space he can within the given parameters, and in doing so, has made us think more carefully about what “public” means in all contexts.

The Key’s Under the Mat doesn’t solve the contradictions inherent in institutional public space. It doesn’t need to. Its achievement is making those contradictions visible, tangible and surprisingly joyful to experience. In a cultural landscape often divided between art that’s critically sophisticated and art that’s genuinely popular, Hewson has created something that brilliantly refuses to choose.

The Key’s Under the Mat is now open at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Sanné Mestrom, Senior Lecturer, DECRA Fellow, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney

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

When we think of spies, we may go to images of people in trench coats and dark glasses, trying to steal government papers. Or someone trying to tap the phone of a senior official.

The reality of course can be much more sophisticated. One emerging area of concern is how countries protect their university research from foreign interference. And how we safely do research with other countries – a vital way to ensure Australia’s work is cutting edge.

This week, research security experts including myself will meet in Brussels to talk about how to conduct free and open research in the face of growing security risks around the world.

What does Australia need to do to better protect its university research?

What is research security?

Research security means protecting research and development (R&D) from foreign government interference or unauthorised access. It is especially important in our universities, where the freedom to publish, collaborate, and work together is seen as a virtue.

Australia’s universities face escalating, deliberate efforts to steal commercially or militarily valuable research, repress views critical of foreign regimes, and database hacking.

As my July 2025 report found, adversaries are no longer just stealing data or cultivating informal relationships. We’re seeing deliberate efforts to insert malicious insiders, target researchers and exploit data and cyber vulnerabilities.

ASIO head Mike Burgess has stressed there is an incredible danger facing our academic community from spies and secret agents.

In 2024, Burgess warned of an “A-team” of spies targeting academia:

leading Australian academics and political figures were invited to a conference in an overseas country, with the organisers covering all expenses […]. A few weeks after the conference wrapped up, one of the academics started giving the A-team information about Australia’s national security and defence priorities.

But Australia can’t just stop collaborating with foreign nations. Some are far more scientifically advanced than we are, and we risk cutting ourselves off from developments in the latest technology.

In other cases, we might be unfairly discriminating against researchers from other countries.

The international research landscape is changing

Since January, US President Donald Trump has slashed university funding, banned foreign students and orchestrated a campaign of lawsuits and investigations into campus activities.

This has a huge flow-on effect to Australia, as we have tied ourselves strongly to the US for science and technology funding.

So Australia is looking to the EU as a more reliable and sustainable funding partner.

It has reactivated talks to join the €100 billion (A$179 billion) Horizon Europe fund. Australia abandoned its original attempt in 2023 citing “potential cost of contributions to projects”.

Horizon Europe isn’t just a massive pot of money for Australian researchers. It’s also a way to bring Australia closer to the EU on other initiatives, like the EU Science Diplomacy Alliance, which ensures scientific developments are pursued for the safety, security and benefits for all people.

Yet if Australia wants to join Horizon Europe, it will need to prove it takes research security as seriously as other EU nations. In April 2024, Australia and the EU agreed to strengthen research security and

measures to protect critical technology and to counter foreign interference in research and innovation.

Australia does not have an adequate policy

But Australia does not have a proper national policy on research security. It also does not have a proper guide for our 43 universities in how they should approach it or what the minimum standards are.

The guidelines we have for “countering foreign interference” are entirely voluntary, and not centrally monitored for compliance in any way.

A 2022 federal parliamentary report detailed a litany of attempts by foreign agents to get access to our universities. It made 27 recommendations about improving that situation. To date, the federal government has not yet acted on about three quarters of these.

These included a recommendation to ban involvement in “talent recruitment programs”, where academics are offered vast sums of money or other benefits to duplicate their research in countries like China.

The EU approach

Australia’s approach is in stark contrast to the EU, which has made research security a priority.

In May 2024, the European Commission directed all 27 member states to adopt laws and policies to “work together to safeguard sensitive knowledge from being misused”.

Germany has since adopted “security ethics committees” – modelled on human and animal ethics committees – to scrutinise potential projects for dangerous or high-risk research.

The Netherlands, Denmark and United Kingdom all set up government contact points to help academics answer questions about research security practices.

It will take more than just policies

Australia needs clearer, stronger national policies for research security. But if we are going to take this seriously, we need more than just policy guidance.

To properly scrutinise and set up research, universities need time, support and information. This also means they need more funding.

In some universities there might be one person responsible for research security, and this may not be their sole job.

So we also need funding to give academics a way to identify and manage risks in research and support information sharing across institutions.

Through these measures we will be able to demonstrate to the world we are doing research securely – and it is safe to fund and work with Australia.

Brendan Walker-Munro, Senior Lecturer (Law), Southern Cross University

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

Between the end of a summer that had been going on too long and the beginning of a too-warm autumn that would crank up my climate change anxiety to ten, I joined a tai chi class.

I had noticed a sign when I was out walking. Immediately, I went online, paid some money and put my name down for the first available session. Looking back, I wonder why I thought this evening class, held in a suburban community centre, might soothe the assorted anxieties I was carrying. Signing up was an impulsive act, prompted by some deep, yet inarticulate knowing that the way I was feeling would not be eased by words; something different was needed, something physical.

I’d had two big bereavements: first my mother, then a beloved aunt. They had been the two most important women in my life, and suddenly they were gone. Meanwhile, I was under ongoing surveillance following surgery for cancer, caught in that uneasy post-treatment period that tests one’s nerve – because there is nothing to be done but wait.

At certain moments, usually in the middle of the night, a niggling voice would whisper that the cancer might be gone but it could return, that even as I lay there in the dark trying to sleep, some small, festering body part might be plotting treason. Sometimes the voice was that of the naturopath I’d consulted, who’d warned since my body had made a cancer, I needed to avoid the conditions that had allowed that to happen. Which, of course, I would – if only I knew what they may have been.

It was a time when at least once a day I would find myself on the verge of crying; sometimes, inconveniently, the tears broke through. It could happen anywhere – when I was out walking, or in the supermarket; sometimes it happened when I was driving, and I’d have to pull over until I was able to quieten my thoughts enough to drive on.

Inconvenient weeping

I’d almost progressed to feeling tearful about being tearful, when I came across the first of Deborah Levy’s trilogy of autobiographical writings, Things I Don’t Want to Know. In it, Levy documents her bouts of inconvenient weeping. It was riding on escalators at train stations that set off Levy’s tears, especially the upward escalator. She writes: “By the time I got to the top and felt the wind rushing in, it took all my effort to stop myself from sobbing.”

I recognised that effortful feeling of trying to control the sobs. Like Levy, I also knew something had to change. Her solution had been to book a flight to Palma, Majorca, where she was met at the airport by a taxi driver with white clouds floating in both his eyes. On arrival, Levy had bought Spanish cigarettes with the intention of taking up smoking again and when the driver abandoned her on the road to her hotel, she sat on a rock and lit the first cigarette.

It was also somewhat comforting to read, in Joan Didion’s essay Goodbye to All That, how as a young woman in New York, she had found herself crying in elevators and taxis and Chinese laundries. There were certain parts of the city she had to avoid, including Times Square in the afternoons, or the New York Public Library at any time, for any reason.

Her solution was to get married. But I was sorry to learn her crying continued even after her marriage to fellow writer John Gregory Dunne. Didion cried, she writes, “until I was not even aware when I was crying and when I was not”. It was a year in which, she tells us, she understood the meaning of the word “despair”. A doctor expressed the opinion she appeared to be depressed. He wrote down the name and number of a psychiatrist for her, but Didion did not go.

A friend had given me the name of a psychologist who she said had helped her, but I had given up on psychology. Or at least, the psychologists I had consulted when things had been going badly in the past had left me poorer without improving matters.

Now, everything was conspiring to cast me low, including that ever since the cancer surgery, my hair had been shedding – hair I had patiently nurtured through the transition from chemical dyes to natural health, hair I had joyously grown halfway down my back for the first time since childhood. My hair was everywhere in the house and in the car; it even migrated into our food. I knew I had been fortunate to have avoided chemotherapy, with its side serve of hair loss, but now it appeared I was to lose it anyway, albeit more slowly.

I read that both surgery and stress can contribute to thinning hair, and concluded although I had been anaesthetised when surgeons re-sectioned my colon, my body had been present and remained deeply shocked.

In signing up for the tai chi class, I was throwing myself upon the mercy of the universe.

A kind of poetry

The only time I had ever actually seen tai chi involved one of those surreal moments that occasionally occur in life. About five years earlier, I had been driving along the southern terrace that borders Adelaide’s parklands and the car radio was playing a piece of classical music by a Japanese composer.

The sound was spare and melancholy, and when I glanced across to the park I saw a tai chi class in progress. That was not in itself unusual – people use the parklands all the time for various fitness activities. What made time swerve to a halt was that the slow movements of the tai chi people were perfectly in time with the music coming out of my radio.

I had stopped the car to watch. The group practising tai chi couldn’t hear the music, of course, but the synchronicity of movement and sound produced a kind of poetry. Perhaps, then, when I saw the sign advertising “tai chi for health and wellbeing” outside my local community centre, it was this memory of the unexpected beauty I’d witnessed that had nudged me over the hump of my inertia to join.

Tai chi is a form of mind-body exercise that originated in China. Its history is somewhat shadowy, with contributions attributed to various monks and masters reaching back as far as the 12th century, and possibly beyond. In T’ai Chi Ch’uan and I Ching: a choreography of body and mind, Da Liu, a tai chi master, credits the most complete foundations of tai chi to a famous Taoist, Chang San-feng, an ardent follower of Confucius who was known as “The Immortal”.

Da Liu writes that Chang San-feng famously observed a fight between a crane and a snake, and from the way the two animals moved he realised “the value of yielding in the face of strength”. He studied the behaviour of wild animals, clouds, water and trees moving in the wind and “codified these natural movements into a system of exercise”. Da Liu concedes: “We owe the present forms of T’ai Chi to numerous masters […] over many centuries.”

Tai chi has been influenced by Confucian thought, and by traditional Chinese medicine, but its roots lie deep in the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism, which emphasises the natural balance in all things. In Taoist thinking, everything is composed of two opposite but complementary elements: yin and yang. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote eloquently of the principles of yin and yang in his famous work the Tao Te Ching.

In tai chi, the polarities of yin and yang are expressed through the form’s shifts of weight and balance, through hardness yielding to softness, tension releasing to relaxation, and moving the body in ways that expand and contract. Gentler and more meditative than the Chinese martial arts it evolved from, its slow, dance-like postures flow into one another, combining concentration, physical balance, stretching and relaxation, with natural, peaceful breathing.

There are different schools of tai chi. Chen, Yang, Wu and Sun styles are named after the Chinese families who developed them, and the skills are passed orally through the generations.

The form I was learning had been developed by a Taoist monk, Master Moy Lin Shin. The tai chi he brought to the West is a modified version of Yang style’s 108-move set. Its elements are borrowed from the Chinese internal arts of XingYi (a bare-handed fighting form), Bagua (a complex system of eight trigrams, which in tai chi relate to movement and body parts), and Liuhebafa, or “water boxing”, a form characterised by its flowing, fluid movements.

Taoist tai chi has been criticised for these modifications, which are sometimes seen as a dilution of classical tai chi. Criticism focuses on the fact Master Moy removed the “fighting” aspects from his form in favour of emphasising its health benefits. His decision was most likely influenced by the health difficulties of his own early years, as well as by the needs of the people he trained after he emigrated to Canada.

Lou Reed, legendary musician, songwriter and founding member of rock band the Velvet Underground, credits tai chi with saving him after years of self-destructive substance abuse. Reed began a martial arts practice in the 1980s; he came to love the fighting aspect of Chen style, but he was also in awe of tai chi’s power to heal. In a letter published by The New York Times in 2010, Reed wrote:

I wish I could convince you to change your life and save your body and soul. I know it sounds too good. But truly: Tai Chi – why not?“

A lesson in humility

My first class was a lesson in humility. Never a sporty type, never even an adequate dancer, awkward hardly does justice to the feeling of finding myself in the centre of a group of people who, at the instructor’s command, began a series of complex moves they seemed to know by heart. Later, I would learn ushering beginners into the middle is a kindness; it means when they turn, there is someone they can follow.

At the halfway point of that first class, Chinese pu’erh tea was served in tiny porcelain cups. Brewed from the leaves of a variety of tea plant native to Yunnan Province, pu’erh tea goes through a complex fermentation process and is reputed to have many health benefits. After the tea break, it was back to the centre of the floor for more repetitions of the move we’d been working on.

That night, we were practising move 18: Carry Tiger to Mountain. It evolves out of move 17, Cross Hands, which even I could manage. The body turns with the arms bent as if cradling a heavy bundle. Yes, I thought, this sorrow and anxiety I’d been holding was my tiger; a creature burning bright with memories that had become too painful, a body darkly striped with grief.

It felt as wild and dangerous in its way as a real live tiger, but if I could only master the correct way to carry it to the mountain, perhaps I would be able to leave it there and move on.

Tai chi requires complete focus, making it almost impossible to think about anything else. So when I came across American beat poet Alan Ginsberg’s poem about tai chi, it struck me as a somewhat inaccurate portrayal of what happens during tai chi practice. Ginsberg is in his kitchen in New York, the only place in his apartment with enough space to do tai chi, but his moves are interspersed with domestic concerns:

the Crane spreads its wings have I paid the electric bill?

White Crane Spreads its Wings is one of tai chi’s most subtly exhilarating moves. It involves a simultaneous rising and turning, a spine-expanding stretch that, for me, somehow generates a feeling of hope. What it doesn’t do is allow any room for thoughts of "the electric bill”. What was Ginsberg up to, I wonder, as his white crane spread its wings in his kitchen? I can only conclude his electricity bill was a pressing matter in his life at that particular moment.

Studies have shown tai chi can modulate the regions and networks in the brain associated with depression, with mood regulation and processing emotions, and with stress and distress.

A focus on life force

Of the Chinese martial arts, tai chi belongs to the internal arts known collectively as neijia. The focus is on mental, spiritual and “qi” (chi) – or life-force – aspects, rather than the physiological nature of the external martial arts.

The Eight Methods are qi, bone, shape, follow, rise, return, retain, conceal. At this early stage of my study of tai chi, they remain a mystery. But the principles of the Six Harmonies are evident in a muted way in the class teachings, where emphasis is placed on movement with intent, and on developing an awareness of what one is feeling during the moves – internally as well as externally.

For those of us who lose touch with what our bodies are doing and feeling, neglecting to pay attention until they threaten our wellbeing, or even our lives, this fusing of mind and body, spirit and movement, intent and qi, feels like an important survival skill.

For example, every year almost 7,000 women in Australia are diagnosed with a gynaecological cancer. These cancers are characterised by low survival rates and are notoriously difficult to detect. Something like ovarian cancer can show up in many different ways and spread quite widely before being correctly diagnosed.

Increased awareness of our bodies could help us bring the information to our doctors that might assist in earlier diagnoses and better outcomes for these and many other conditions.

In 2020, tai chi was added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list. There have been claims for the practice’s beneficial effects on people living with Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis: conditions that come with a debilitating loss of coordination and balance.

One year-long study of women with MS, carried out between 2019 and 2020, showed measurable improvements in the areas of their balance, gait, mood, cognition – and also in their quality of life.

Cancer as betrayal

My experience of cancer has been that it feels like a betrayal. For decades, my body has carried me through every kind of weather, both actual and emotional. It has reliably bounced back from every health breakdown. No words can adequately describe the sense of loss engendered by a cancer diagnosis, even one that is not yet deemed terminal.

I was fortunate to be diagnosed early, but I was still blindsided by my body’s deceitfulness, its silent treachery; even after surgery, it was a shock to realise the bounce-back appeared provisional. Was this payback for all the times I’d wished for a different physiology – longer legs, straighter hair, slimmer hips? Or for the times I’d just plain hated the way I looked, hated my own clumsiness in the world so much I’d mistreated my closest ally?

Tai chi asks us to turn our awareness to the body with gentleness and precision; to become better at hearing what it has to say. I have felt let down, so when tai chi’s difficult “separations” sequence requires the whole of my weight to be supported by one ankle, one foot, five toes, I ask my body: Will you hold me? Will you keep me from falling? Can I count on you effortlessly as I once did, as a child, as a young woman?

And each time I do not wobble, or have to save myself from falling, it feels like a baby step in a gradual rebuilding of trust, perhaps even of finding forgiveness for the betrayal, a re-bonding with the self at a profound level.

The Taoist Tai Chi logo is the circular yin and yang symbol, with the light and dark sections reversed. It is said to symbolise tai chi’s ability to reverse bad habits and the ageing process, and thus to promote good health. During practice, I hope to reverse the conditions, whatever they may have been, that prompted my body to turn against itself.

But I understand it is a gradual process, as slow and continuous as the movement and pace of tai chi itself, sometimes compared to pulling a silk thread from a cocoon. Pull it too quickly and it breaks; pull it too slowly and it won’t unwind. Slow and gentle doesn’t equate to “weak” or “ineffectual”. Fundamental to tai chi is the concept of “effortless effort”, in which relaxation enables the important inner work to take place.

Less inclined to tears

For me, two months into the practice, my emotions felt more under control; I was less inclined to tears. Week by week, I was discovering that grief and loss are not only held in the heart and mind, but also in the body; muscles and tendons, all the complex systems of nerves and blood and lymph that circulate our distress, are open to being soothed by the language of movement.

As winter set in, I began taking extra classes, going two or three times a week. Pitching up at draughty memorial halls in outlying townships where huge stages were framed by crimson curtains, and where in one case, rows of two-bar electric heaters high up on the walls appeared to be the only heating.

Physically, I found the constant shifting of weight, the expansion and contraction of parts of the body, the striving for a sense of flow, the need to focus, all generated a tangible feeling of wellbeing – though I still felt like an awkward beginner.

In Taoist Tai Chi’s 108-move “set”, some moves – like White Crane Spreads Wings, and Hands Like Clouds – occur multiple times. Learning involves sharpening one’s observational skills, as each move is demonstrated three times by the instructor.

Another subtle aspect of the art is being helped by following those around you who are more skilled, and by their patience in “treading water” for a time while beginners settle in. In this way, tai chi becomes both an individual and a communal endeavour: expressing, through effortless effort, the Taoist ideal of service to others.

To practise the set outside class, the moves must be memorised. It requires patience, persistence and possibly years-long commitment, but studies show the benefits are well worth the effort, especially as we age. Even a tai chi practice of only 24 weeks has demonstrated improved cognitive function in older adults with mild cognitive impairment.

‘I don’t want to seem mystical …’

Lou Reed’s book The Art of the Straight Line: My Tai Chi, edited by his wife, artist Laurie Anderson, was published after Reed’s death. It contains his writings on tai chi and conversations with fellow musicians, artists and tai chi practitioners.

“I have often thought of tai chi as some kind of physical unity to the universe itself, some strange ancient methodology that could link us to the basic energy wave of existence,” he writes. “I don’t want to seem mystical, but something does happen to you when you practice this ancient art.”

Reed became a devotee of Master Ren Guangyi, practising Chen style tai chi for up to two hours a day, and for six or seven days a week. He took Ren on a world tour with him, eventually putting him on stage to do a tai chi set while improvising music to complement the form. The two performed together and engaged in tai chi with the public at Sydney’s 2010 Vivid Festival, which was curated by Reed and Anderson.

In The Art of the Straight Line, in a transcribed conversation between Laurie Anderson and Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (with whom Reed had studied meditation), Anderson movingly recounts how

as Lou died, he was completely conscious. And he was doing Cloud Hands, a tai chi movement, while he died.

Reed had had cancer of the liver and hepatitis, and had undergone a liver transplant six months earlier.

In Things I Do Not Want to Know, Deborah Levy concludes it was the past, specifically her childhood in Africa, that had returned to her when she was sobbing on escalators. After weighing things up in Majorca, she settles down to write. In Goodbye to All That, Joan Didion leaves New York and returns to California. After a time, the moon over the Pacific Ocean and the pervasive scent of jasmine make her tears in New York seem “a long time ago”.

Even so, after the death of her mother, Didion wrote: “There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.” For a long time I had shared that view, but now, as I progressed with tai chi, I was beginning to think there might be ways.

For me, grief for the past has been as much a factor in my tears as my anxiety about the future. Helplessly poised between the two, I found in tai chi a way to manage this position – not by looking back, nor forward, but expanding and contracting into the present moment, shutting out the world’s noise and finding peace within myself through movement and mindfulness. If this sounds too mystical, I can only agree with Lou Reed: “Something does happen to you when you practice this ancient art.”

What is the “something” that happens? It’s difficult to define, and I suspect you feel it almost immediately if you’re going to feel it at all. I’ve noticed that people who’ve never done tai chi come to a first class and they either never return or, like me, embrace it with the zeal of missionaries. In searching for a way to explain the “something”, I can’t find a better place to start than the opening move.

‘I’m confident it’s happening’

The opening to tai chi appears the simplest of movements. The hands, from hanging at the sides with the palms open, rise in front of the body and then slowly float down. It’s the motion one uses when flinging a sheet over a mattress to make a bed, but so much slower. With the upward lifting of the hands, the body contracts; as the hands descend, the body expands and rises.

It is surprising how soothing this motion can be, how almost at once the mind and body calm. The upward lift is driven by pushing up from the floor, with the hands rising as if on puppet strings, but the downward drift comes from dropping the elbows. They are such subtle adjustments, yet the body responds with a palpable quietening.

There is a sense of return in this move, even though it is a beginning. It’s the feeling I get at the end of a long walk when I open the gate from the street and step into our garden. Or when I close the front door behind me and breathe in: home.

In The Art of the Straight Line, Anderson writes that after more than 25 years of practising tai chi, Lou Reed “could actually feel chi. He could pinpoint it, describe it, and trace the way it moved through his body”. She describes how Reed would demonstrate chi by passing one hand over the other.

When I felt that for the first time, I was electrified. I was holding a ball of unbelievably powerful energy and realizing that it could move through me and that this is also what I was made of.

I have not felt the chi moving through me, but it is early days yet. Eight months in, I remember to straighten my spine as I go about my day; I am calmer and have better balance. While I can’t actually see the new neural pathways forming in my brain, I’m confident it is happening.

I continue each week to carry my tiger to the mountain. In the kitchen, while I wait for the kettle or the oven, my white crane spreads its wings. At night, visualising the first 17 moves sends me to sleep. When I practice the difficult cloud hands, I am reminded of Lou Reed: the way he brought his art and his capacity for devotion to tai chi, and was rewarded.

I approach each class with beginner’s mind, and am hopeful of one day experiencing chi’s electrifying energy.

Carol Lefevre, Visiting Research Fellow, Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Adelaide

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

“Hubble bubble toil and trouble” is a quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth that conjures images of evil witches making potions in giant cauldrons. But the truth was that women persecuted as witches were probably legitimate healers of the time.

Prior to the 14th century, women healers were generally tolerated throughout Europe, offering one of the only kinds of medicine available at the time. But from the 14th to the mid-18th century, with the rise of university education, coupled with the increasing power of the church, women healers were often demonised.

University graduates were favoured instead. Women folk healers were now commonly labelled as “witches” and subjected to torture and execution.

Valuable medicinal knowledge may have gotten lost along the way. To rediscover this ancient knowledge, researchers are looking in more detail at some of the major ingredients used in these medicines and assess their scientific worth through a modern lens.

Some of the most famous potions documented in records of medieval treatments were said to contain exotic ingredients such as eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, tongue of dog and adder’s fork. But these were actually synonyms for plants and not animal parts.

Although, animal parts such as frogs and toads were indeed also used in other recipes used by the healers of the time, often for their psychoactive properties.

The majority of the plants folk healers used were native to Europe. But there were also some exotic ingredients, obtained through the spice trade, which began as early as the fifth century.

Eye of newt is mustard seed, most likely the European species Sinapis alba. Modern research has shown it has anti-cough, anti-asthma, anti-inflammatory, anti-nerve damage, anti-androgenic, cardioprotective and anti-tumour effects.

The classical formulations containing dried mustard seed, handed down from ancient medical books or ethnic medical experience, are now widely used in herbal clinics.

Wool of bat is common holly leaves, and has been shown to reduce high levels of fats in the blood, including high cholesterol. It also contains some compounds that are toxic and so self-medication isn’t recommended.

Tongue of dog is actually a plant known as hound’s tongue, attributed to the long leaf shape. It has a history of use across the world for a variety of ailments including malaria, hepatitis and tuberculosis.

The presence of group of natural compounds called pyrrolizidine alkaloids render it highly toxic to the liver. This means that any research showing medicinal promise has to be viewed with some caution.

Adder’s fork refers most likely to the fern, English adder’s tongue, primarily used in folk medicine for wound healing and for promoting healthy blood circulation. It has also been exploited for its skin-enhancing properties by the cosmetic industry.

Witches’ brews

Witchcraft and folk healing are two different arts. However, medieval folk healing did involve elements of superstition, astrological lore and even pagan ritual and so the line between compassionate healer and witch could easily be misrepresented by those in power.

Flight ointments, sleep potions and love potions are often mentioned both in historical records and fictional literature. Commonly containing a potent class of chemical compounds called tropane alkaloids (a class that also includes cocaine), these concoctions would have had some interesting effects.

Flight ointments were applied to a broomstick and to parts of the body with blood vessels close to the surface to aid absorption. There has been much colourful debate as to the exact parts of the body that these ointments were applied to, but the extremities are most frequently mentioned.

This could be viewed as an early form of transdermal application, now found in the delivery of some drugs such as nicotine patches.

These alkaloids, derived from plants of the Solanaceae (potato) family, including deadly nightshade and henbane have intoxicating psychoactive effects, including feelings of lightness, delirium and hallucinations. These effects could easily be experienced as feelings of flying.

Sleep potions often used extracts from foxglove and extracts from the plant Indian snakeroot, containing the drug reserpine, the world’s first drug treatment for high blood pressure. It was reportedly rediscovered after the founder of the Indian herbal medicine company, Himalaya, observed its calming effects on restless elephants during a trip to Burma in the 1930s, hundreds of years after its use in medieval times.

Together these plants and their compounds produce symptoms such as reduced heartbeat, inhibition of adrenaline release and drowsiness, all things that might aid in a restful night’s sleep.

Love potion recipes called for ingredients such as the mandrake plant Mandragora officinalis. The root is a rich source of the same alkaloids found in the sleep potions.

This may appear counter-intuitive but higher doses of these compounds are known to produce increased heartbeat, palpitations and sweating rather than drowsiness. Other plants such as Ephedra sinica (containing a stimulant called ephedrine) and psychoactive Areca catechu (betel nut) have stimulant and euphoric effects linked to increases in adrenaline and serotonin.

A sleep potion can be transformed into a love potion, and should love turn to hate, a further increase in dosage would transform these plants into poisons. So it’s unsurprising that accusations associated with poisoning and witchcraft were more commonplace during the heightened witch hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries as a means to prosecute women healers under the law.

Prosecutions for witchcraft didn’t come to an end in England until the early 18th century when the 1736 witchcraft act repealed earlier legislation and made it a crime to either pretend to be a witch or to accuse someone of practising witchcraft.

Following the 1736 act, the witches (and folk healers) were left alone for a while although still encountered difficulties from the church and establishment at times. Nonetheless the act of prescribing potions continued.

The practice of prescribing herbal pills, potions and salves as a herbal medicine practitioner eventually became a legitimate occupation. It’s one still dominated by women to this day.

Anthony Booker, Reader in Ethnopharmacology, University of Westminster

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