Pittwater Online News

The high-stakes nature of Year 12 exams can bring out sudden anxiety in the best of students.

You might have felt this before or during an assessment. Sometimes it feels like a rising panic in your chest. Other times it’s like your mind has gone blank and you can’t remember anything. These feelings can make it difficult to focus.

The key to good exam performance is learning to manage your anxiety.

We are clinical psychologists who research academic stress. Here’s what can help.

Academic stress is common

Research shows one in six students experience extreme levels of stress during the final years of schooling. This involves unrelenting stress that disturbs sleep and wellbeing. While moderate stress is okay, too much stress can negatively impact academic performance.

In its simplest form, exam anxiety is a stress response like any other. It’s the activation of the body’s flight-or-fight response, which is triggered by the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system takes care of things like your blood pressure, heart rate and digestion – the things you don’t think about.

The flight-or-fight response occurs when our brain perceives we are in danger, whether it is physical danger, such as fear of being bitten by an angry dog, or psychological, such as stuffing up a speech.

What anxiety in an exam can feel like

The flight-or-fight response might lead to physical symptoms such as:

• an increased heart rate

• an increased rate of breathing

• sweating

• a feeling of unease in the stomach

• tightness in the chest.

While these symptoms might seem handy if you need to flee or fight, it’s hard to see how they are helpful in an exam situation. Who needs dizziness and sweaty palms when trying to solve a quadratic formula?

Your brain can catastrophise the situation

As you head into the exam you might also face thoughts such as:

I’m going to fail. I won’t be able to remember anything. My mind will go blank.

But this sort of thinking increases the perceived danger of the situation.

Research shows thinking less catastrophically, and more realistically, about a situation can help reduce anxiety.

1. Challenge negative thoughts

To challenge these negative thoughts before or during an exam, it helps to ask yourself questions such as:

• Is it realistic that I will completely fail the exam?

• Is it realistic that I won’t remember anything?

• Do I actually need to get a perfect score to get through this?

• What would a friend say to reassure me right now?

2. Focus on your breathing

Another practical way to help reduce anxiety is by slowing down your breathing rate.

In an exam scenario, a full meditation session might be out of the question. But there are still exercises you can do.

For example, while you wait for the exam to begin, or during reading time, try to take a long breath in while counting to four in your mind. Then breathe out over a count of four. Repeat this while slowing down your counting. After a few rounds you will hopefully notice your anxiety start to lessen.

3. Make an exam plan

Look through the exam during reading time and find the questions you feel most comfortable with. Once reading time is over, aim to tackle these questions first. This can help build your confidence during an exam.

If you have long answer or essay questions, it can help to read over all the questions before writing so that while you are answering the “easier” question, your brain will be working in the background, bringing forward information you can use when you answer the harder questions.

This works because information is stored in our brain using networks, so reading questions repeatedly can activate the links between concepts in those networks. This means information might be more readily available when you come back to the harder question.

Stress isn’t always a bad thing

If you’re still feeling stressed, the good news is that mild to moderate levels of stress have actually been shown to improve academic performance. This is because the flight-or-fight response also increases mental alertness and motivation.

After the exam is over, you might feel relieved or devastated, or something in between. It is normal to ruminate over the questions and how you responded to them.

One way to bring yourself back down to a calmer state is to do some exercise. Take a walk or go for a run. This burns up the stress hormone, cortisol, and can help you recover more quickly.

If this article has raised issues for you or your child, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.

Viviana Wuthrich, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Macquarie University and Jessica Belcher, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University

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

The second annual Shopfront Youth-Led Conference rounded out a weekend of activity celebrating the 50th birthday of the Sydney youth arts company with a radical and celebrated history.

Hosted by the Sydney Opera House and entirely curated by the Shopfront Youth Advisory Panels, the day was designed by young people for young people. Workshops, performances and panels all explored a central theme: “redesigning success”.

A youth-led conference arrives at a pivotal moment in Australian political life.

Concern about declining young people’s participation in formal or traditional civic and political life, and what that means for “social cohesion”, is growing alongside a more sophisticated understanding of how young people are engaging in democracy differently.

Instead of joining existing political parties, young people are engaging in civil and political life through volunteering, community advocacy and local action.

Arts participation plays a crucial role. The link between the arts, creativity and democracy to build civic capacity is well established.

Arts participation supports children and young people to develop their voice, self-expression and connection with others. It also helps build resilience.

In the face of uncertain social and political futures, these are invaluable future skills for Australia’s young people.

Transforming ideas

As part of the day, I watched TED-Ed, featuring extraordinary young people aged 10 to 18 who had worked with Shopfront for eight weeks to transform their ideas into powerful presentations.

Dan, 14, a “performing arts activist”, told the story of seeing his first show and knowing he wanted to be on stage.

He wants to address financial barriers for young people that limit access to arts participation and seeing live performance. At just 11, he founded a business called Casting Dreams to provide scholarships for young people to support access to the arts.

He argued the performing arts creates community – and it may be the only place where a young person can see themselves reflected.

Dean, 14, urged young people to ask themselves “do I need this?” when it comes to the frightening pace of new game editions and costly new technology updates. He crunched some eye-watering numbers on how much his dad spent ensuring he had the latest edition of the FIFA Nintendo game so he was able to play with his friends and feel included.

Haya, 15, argued we need to question the unwritten – often unseen – rules we all obey. When we start to ask some questions about these unwritten rules, she said, we might just unpick the systems of power that uphold the status quo.

Amelia, 15, used the stars and other intelligent life forms to suggest there is more to know and we should remain curious.

Beatrice, 14, introduced us to Aristotle’s concept of Eudaimonia: living with purpose and intention. She suggested finding happiness beyond yourself may be a key to transforming the alarming rates of poor youth mental health in Australia.

Yashra, 15, examined how class privilege plays out in the symbol of the school uniform, telling a powerful story about the discrimination faced by young people who attend schools in the lower socio-economic bracket.

Collaboration – and slowing down

One panel I attended saw a mix of young and established artists discuss collaboration as a skill that must be taught: a skill that, once learned, can make you a better and more resilient human.

The arts both creates and needs great collaborators – including those who do not necessarily identify as artists – in order to thrive.

Great collaboration was defined as challenging and rewarding in equal measures, requiring an investment of time to establish the relational framework that might underpin a strong collaboration.

Across the day, I was struck by how often time and slowing down came up.

The theme surfaced in the opening Welcome to Country; in a workshop that guided us through using each of our senses to really help us pay attention and notice our surrounds; in Dean’s challenge to a culture of constant upgrading; and in the insistence that good work comes from patient, sometimes difficult, collaboration.

Again and again, young people urged other young people to stop equating busyness with success.

It was a quietly radical message, and it came from the very generation that faces the increasing speed of an AI-enhanced future. This is a generation most often told to hurry up: to achieve more, build the résumé, and have the plan.

Here, young people were asking different questions. Who decides what success looks like? What are the barriers standing in the way for people and how do we remove them? What do we gain when we slow down enough to notice?

That feels fitting for an organisation turning 50 that is proudly and fiercely youth-led. Shopfront’s history is one of making space for young people to be heard. This conference showed young people are working through some of the most challenging and persistent social problems.

The most memorable ideas of the day weren’t about doing more. They were about asking better questions, noticing what we’ve been taught not to question, and making room – in our schedules, our institutions and our creative communities – for everyone to take part.

Importantly, these young people know creativity and art play an enormous role in making our lives better in every conceivable way. Creativity and art also have a role to play in politics, institutions and technological interaction.

The conference’s theme, “redesigning success”, was evident in what these young people modelled: pausing, questioning, creating and bringing others along with you.

Sarah Austin, Senior Lecturer in Theatre, The University of Melbourne

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

Do you remember the last time you were laughing and simply could not stop? Perhaps it was a situation when you should not have been laughing at all.

This happened to one of us while accompanying a friend to a family court in the middle of an unpleasant divorce case. It led to a rapid dash to the bathroom while desperately trying (and failing) to regain control – not quite the kind of emotional support this friend was looking for!

Another classic example is the cricket commentators Brian Johnston and Jonathan Agnew who laughed so much as they described the day’s play in 1991 that they could not talk at all. But how and why does this happen?

In fact, although we typically associate laughter with amusement, most of it occurs for other, social reasons. For example, you are 30 times more likely to laugh if you are with someone else than if you are on your own. And you’ll laugh more if you know your companion and like them.

Most laughter occurs during conversations, when people may laugh through contagion – catching the laughter from someone else. Studies show that when we see or hear someone laughing, this can trigger laughter in us almost automatically, promoting social bonding.

We often laugh to demonstrate agreement and understanding, and to cement friendship – for example, over shared recollections. We also laugh to reduce stress.

These common conversational laughs happen roughly six times per ten minutes of conversation, on average. They’re short, lower in pitch, and tend to start and stop quickly.

These types of laughter, which we refer to as voluntary, are different from the helpless laughter that incapacitates us, and which we cannot prevent from happening. Helpless or involuntary laughs are longer and higher pitched, involving strange squeaks and whistles.

In our latest research, we have investigated whether these two different kinds of laughter might have their roots in entirely different brain systems.

Things get difficult

When attempting to understand the brain networks that underlie the production of laughter, things can get difficult quickly.

For a start, people move a lot when they laugh. This can cause problems for brain imaging techniques such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). It can also be extremely difficult to get people to laugh naturally under laboratory conditions.

Another issue is that different regions of the brain all appear connected to laughter. One of us (Fausto) collaborates with the epilepsy surgery unit at Niguarda Hospital in Milan, where patients with drug-resistant epilepsy undergo electrical brain stimulation for clinical purposes. Electrical stimulation is highly precise and not affected by movement.

Normally, if you stimulate the motor system, the patient will move. If you stimulate the visual system, they may experience hallucinations. And if you stimulate the auditory system, they will hear sounds. But there are five or six areas of the brain where stimulation triggers loud laughter in the patient. So, why is this?

We recently reviewed all brain stimulation studies of people laughing, and how they felt when they laughed. These studies provide evidence that the areas of the brain where stimulation evokes laughter form two different laughter networks.

In one, encompassing the anterior cingulate cortex, the temporal pole and some subcortical regions, stimulation led to laughter accompanied by pleasant sensations and happy feelings – this is the more helpless, high-pitched laughter. When there was stimulation to the other network, which is in the brain’s motor and premotor regions, laughter led to speech impairments and was not associated with any emotional state.

Evolutionary differences

The areas constituting the first, more joyous laughter network mapped on to a network for vocalising that humans share with all other mammals. This is potentially also responsible for other spontaneous emotional vocalisations such as crying out.

Activation of this network during spontaneous laughter triggers a neurochemical cascade that taps into, among other things, the opioid system. This helps to explain the sense of pleasure and reward that comes from this joyous, uncontrollable laughter. The serotonin system that regulates our sensitivity to pain is also affected, which may explain why this laughter can temporarily dull physical pain.

From an evolutionary perspective, this network is older. It originates in the spontaneous emotional responses and rough-and-tumble play systems of animals, and is therefore largely unchanged between humans and other animals.

The other, voluntary laughs mapped on to a brain network linked to voluntary movements in humans, such as speaking aloud. These have a primary role in strategic communication and social negotiation, so may explain the particular use of laughter in conversation as a sort of spoken punctuation.

This neural system is found mainly in humans, and is associated with complex vocal acts such as speaking, singing and beatboxing.

A 2022 study looking at the shapes our vocal tracts make when we laugh in this conversational way found they resemble the shapes we make when we speak. In contrast, the shapes of our vocal tract when we laugh helplessly look very unlike speech, and their motor control is simpler, consistent with their ancient origins.

This research shows that voluntary laughter requires more complex and refined motor control than spontaneous laughter, occupying a middle ground between spontaneous laughter and spoken language – not only functionally but anatomically as well.

If a person has a stroke that damages this voluntary network, they can develop severe problems with speech while still being able to laugh, cry and swear. We would argue that this is because the older network remains intact.

The science of laughter may seem like a rather frivolous subject – and neuroscientists have certainly devoted more effort to studying negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, anger and disgust.

However, research on human laughter is turning out to be something of a Rosetta Stone for understanding a surprising range of phenomena – including the origins of the social brain in mammals, the mechanisms of bonding and empathy, pain modulation, language in conversation, and emotional contagion.

Sophie Scott, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, UCL and Fausto Caruana, CNR Senior Researcher and Adjunct Professor at the University of Parma, University of Parma

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

Harry and Susan Burrell were a remarkable 20th century couple. They were Australian vaudeville performers, self-taught naturalists, animal traders and collectors of specimens.

Although Susan’s contributions have largely been overlooked (mainly due to the sexism of the time), Harry Burrell remains a renowned natural scientist. His speciality was monotremes, and his passion was the platypus.

An upcoming exhibit at the Australian Museum shares the incredible story of this self-described “platypoditudinarian”, featuring images and specimens from his collection.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the life of the man who married scientific inquiry with vaudeville theatrics.

A vaudevillian life

Born in Sydney in 1873, Harry Burrell spent several years as a vaudeville comedian travelling in variety shows around the country. In 1901, he married Susan Emily Naegueli and settled on her family’s property in Manilla, New South Wales, where they took up an interest in zoology.

Although biographers mark this vaudeville period as a minor blip in the trajectory of Burrell’s life, his showmanship would go on to saturate his work as a naturalist.

Burrell believed the serious business of scientific research should not be separated from engaging public science education.

Inhabiting the platypusary

One of Burrell’s landmark achievements was to create a “platypusary”: a portable platypus carrier that mimicked platypuses’ burrow networks.

To populate his platypusary, Burrell trapped platypuses and their young (called “puggles” today) by digging them out of their burrows along the Namoi River in northern NSW.

This was risky work. Burrell was stabbed by male platypuses’ poisonous spurs. Also, on one occasion in 1927, he became temporarily paralysed after staying in cold water for too long.

In images (like the one above) Burrell seems to perform the role of intrepid adventurer: braving nature’s dangers to bring scientific knowledge to the world.

Posturing aside, this bizarre contraption was the culmination of several scientific breakthroughs.

Burrell was the first person to be documented keeping platypuses in captivity – a significant feat since these animals are notoriously difficult to observe in the wild.

Until his experiments, nobody even knew how much a platypus had to eat each day to survive. Such discoveries allowed Burrell to keep platypuses alive in his platypusary, where they could be studied up close.

The platypusary allowed the scientific community to collect data, while also giving the public a chance to see the animals on display.

In 1910, for instance, Burrell displayed a platypus in his platypusary in the Sydney Zoological Garden for three months, before releasing it into a nearby pond.

Some years later, he helped in organising the transport of six platypuses, via a platypusary, to the United States. The sole survivor of this journey was displayed at the New York Zoo for 49 days, before it died.

Merging science and spectacle

The platypusary was by no means Burrell’s only enclosure that married science with spectacle.

A 1920s American education film shows him in a self-designed platypus tank. His head is enclosed in a glass dome protruding into the tank, while his hands reach into the water from the bottom wall. The result is surreal, with disembodied human appendages floating next to a platypus.

This tank allowed Burrell to interact with the platypus, through which he demonstrated the animal could not sense underwater using its eyes, ears or nose; only through touch.

This video is the first known footage of a platypus swimming underwater. It marked a huge leap in our understanding of the animal.

For instance, it laid the foundation for the eventual discovery of its rare “sixth sense” of electroreception. This is where platypuses use special receptors in their bills to detect tiny amounts of electricity generated by the muscles of their invertebrate prey.

Lessons from the stage

The Burrells completed their groundbreaking research at a time when the boundaries between science and entertainment hadn’t fully hardened – but changes were afoot.

From the late 19th century, natural history museums increasingly tried to establish themselves as centres of serious rational inquiry, rather than sites for encountering the exotic and curious. But at the same time they also tried to retain public attention.

Burrell’s letters to museum curators in Australia and overseas reflect this tension. In them, he moves back and forth between asserting the scientific rigour of his findings, photographing puggles in egg cups, and giving himself titles such as “platypoditudinarian”.

The Burrells’ achievements remind us why a hard boundary between science and creative expression isn’t always helpful. By melding rigorous curiosity with a flair for the dramatic, the Burrells created innovative methods for exploring the natural world.

Perhaps science today could use a little more vaudeville.

Harry Burrell: The Platypus Man is on display at the Australian Museum until March next year.

Meg Foster, Chancellor's Research Fellow, School of Communication and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney and Kirsten Wehner, Research Affiliate, Sydney Environment Institute, University of Sydney

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

This autumn marks a special occasion in the Marvel universe: Spider-Man, perhaps the most popular superhero of all time, has reached issue #1,000 in the comics series.

The tale of a scrawny teen from Queens who was bitten by a radioactive spider at 15, Spider-Man premiered in Marvel’s Amazing Fantasy #15 in August 1962 as a last-ditch attempt to save the dying series. The story of Peter Parker’s witty, agile alter ego quickly became an international sensation.

The defining hero of our times, this 1,000th edition also begs the question: what is it about superheroes that make them routinely outlive almost every other cultural property out there – regular heroes included?

My ongoing research into the world of superhero franchises may present a partial answer. Over the past several years, I have read a few thousand comic books, seen most (if not all) superhero films ever released, and interviewed dozens of superfans across the globe. I believe the secret to the longevity of Spider-Man (as well as countless other superheroes) lies at the nexus of four qualities cultivated over many decades within Marvel and DC, the two largest names in superhero entertainment for almost a century.

1. Spider-Man is unreliable

Heroes are heroes because we always know where they stand. From Hercules to Luke Skywalker, a hero is a person of generally high principles and integrity. Heroes are reassuringly reliable, almost by definition.

In contrast, superheroes are compelling because they are unreliable, even to themselves. For instance, Spider-Man quits being Spider-Man altogether in The Amazing Spider-Man #50, and publicly unmasks in the Civil War comic book series (which undermines the character’s long-established anonymity). He is actually replaced in The Amazing Spider-Man #698-700 by arch-villain Doctor Octopus, who for a while becomes a harsher, more violent “superior” Spider-Man.

Across these stories, Spider-Man is never just a fixed moral archetype. Instead, he is a character whose very meaning can be repeatedly unsettled. And, comparing Spider-Man across different eras and manifestations fascinates the fans, who can never agree on what Spider-Man actually is outside of the name and a now-canonised origin story.

2. Spider-Man is actually Spider-People

At first, Spider-Man was just Peter Parker. Over time, however, Spider-Man stopped being a single character and became a narrative role that different characters could inhabit together and in parallel.

For instance, Ben Reilly, introduced as Peter’s clone in The Amazing Spider-Man #149, eventually takes over and becomes Spider-Man during the 1990s Clone Saga. Miguel O’Hara, a brilliant scientist, then reimagines the character for the future in Spider-Man 2099. There are several more incarnations too, including Peter Porker (aka Spider-Ham), a pig bitten by a radioactive spider, Spider-Spider (a spider in the Spider-Man costume), and even a medieval British version called Peter Parquagh.

Over time, Spider-Man no longer describes one biography so much as a portable combination of recognisable powers, a loose moral compass and visual codes. For fans, this makes the brand unusually elastic. As they do not have to agree on a single definitive Spider-Man, they can attach themselves to the version that best fits their tastes.

3. Spider-Man: no way home

Almost by definition, heroes must undergo the hero’s journey: they are called to an adventure, transformed by an ordeal and eventually return home as changed people. This has been a consistent pattern since Odysseus at least.

In contrast, Spider-Man never really gets to go home, as his supposedly formative experiences simply become the beginning of further experiences. For instance, in The Amazing Spider-Man ##121-122, the death of Gwen Stacy, Peter’s friend and first love, permanently upends the emotional stakes of his life – a fact that reverberates in Spider-Man #1000.

Decades later, however, he marries Mary Jane Watson. But The Amazing Spider-Man #544-545 dissolves this marriage and resets much of his adult existence again. That is, before Brand New Day begins yet another personally tumultuous phase in #546.

None of these moments supply a final transformation. Spider-Man simply can never graduate from being Spider-Man, the tortured Hamlet of superheroes. Therefore, his journey becomes less a cycle and more a never-ending life story in which apparent endings are continuously folded into new beginnings. For fans, this constant regenerativity creates a peculiar promise: older fans can “grow old” with Spider-Man, while new readers always encounter what feels like a brand new beginning.

4. Spider-Man remembers everything

Traditional heroes usually arrive with relatively little narrative baggage, and their defining trials and transformations are contained within finite and carefully staged stories.

Every new Spider-Man story, however, enters a world already crowded with previous stories. Spider-Man does not merely accumulate stories. Instead, later stories continually reactivate, reinterpret and cross-reference earlier ones.

This accumulated baggage can surely make the Spider-verse difficult to navigate for some. But it also rewards familiarity and time investment: the more Spider-Man you consume, the more meanings, references and connections become visible, turning laborious research into a source of pleasure and expertise.

Spider-Man’s longevity is the product of a highly specific narrative architecture. Spider-Man can contradict himself, multiply into different people, begin again after apparent endings and continuously mine his own past for new stories. These qualities make Spidey unusually difficult to exhaust, as each new generation of fans inherits a Spider-Man that is both recognisably old and strangely new.

Issue #1,000 is therefore less a culmination than a proof of concept. Looking back at more than 60 years of constant reinvention, Spider-Man’s greatest superpower may simply be his ability to go on despite all odds.

Roman Pavlyuchenko, Lecturer in Marketing, University of Bath

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

If you’ve ever been stung by a honeybee, you might know they have a special trick: they insert the stinger into your skin and leave it behind. As they fly away, the needle-like appendage keeps stinging you.

Losing the stinger can kill the bee by damaging its internal organs, so they don’t do it lightly. However, it means that even if the bee is crushed or brushed off, the stinger will continue to do its job – defending the hive. In fact, it takes over a minute to finish pumping after it enters the skin.

The stinger is effectively a fully autonomous micro-pump. But how does it work all on its own?

Most venomous animals store venom in a venom sac – more or less a very unpleasant water balloon. Circular muscles around this balloon squeeze and release the venom. But scientists have known for a while that honeybees are equipped with something different.

A honeybee’s venom sac empties into a pumping chamber, which contains little pumping elements called valves. This was illustrated as early as 1910 but we’ve never known exactly how these valves work.

In our study published today, we filmed the pumping elements inside the bee stinger in action for the first time.

What we did

Since the bee stinger detaches from the body, we could observe it unobstructed. Using a clear gel that mimics human skin as a target, we detached the stingers and then filmed them in action pumping venom.

What we found was very unusual. Imagine the pumping chamber of the stinger as a cylinder. An inlet at the top delivers fresh venom and an outlet at the bottom delivers venom into the skin.

Inside this cylinder we have two valves, both moving to pump the venom. On the downstroke, the valve opens up like a parachute, spanning the diameter of the cylinder and creating a seal.

As the valve moves down, it pushes venom out through the outlet. At the bottom of the cylinder the valve reverses direction and collapses, a bit like an umbrella, allowing it to move back to the top of the cylinder.

Simple, right? Well, the thing is there are two valves inside the cylinder, and they are moving in opposite directions. This means they have to be able to both move past each other while still making a seal and pumping venom; and allow the pumping chamber to refill.

What we discovered is that the valves are acting as collapsible pistons. By pumping in opposite directions, they deliver a continuous flow of venom.

Studying the stinger mechanism required hundreds of hours of filming. In all that time handling live bee stingers I only got stung once – I count that as a win.

Taking an even closer look

The filming helped us understand how the stinger is moving. However, it’s so small, so difficult to see, and has such a complicated shape, that we needed different microscopes to understand what it looks like.

We took three-dimensional scans of the stinger to make a model of its structure, and compared this model to images that better captured the material properties and details of the stinger.

Looking at the stinger from different angles was key to understanding what was actually going on.

To confirm our findings, we then took our 3D scans and used them to make a simplified, up-scaled version of the stinger.

After testing a lot of different plastics, we 3D-printed the pumping chamber and the valves using rigid and flexible materials, and replicated the pumping principle that we observed in the real stinger.

Although many of us are familiar with using 3D printers to make small toys and gadgets, normal consumer printers can also be used for rapid prototyping in science.

The honeybee stinger is an unusual pump. Most pumps in nature are either reservoirs that are constricted by muscles (snake venom glands) or chambers that are deformed by muscular contractions (your lungs).

Honeybee stingers work more like the pistons in your car engine, if those pistons were two to a cylinder and also highly deformable. We think this unusual pump design could find applications for human-made pumps in microfluidics (a discipline that controls tiny amounts of liquids), drug delivery, or continuous flow pumps.

Fiorella Ramirez Esquivel, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University

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

It’s called a doof, but it’s actually all about quiet reading. There are beanbags, some chairs and a few shared tables, where readers sit (or lie) down and read their separate books. Maybe some music playing in the background. Book Doof’s founder calls it a social experience. But can people reading their separate books alone, together, really be social?

Reading has long been a social activity. One early precursor to the modern book club was Anne Hutchinson’s Bible study group in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. Women met to discuss weekly sermons and religious texts, creating a space for debate and intellectual exchange at a time when many women lacked access to formal education.

Since then, readers have gathered around books in homes, libraries, bars and literary societies. Today, reading communities also extend into mediated spaces: television, radio, podcasts and social media. The difference is in how these groups of readers connect through books.

Conventional book clubs unite readers by discussing a mutually agreed, shared book. But in events like Book Doof, Silent Book Club, Reading Party and The Offline Club, there’s no assigned book: participants connect through the shared practice of reading.

These events let readers read alone, together. Conversation is optional and people can come alone. They don’t have to perform sociability or literary expertise. Silent reading events offer readers a low-demand belonging: being present is enough.

They don’t ask readers to choose between solitude and connection. They let them have both.

Book Doof

Hoping to make reading “something you look forward to with other people”, Book Doof is “a rave for readers”. It recently held silent reading meet-ups at Melbourne’s Fed Square and Abbots Yard.

You bring your own book. There is curated ambient music and you can read for the whole four hours with fellow readers. Bookish conversations do not drive the event; there is no required small talk and you can be social in silence.

Book Doof just launched in Canberra, with a booked-out event supported by the Canberra Writers Festival. It promised the same “cosy sanctuary — an afternoon of reading, good tunes, and quiet community”. The same no-small-talk, no-book-club-discussion approach followed.

Silent Book Club

Silent reading events are not new, though. Silent Book Club has been gathering readers to read their separate books in the company of other readers since 2012. A “book club where you could just enjoy books, friends, and drinks — without any homework”, it follows the same BYO book format, with socialising not mandatory.

Started in San Francisco by friends Guinevere de la Mare and Laura Gluhanich, Silent Book Club officially launched as an organisation in 2015. It now has more than 2,000 chapters in over 60 countries. The Sydney event was held at the Darling Square Library last weekend. It will recur on the second Sunday of each month.

Reading Party

Reading Party Melbourne is a silent reading party where readers bring their own book, have a drink, and read in a comfy spot in a boutique bar or restaurant. The tickets usually include a complimentary drink. It’s a space for readers to get off their phones and read with no distraction, where the founders promise there will be no judgement about what you read.

Readers start reading for an hour when the bell rings. They can start socialising when the second bell rings – or continue reading if they prefer.

The Offline Club

Taking the off-screen, no-phone-time idea further, The Offline Club, founded in Amsterdam in 2024, holds silent reading parties across the world. It debuted in Australia last year, with a series of events for Illuminate Adelaide.

Their recent Bali reading party kept the location secret until 48 hours before the event. It invited readers to a one-hour shared silent reading. The event urges readers to “prove that a room full of humans can still choose the page over the screen”.

Their upcoming Amsterdam Reading Party also promises “a relaxing reading time free from digital distractions”. Readers are invited to leave their phones in a “phone hotel”. Those who prefer to keep their phones with them are encouraged to switch them off and keep them out of sight.

The Offline reading parties, too, let readers bring any book and allow them to stick around to connect with other readers after the reading hour is up if they want to.

Social reading online

Online reading communities – like BookTok, Bookstagram and BookTube – similarly don’t require readers to be reading the same book in order to participate. They connect through shared tastes, genres such as romance, tropes such as enemies-to-lovers or fake dating, book recommendations and emotional reactions.

Like in silent reading events, these reading communities don’t necessarily connect through a shared book – though particular books and series can become common points of reference. Sometimes that connection is the act of reading, or identifying as a reader.

Just like in silent reading parties and similar events that happen in physical spaces, belonging to an online reading community doesn’t require constant interaction. Members can choose if they want to post, comment, recommend books – or just lurk, reading or viewing what other readers post.

Offline reading, organised online

Some organisers genuinely frame silent reading parties as relief from screens. Many view them as antidotes to scrolling, or a backlash to the digital world. But people organise, book, discover and circulate these events digitally. Scholars call this “postdigital”: online and offline are now so intertwined, even attempts to stay away from screens are often organised through them.

Part of what appeals to readers about these events is that simply being there is enough. There is also a kind of recognition in being surrounded by other people who have chosen to spend their time reading.

Research on online reading communities has found that online reading can create both close-knit communities and looser forms of affiliation around a shared interest in books. Silent reading events make something similar possible in a physical space: you can look around and see other people doing the same thing you are, without needing to talk to them or even read the same book.

The community is shared, while the reading can remain private.

Taken together, these online and offline spaces suggest the social life of reading is not simply becoming more social. It is becoming more flexible. Readers can move in and out of community: talking, recommending and sharing when they want to, or simply reading alongside others when they don’t.

Perhaps that is the appeal. Being part of a reading community no longer has to mean giving up the solitude that makes reading pleasurable in the first place.

Shakiba Barghi, PhD Candidate in Publishing and Communications, The University of Melbourne

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

Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature. The 76-year-old Canadian poet, essayist, translator and classicist was in Iceland “listening to the wind” when the news broke. The Swedish Academy praised her “bold and inventive” oeuvre for its “playful dialogue with the classical tradition”, through which she has fashioned “new forms for contemporary literature”.

In books like her 1998 verse novel Autobiography of Red (which has sold nearly 100,000 copies in the United States), Wrong Norma (2024), her recent poetry collection, and her 1986 debut Eros the Bittersweet – a book-length essay about the god of love – she challenges formal conventions and moves across literary genres.

Carson’s own account of what language can do offers a sense of the possibilities such invention opens up:

words can squirt sideways, mute and mad; you think they are tools, or toys, or tame, and all at once they burn all your clothes off and you’re standing there singed and ridiculous in the glare of the lightning.

‘The easiest difficult poet’

Born in Toronto in 1950, Carson studied classics at the University of Toronto and went on to teach ancient Greek. Eros the Bittersweet grew out of her scholarly training.

Carson, who divides her time between Ann Arbor, Michigan in the US, and Iceland, is famously private. But in a 2024 essay in the London Review of Books, she revealed she has Parkinson’s disease, and mourned the disintegration of her handwriting and the erosion of her long pleasure in filling “shelves and shelves” of notebooks.

She has been awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships. And she became the first woman to win the TS Eliot prize, for her collection The Beauty of the Husband, in 2001.

Her work is fiercely learned, and makes no apology for it. “Almost everything she writes is about several things at once,” notes critic Lola Seaton, “and ranges associatively across the history of Western thought.”

Yet that erudition sits easily alongside lyrical, direct accounts of human emotion and experience. This may help explain her appeal to readers who could otherwise find such intellectual density and avowed experimentalism forbidding – or even off-putting. The New York Times’ poetry columnist has called her “the easiest difficult poet”.

In Carson’s hands, the breakdown of a marriage can become a way of testing Keats’ claim that beauty is truth. An ancient monster can grow up to be a teenager struggling with his sexuality. Marilyn Monroe can be reimagined as Helen of Troy. A short talk on Homer’s Odyssey can lead to poet John Ashbery’s thoughts on the importance of light.

Where to start?

For readers encountering Carson for the first time, Autobiography of Red is a good place to begin. Its reworking of an ancient myth indicates her artistic sensibility and shows how closely her scholarly interests and imaginative pursuits are intertwined.

The text draws on the work of Stesichorus, an ancient Greek lyric poet whose account of the monster Geryon survives only in fragments. In the familiar heroic version of the myth, Heracles kills Geryon and makes off with his livestock.

Stesichorus had already complicated that account by treating Geryon sympathetically. Carson, characteristically, takes things that little bit further, recasting the monster in a contemporary story of sexual desire and artistic discovery.

Her Geryon is a red boy with wings. Growing up in an abusive household on an Atlantic island, he finds a means of expression in the medium of photography. He falls in love with Heracles, a young man whose casual approach to their relationship leaves Geryon exposed and undone.

When they meet again years later, the attraction persists, as does its capacity to wound him. In this way, the mythic and heroic material she draws on is transformed into something more intimate, with consequences Geryon must learn to live with.

Painful contradictions of desire recur

The painful contradictions of desire are a recurring concern in Carson’s writing. It is evident in her first published book, Eros the Bittersweet.

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time, it considers the paradox of a desire that produces pleasure while causing pain, taking Sappho’s account of eros (or passionate, sexual love and desire), as a point of departure. This is how it starts:

It was Sappho who first called eros “bittersweet.” No one who has been in love disputes this.

The conversational second sentence brings the ancient observation into the remit of the reader’s experience. Across Carson’s body of work, the distance between classical literature and contemporary life thoroughly, repeatedly contracts in this fashion. Old texts offer exacting accounts of feelings we might, in the first flush of emotion, take to be ours alone.

Carson also reminds us these connections between literature and lived experience extend beyond the classical world. Consider her long poem about unrequited love The Glass Essay, collected in Glass, Irony and God (1995) – and cited by the Nobel committee. The poem’s speaker visits her mother after the end of a relationship, taking Emily Brontë with her in the form of a book. Reading is part of her effort to understand what has happened.

The relationship between learning and loss becomes especially stark in Nox (2010), Carson’s astonishing elegy for her estranged brother, Michael, who died in 2000.

Running through it is Carson’s engagement with Catullus’ poem mourning his own brother. Poet-critic Dan Chiasson explains how the book brings the limited record of Carson’s brother’s life into contact with a Latin–English lexicon keyed to ancient Roman poet Catullus’ elegy. Chiasson also draws attention to a difficulty at the centre of Nox: accumulated material does not produce a clearer understanding of the person being mourned.

Carson acknowledges this at the start of the book:

I wanted to fill my elegy with light of all kinds. But death makes us stingy. There is nothing more to be expended on that, we think. He’s dead. Love cannot alter it. Words cannot add to it.

That tension helps explain the book’s deeply thoughtful method of assemblage. Nox needs to be seen – and ideally, held – to be properly appreciated. Published as an accordion-folded book in a box, it reproduces a handmade assortment of photographs and fragmentary scraps of text.

Archival documentation can be preserved and examined, but cannot answer every question Carson might have asked of her brother. The form of the thing allows evidence and uncertainty to sit side by side, encouraging further reflection on the part of the reader.

Breath-taking emotional force

The gaps in Nox find a counterpart in Carson’s work as a translator. In If Not, Winter (2002), her bilingual edition of ancient Greek poet Sappho’s work, brackets and blanks mark what has been lost. The reader encounters words that have endured for centuries alongside the white space where others should be. Carson makes that incomplete transition part of the reading process. Absence acquires a visible form.

Her recent collection, Wrong Norma, finds a different use for discontinuity. Its 25 entries, accompanied by images, move between subjects as far apart as the legal representation of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and deepening footsteps left in snow (the latter is one of Carson’s longstanding preoccupations).

Carson describes the pieces as unlinked – hence the title’s supposed wrongness. The collection gives readers no continuous narrative to follow. Each exploratory text is a point of departure: an opportunity for fresh discovery and the potential for new ways of thinking.

For readers drawn to Carson in the wake of the Nobel, this willingness to depart from an expected course may take some getting used to. But it is also part of the pleasure and reward of reading her.

Her writing might be grounded in the trappings of scholarly inquiry, but she consistently arrives at observations and insights whose emotional force can take the breath away. The learning matters. So does the surprise.

Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney

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

Most kinds of coral spawn once a year. In an enormous multi-day event synchronised to specific phases of the moon, they release vast slicks of eggs and sperm into the ocean to be mixed together by the drifting currents.

Imagine hundreds of thousands of Olympic swimming pools filled with tiny pinkish spheres, all dumped into the sea at once.

In new research published in Ecology and Evolution, my colleague and I have for the first time estimated just how many eggs are involved in one of these spawnings, and it’s a mind-boggling number.

According to our calculations, in a single spawning event, corals across the Indo-Pacific region release around 3.5 quintillion eggs (that’s 3,500,000,000,000,000,000 if you write out all the zeroes).

This isn’t a just a curious piece of trivia, either: it’s basic information we need to help preserve Earth’s coral species for the future.

Why count coral eggs?

Counting Earth’s ecological assets reveals how our planet functions. Knowing the total number of ants living in the ground (around 20 quadrillion) allows scientists to estimate how much carbon they can remove, for example.

Scientists have mapped half a trillion adult coral colonies, as well as tracking global fish egg production. These numbers tell us about the function and health of ecosystems.

Counting nature also tells us about its power to regenerate. Ocean life, and coral reefs in particular, are bearing the brunt of global warming. Since 1950, roughly 50% of global coral reef cover has disappeared.

This is why we want to know about coral’s capacity to reproduce and regenerate.

A baseline for coral reproduction

Our new study provides the first estimate of coral reproductive potential across the Indo-Pacific region, which is a hotspot for marine biodiversity.

Our estimate of 3.5 quintillion eggs released in a spawning establishes an essential baseline of what these reefs produce at peak capacity.

Measuring across hundreds of coral species, we found most eggs came from a few key groups. Branching Acropora, Porites (bommies or massive boulder corals), and Montipora accounted for around half the total egg supply.

How to count a quintillion eggs

How did we figure this out? We were looking at almost 190,000 square kilometres of tropical reef, so we couldn’t just swim out with a clipboard and start counting eggs.

Instead, we looked at what we knew about coral and eggs at the small, medium and large scales.

First we examined coral polyps. A single coral is a colony of many, many individual polyps. We calculated how many eggs fit inside the average polyp.

Next we estimated how many polyps are in each whole coral. This let us work out how many eggs an average-sized colony of each coral species produces.

Finally, we combined these figures with real-world data about coral cover and geographic distribution for hundreds of species.

This might seem like a straightforward process, but direct counts of eggs only exist for a handful of coral species. It’s a tricky task, and for many species we still don’t even know exactly when they spawn.

To fill in the gaps in the data, we made estimates based on patterns in data from related species.

Not all coral species are equal

We discovered many interesting things about coral egg production. Massive boulder corals produced the most eggs per square centimetre of living tissue, for example, while branching corals dominated overall egg production across the region.

So, our research uncovered an important scale mismatch. This means that polyp or colony-level output does not necessarily translate to high regional egg output.

We also found that while some groups of species produced fewer eggs on average, there were individual species within those groups that were highly productive egg factories.

Even within the group of branching Acropora species, one species produced ten times more eggs per square centimetre than the others.

This kind of species-level information tells us about what might be the true workhorses of reef repair. We need more of it – and that means genuine species-level measurements.

What now?

Why is this so critical for reef conservation? Reproduction is the fundamental bridge to recovery after severe marine heatwaves. Damaged reefs cannot recover without a supply of fresh coral babies onto the reef.

Our study provides a practical, data-driven blueprint for coral protection and rehabilitation. Knowing that a handful of coral groups carry most of the potential for repair, managers and conservationists can deliver their attention to these heavyweights.

Our work is what is called a “first-order” estimate: a rough draft with a large (but quantifiable) amount of uncertainty. It’s a good start, as it allows us to get an idea of the scale of coral reproduction and the differences between coral groups.

We now need to refine our estimates by going out and directly measuring egg release across new and diverse coral species. It’s an exciting but also daunting prospect – 190,000 square kilometres is a lot of area to cover with a clipboard.

Kate Marie Quigley, DECRA Research Fellow in molecular ecology, James Cook University

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

In 2001, I had an epiphany while making my first trip to Australia.

Walking across a remote sheep station in the dusty west, my ears were suddenly filled with the rich, spirited song of three pied butcherbirds.

Together, their voices wafted through the air like a hauntingly beautiful flute. That was the first time I encountered a trio of singing birds. I was instantly captivated.

Almost three decades later, I’ve built a career as a musician, composer and zoomusicologist – someone who studies sound in animal culture.

That serendipitous experience sparked my quest to understand how songbirds shape sound and why birdsong affects us so deeply.

The origins of songbirds

There are at least 4,000 species of songbirds, also known as oscine passerine birds, which together make up nearly half of the world’s bird life. This includes familiar and much-loved species like lyrebirds, fairywrens and honeyeaters.

Birdsong research has long focused on the northern hemisphere. However, DNA evidence from a major 2002 study turned this upside down. It revealed that all songbirds originated in Australia, before spreading across the world. Tim Low’s best-selling book, Where Song Began (2017), did much to popularise this research.

Subsequent studies refined this picture, suggesting early songbirds radiated out from Gondwana – the ancient supercontinent that included Australia, Antarctica and South America. The well-known lyrebird and the rare, ground-dwelling scrub-bird are thought to be the Australian songbirds with the oldest lineage.

Today, songbird hotspots are scattered across the globe.

South and Central America – particularly Colombia, Peru and Costa Rica – are famed for their avian diversity. New Guinea is home to birds-of-paradise, whose strikingly colourful displays have fascinated scientists and artists alike.

Europe’s spring chorus – sustained by blackbirds, thrushes and nightingales – features widely in literature and film. And in North America, birders prize the flutey flourishes of the hermit thrush and the wood thrush’s bell-like notes.

Learning to sing

These melody-making birds share a rare gift: they learn their songs from parents and peers. This process is known as vocal learning.

Among birds, only parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds are vocal learners. Humans are the sole primate that falls into this category, capable of imitating, altering and learning from the sounds we hear. Elephants, whales and some bats are also vocal learners.

Birdsong is often framed as a tool males use to compete for a territory or a female’s attention. Birdsong does serve these two practical functions. However, some birds produce sounds infinitely more beautiful and complex than what’s strictly needed to retain a territory or attract a mate.

It’s worth noting songs are not the same as calls. While birds must learn to sing, they have a relatively innate ability to call. Calls are short, meaningful sounds that help birds do everything from feeding to nesting and flocking, where birds gather to collectively forage or travel.

How birdsong affects us

Many people turn to birdsong as a way to relax and reconnect with nature. But listening to birdsong isn’t just pleasurable.

Research suggests it can reduce stress, improve anxiety and even sharpen attention. One 2022 study suggests listening to birdsong for just six minutes improves mental wellbeing. Another 2021 review found that when people tuned into natural soundscapes – such as birdsong or the sound of fast-flowing water – their blood pressure and heart rate lowered.

Many people instinctively know this. Consider how often birdsong features in meditation apps, in films or even at shopping centres.

Hearing a wild bird’s song is both ordinary and majestic. Ordinary because songbirds aren’t usually surrounded by sweeping vistas – instead they may be perched on a power line or hidden high in a tree. It’s also majestic because people are often deeply moved by these encounters. A single song can lift the mood of a morning.

Where to listen

Thankfully, you don’t need to traverse the world to tune into birdsong.

Australia is rich in birdwatching opportunities, particularly in the north and east of the country. If you’re unsure where to go, you can visit Australian Geographic’s top birding locations website. You can also find songbird hotspots in Australia and abroad using Birdingplaces’ interactive global map.

You don’t even need a car. Dawn is when birds are most active, so you may encounter a songbird if you step out early. It also pays to walk near water, where vegetation is dense and insects plentiful. But many avian singers also thrive in suburbs and urban parks.

Once you start hearing and observing birds, you will inevitably want to identify them. An abundance of online tools can help. A free option is eBird, which allows birders of all stripes to identify and document species. Xeno Canto is another resource.

You don’t need to identify a bird to enjoy its contribution to the dawn chorus. Just slowing down and listening is a good start.

Hollis Taylor, Research Affiliate, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney

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

A cockatoo, a flame and a map all in a single symbol – now known as Brisbane 2032’s Olympic and Paralympic emblem. Is it saying too much, and who is it really speaking to?

The emblem was revealed last Friday, supposedly by accident, on the Brisbane 2032 YouTube channel, three days ahead of the official launch event.

It features a pink cockatoo crest, doubling as a torch, and loosely mirrors the shape of host state Queensland. The feathers are also grouped in bundles of three and two – a nod to “2032”.

A dramatic response is almost guaranteed for a new Olympics emblem. In this case, it has been generally positive.

Designing an emblem that represents a diverse nation on the world stage is a complicated task. And it’s not just about effective design; it’s about which version of Australia we choose to present.

Why Olympic emblems matter

Olympic emblems become the visual face of a host city and nation for years before the games begin. They appear on broadcast graphics, uniforms, merchandise, tickets, signage and marketing campaigns. And for international audiences, they provide an impression of the host country.

An effective Olympic emblem needs to work across languages, cultures and media. It must be original, and must represent place, identity and aspiration, while remaining simple enough to reproduce everywhere, from giant stadium screens to postage stamps.

This is a difficult balancing act, and not all countries pull it off.

In 2007, London was preparing to host the Olympics when its Keith Haring-esque 2012 emblem was launched. It came with a £400,000 price tag from brand consultancy Wolff Olins – quickly followed by a petition, signed by more than 48,000 people, appealing against it.

Some eight years later, Tokyo’s 2020 emblem was withdrawn due to plagiarism allegations. Belgian designer Olivier Debie accused Kenjiro Sano of copying his logo for the Théâtre de Liège. Sano denied this.

The replacement came from an open competition that received 14,599 entries.

But there have been some clear successes, too. Both the Mexico 1968 and Munich 1972 logos are regarded by experts as classics in Olympic emblem design.

Mexico’s designers embedded the figures “68” into the Olympic rings – and this pattern spread across the whole city.

For Munich 1972, German graphic designer Otl Aicher deliberately opted for a calm blue to distinguish the event from the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Aicher also developed a range of intuitive sport pictograms for the 1972 games which are still replicated to this day.

Limits of a layered symbol

The Brisbane emblem was designed by a consortium of global agencies: VML and Verian (formerly Kantar Public) and Queensland First Nations consultancy BlackCard. BlackCard is the only Queensland firm in the team.

To Queensland audiences, the cockatoo crest will be easily recognisable. But the games will also draw potentially hundreds of thousands of international visitors.

Most of them are unlikely to recognise Queensland’s shape without additional context. Some may not even recognise the feathers as a cockatoo crest.

The emblem also seems to have some minor drawbacks or conflicting elements from a design perspective. For instance:

• it is officially a Brisbane event, yet Queensland occupies the visual centre of the design

• it isn’t immediately obvious the feathers are mirroring the shape of Queensland

• people may not understand the reference behind the feather grouping, or even notice it

• the pink cockatoo is primarily associated with Australia’s arid inland and is found as far east as Roma, rather than being strongly associated with Queensland’s “reefs, beaches and hinterland”

• the official story regarding the symbolism behind cockatoos – that they “carry First Nations significance, with strong connections to Country and a cultural role as messengers linking people to place, story and ceremony” – isn’t obvious in the emblem itself.

This doesn’t mean the emblem won’t work. It will be joined in the near future by pictograms and a mascot, which jointly will tell the whole story of Brisbane 2032’s branding success.

Sydney 2000 versus Brisbane 2032

Every Olympic host must decide what aspect of itself to foreground. The challenge is that one symbol is being asked to tell several different stories at once.

Compared to Sydney 2000’s “Millennium Man”, Brisbane’s 2032 emblem signals a shift in how Australia wishes to present itself to the world.

Sydney’s emblem used iconic landmarks and sport to tell a simple, unmistakably Australian story. Instead, Brisbane 2032 draws on wildlife, geography and culture.

Whether by design or not, this focus on nature also neatly aligns with Tourism Australia’s recent ten-year strategy, moulded around promoting the nation as a first port for “deep connection to nature”.

Sydney sold a city. Brisbane 2032 takes a much broader approach, highlighting the challenge of representing a country with many voices.

Nina Hillenberg, Senior Lecturer, Design, Torrens University Australia

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

No one likes to feel left out of the conversation – including people living with dementia. Sometimes, all it takes is a little extra thought to make sure everyone feels included.

Here are some things you can do to help make communication a bit easier when someone you know is living with dementia.

Some basics

Dementia is an umbrella term for a group of brain diseases which can impact memory, language and how people communicate.

Specific types of dementia can affect someone’s understanding of the meaning of words or their ability to produce language.

People with dementia may find it hard to find the right words, or it might take them longer to process information.

Changes in memory and thinking can also make it hard to keep up with conversations and remember what you wanted to say.

Dementia affects each person differently. There is no one way of talking to people living dementia, just as there is no one way of talking to any group of people.

But the principles remain the same

People with dementia continue to face high levels of discrimination and stigma.

But fundamentally, how you talk to someone living with dementia is the same as talking to anyone else.

Communicating means being clear and showing respect, and not assuming what the other person may or may not be able to understand.

When someone has dementia, you may have to adapt and simplify some of the ways you communicate. But it’s important to do this without talking down or infantalising them.

Control what you can

If your friend or loved one with dementia often finds communicating challenging, planning ahead can make a difference.

Most of us would find it harder to concentrate in a busy cafe with the coffee machine roaring, music playing and background conversations. But for someone with dementia this can be particularly overwhelming.

Wherever possible, choose a quiet space to catch up, and limit the group to one or two people. If you’re in a bigger gathering, consider having someone stay with the person with dementia to support them if they start to feel overwhelmed.

Communication is both verbal and non-verbal. So make sure there is good lighting and that you sit where the person with dementia can see you.

If they (or you) use hearing or visual aids, make sure they’re worn and on. And put down your phone – giving the person your full attention can help them anchor theirs.

Using expressive body language – such as smiles and nods – can help convey meaning.

Let them lead

Sometimes people with dementia may say things that are out of place. They may also refer to people or things from the past as if they’re here today.

When this happens, it’s natural to want to correct them, but it’s not the best approach. Lying should also be avoided wherever possible.

So what can you do instead? Focus on alleviating their distress, validating their emotions or redirecting the conversation.

You can try to understand what they’re feeling or experiencing. If someone asks for their mother, for example, it could be a sign they need comfort. After checking for anything else that could be causing distress, you could acknowledge they miss their mum, but explain she’s not here right now.

Where appropriate, touch can provide comfort and help redirect the conversation.

Reminiscing can also be positive. If they ask about a specific person or place, a memory book can help prompt recollections of good times they’ve shared.

Of course, not all family relationships or past experiences are positive. If you know there are difficult topics or relationships, try to let the care team or other people around them know the person’s history so they can watch for signs of distress.

More practical tips

Inclusion should always be the priority. So try to speak directly to the person living with dementia, not about them.

Use their name, and don’t be shy to introduce yourself and remind them how you know each other. For example, “Hi Brenda, I’m John. We met at tennis.”

Don’t rush to finish their sentences. Slow down and give them time to respond.

Show interest in what you know about the person from their past. Ask questions, but remember – providing context can make it easier to answer: “I’ve been enjoying Wimbledon. Have you got a favourite tennis player?” or “It’s a lovely day outside. Shall we see what’s growing in the garden?”

Music is also a wonderful way to connect and may help reduce depression. Listening to familiar songs can be a way to spend time together without the pressure of a conversation. Or you might find other ways to connect through art, gardening or spending time with grandchildren.

Good days and bad days

Dementia is progressive, so it will get worse over time.

However, symptoms can change depending on the time of day, and daily fluctuations are more common in some types of dementia.

As for any of us, feeling tired, unwell or in pain can make it harder to pay attention.

But if you notice a sudden change – such as the person not knowing where they are, hallucinations or a mood shift – check for infection or recent medication changes, and seek help. These could be signs of delirium, which is a medical emergency.

Remember that you’re human, too

Caring for someone living with dementia can also affect your own health and wellbeing. It’s important to take time out for yourself, connect with support services, ask for help, and remember that we all make mistakes.

When someone has dementia, challenges communicating are not anyone’s fault. But slowing down, being patient and listening can make a world of difference.

Nikki-Anne Wilson, Lecturer, School of Psychology, UNSW ; Neuroscience Research Australia

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

The ins and outs of some of the seemingly endless fights over the Albanese government’s budget measures are often arcane or difficult for many people to easily understand.

That’s the case, for example, with the legislation to crack down on trusts, introduced on Wednesday, which has been surrounded by a lot of heat.

But the tug of war over the government’s plan to remove, from April next year, the age discrimination that favours older people taking out private health insurance is a very simple issue for voters to get their heads around, wherever they stand on the merits of the measure.

It’s now a central battle for the government and it will be hard for it to rescue the measure without sacrificing big dollars – just when Treasurer Jim Chalmers needs to preserve the budget’s savings.

In terms of personalities, there’s a lot to watch too, with new Greens leader David Shoebridge and Health Minister Mark Butler as main players.

Both have something to prove in how this ends. It’s Shoebridge’s first big legislative test in his new role, and he flagged earlier the Greens would be more assertive under his leadership.

For Butler, seen as one of the frontrunners to eventually succeed Anthony Albanese, it will be another benchmark of his ability to land a deal – providing clues on how well he will handle the complexities ahead in his job of reforming the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Under present arrangements, people 65 and over who have private health insurance receive a bigger rebate than those who are younger. The amount is larger if they are 70 or older.

By removing the “top ups”, the government would save $3 billion over four years. It has said this would be put into aged care, which is much in need of money.

Its justification for the measure is equity – that it is unfair that people should be treated differently on the basis of age.

On Wednesday the opposition, Greens and other crossbenchers joined in the Senate to knock the legislation off the government’s agenda.

The Greens say that, as the price of passage, they want pensioners removed from its ambit. “You can’t take a billion dollars from 1.2 million pensioners,” Shoebridge says.

Butler on Thursday reintroduced the bill into the House of Representatives. Its future was unclear when parliament broke late Thursday. The weeks ahead will see negotiations between the government and Greens.

There’ll be plenty of time for the bill’s critics to intensify their lobbying, which has already been full on. One Labor backbencher, receiving a flood of emails, says the measure is causing a lot of pain in electorate offices. This MP thinks the government should at least remove pensioners from those hit, if not drop the bill entirely.

Teal independent Monique Ryan, a medical doctor, has been a strong critic, commissioning data from the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO).

Ryan said after the Senate vote: “It’s unfair and unreasonable to strip support from older Australians who have worked for decades to retain their private health cover in retirement.

"The PBO analysis I commissioned found that half the $3 billion in savings the government had planned would have been taken from the pockets of the older Australians least able to afford them.”

Ryan accuses the government of trying to hide the impacts of the changes. “It claimed that 44,000 older Australians might drop their cover because of these changes. The Health Department says it is closer to 80,000. That would shift the cost of their healthcare to public hospitals, and the government has refused to say how much that would cost the states.”

For the government, and in particular the treasurer, the rejection of the health rebate bill capped off yet another fraught week, which saw Chalmers embarrassed when the prime minister seemed to be claiming all the ownership of last week’s backflip over the Australian Taxation Office’s credit card ban.

This budget has such a long tail that it is running into the preparations for the mid year update, due in December. Many concessions and corrections have had to be made. At the macro level the news continues grim, with the latest International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook this week showing Australia expected to have continuing high inflation, in the top band of developed countries. Thursday’s job figures showed unemployment at 4.7% in September, a five year high.

Expectations remain of another interest rate rise in this cycle, But Chalmers will fervently hope the Reserve Bank will press the pause button at its early November meeting, as is currently considered likely. Thursday’s jobless numbers increase the prospect of a hold in November.

Chalmers finds himself under the most pressure that he has experienced in his time as treasurer, with no relief in sight and the budget update looming as yet another test.

Given his present problems and preoccupations, it was interesting that Chalmers this week delivered a major speech recognising the risks posed to Labor by One Nation and warning the progressive side of politics not to insult those attracted to voting for that party.

It was a timely reminder, as One Nation appears an increasing threat to Labor. A landmark test for the left side of politics will be next year’s New South Wales election where, despite the Minns Labor government having a reasonable record (unlike Victorian Labor), One Nation appears to be gaining quite a strong foothold.

For the federal opposition, on the objective evidence this week should have been a very good one, with the government seriously on the back foot. Yet Angus Taylor and the Coalition still fail to present as a credible alternative, a message reinforced by implication in former treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s autobiography, released this week.

Many in the current parliamentary Liberal party are highly critical of the former Liberal deputy leader producing the book now, or at all. But the point is, while people may dispute the solutions Frydenberg offers, he has held a mirror to the Liberals’ problems and inadequacies. The party has to fix what the mirror shows – it’s no good just panning the man holding it.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

The Senate has rejected the government’s controversial budget measure to remove the higher private health insurance rebate for people 65 and older.

The opposition, Greens and crossbenchers on Wednesday passed a motion to ditch the bill from the Senate agenda.

At present older people with private health insurance receive higher rebates than the younger population. There are two tiers for those 65 and over, with the highest concession going to those aged 70 and over. The government’s change would remove all age distinctions.

The saving would be worth some $3 billion over four years to the budget. The government said the money would be redirected into aged care.

The measure has received wide criticism with predictions many low income people would not be able to afford to continue their private insurance.

After the vote, Health Minister Mark Butler said the government would try on Thursday to bring the legislation back. He said the government was willing to discuss changes.

The Greens are concerned about the hit to pensioners.

New Greens leader David Shorbridge said

The Greens will support this Bill to reduce Private Health Insurance rebates with a simple clear amendment, protecting pensioners.

It is plain offensive to see Labor looking for over a billion dollars in savings from cutting rebates to pensioners when they refuse to even consider taxing record gas export profits.

We have a simple message for Labor today, tax gas multinationals not pensioners, then you will get Greens support.

Butler said that pensioners made up some 1.2 million of the about three million people who would be affected by the measure.

The motion in the Senate was co-sponsored by Tasmanian crossbencher Jacqui Lambie and the shadow minister for health and aged care, Anne Ruston.

Butler told a news conference:

This afternoon we saw the resurrection of the No-alation under the new leadership of David Shoebridge, a partnership that is determined to thwart the agenda of the government without debate, without consideration of amendments, simply by a political stunt to discharge a bill that is intended to fund more aged care beds, more aged care packages, and better care for older Australians.

Butler said the government had been willing to “consider those amendments in good faith in the chamber, but we didn’t have the opportunity to do that”.

“We’ve been having discussions with the Greens. It appears pretty clear that the new leadership of the Greens Party was not willing to have those negotiations continue.”

Ruston said Wednesday’s result “is a win for every pensioner who has paid their premiums for decades and was about to be punished for it.

"Mark Butler should take the hint. Don’t try to sneak this cut back onto the agenda. Drop it for good.”

The Coalition said documents released under Freedom of Information showed the Health Department expected 78,000 older people to drop their cover by 2029-30. This was nearly double the 44,000 figure Butler had used publicly. “The Department’s own figures show a single person over 70 on Gold cover would have paid around $400 more a year,” the opposition said.

Lambie said: “You do not balance the budget on the back of pensioners”.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

On Ultimo Road in Haymarket, just a few minutes’ walk from Paddy’s Markets, stands an unassuming building with an unusual history. Built in 1921 for the Sydney branch of the Kuomintang (KMT), or Chinese Nationalist Party, it later became the headquarters of the party’s Australasian organisation.

More than a century later, the building has been heritage-listed by the City of Sydney. It’s not only the building itself that is valuable, but the archives, objects and stories preserved there. Together, they challenge some familiar assumptions about Australia’s past.

Most people associate the KMT with China and Taiwan. Emerging from Sun Yat-sen’s republican movement in the late 19th century, it later governed China under Chiang Kai-shek until its defeat by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. In Taiwan, it imposed martial law and maintained authoritarian rule for decades. Martial law was lifted in 1987, paving the way for Taiwan’s democratisation in the 1990s.

So what was this party doing in Sydney? And what can its headquarters tell us about Australia?

In September, the Museum of Chinese in Australia invited me to talk about the building’s history. But the discussion that followed my talk quickly moved beyond the building itself.

The audience brought together migrants from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, descendants of long-established Sydney families, policymakers, history enthusiasts and groups of international studies and high school students.

Some asked whether migrants are still viewed with suspicion from the wider Australian public over divided loyalties. Others wondered how changing attitudes towards immigration might affect their communities. Their questions showed how this building can open conversations about Australia today.

Australia was never simply a destination

We often tell Chinese Australian history as a story of arrival: miners, market gardeners, merchants and families who endured the restrictions of White Australia and built lives here.

These stories are all true, but go in one direction. They make Sydney the end of the journey.

Those who built the KMT had different views of the city. For them Sydney was a hub.

Chinese-language newspapers, telecommunications, shipping routes and political organisations connected Sydney with Hong Kong, Japan, San Francisco, Vancouver and the Pearl River Delta. Chinese Australians raised funds, organised meetings and debated China’s political future, from Australia.

Over time, even as the building stayed essentially the same, what the KMT represented changed – through the course of war with Japan, China’s civil war, the Cold War, authoritarian rule in Taiwan and Taiwan’s democratisation.

Australians often date their engagement with Asia from the 1970s. This building reminds us that Chinese Australians were active in regional political networks much earlier. Australia was not watching Asian history from the sidelines. Some of that history was being debated and organised here.

The Kuomintang headquarters is a tangible trace of that transnational world.

One building, different memories

The museum discussion also revealed that Australians do not necessarily remember the same political past in the same way.

For descendants of early members and some older Chinese Australians, the party represents a history of republicanism, wartime mobilisation and community organisation around White Australia policies. For those forming political memories in Taiwan, the party may represent a very different thing.

I grew up in Taiwan, during the final years of martial law. From this perspective, the history of the Kuomintang is inseparable from the February 28 Incident in 1947 when thousands were killed in the KMT government’s violent suppression of an uprising; and the White Terror, decades of political repression that intensified under martial law from 1949.

Neither history disappears when people move to Australia. The revolutionary organisation of the 1920s, the authoritarian government of Cold War Taiwan and the party competing in Taiwan’s democracy operated in very different political circumstances.

This reveals something important about multicultural Australia. Migrants bring more than food, languages and traditions. They also bring political experiences and memories that may conflict with those of their neighbours.

Preserving history without silencing it

Heritage listing is about more than celebrating cultural diversity. It also means recognising histories that are difficult or uncomfortable to tell.

Making history accessible should not mean removing its political conflicts or uncomfortable truths.

The KMT’s own history reminds us of the consequences of censorship. During its authoritarian rule in Taiwan, people were punished for expressing political views the government opposed.

The freedom to tell difficult histories also matters in Australia today. Historian John Fitzgerald recently raised concerns about political pressure on Australian cultural institutions and disputes over how Chinese Australian history is presented.

Fitzgerald’s concerns and the KMT’s history of censorship involve different circumstances, but both remind us how political power can shape – and simplify – historical narratives.

Preserving the KMT headquarters does not mean endorsing the party. Nor should its authoritarian past erase its place in Chinese Australian history.

A century-old building cannot settle these disagreements. But it can give Australians a place to examine them.

Heritage listing is an important first step, but it should not be the last. The building and its archives hold stories that remain little known. Opening them up to the wider public would allow more people to explore these histories, ask questions and bring overlooked stories to light.

The building reminds us that Australia’s connections with the Asia Pacific were shaped not only by governments and trade, but also by migrants who brought political struggles, competing visions and different memories.

Understanding Australia’s past means making room for these histories, including those that are difficult to tell.

Mei-fen Kuo, Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Culture and History, Macquarie University

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

In July, a group in Bathurst, New South Wales wanted to hold a small rally in a local park against culling wild horses, known as brumbies.

When an organiser notified the council, they were told they would need $20 million in public liability insurance.

Organisers for the same cause reported facing similar barriers in councils across Australia, including Bendigo, Newcastle, Queanbeyan, Yarragon and Adelaide.

This wasn’t a stadium event. It was people wanting to stand in a public space and object to something the government was doing.

These examples are just some of many. Before they can protest, people across the country increasingly need permission. If they don’t get it, they risk heavy fines, jail time and violent dispersal. The NSW police watchdog is currently investigating the use of force at a rally in Sydney.

Our new research, released today by the Australian Democracy Network and Deakin University’s Centre for Law as Protection, maps how protest permit systems work in every state and territory. The result is a tangle of laws, council by-laws and public place rules so complex that people struggle to find out, in advance, whether they may even turn up.

Notify or authorise?

Part of the problem is confusion between notification and authorisation systems.

A notification system asks organisers to give police a heads-up so a protest can run safely.

An authorisation system does the opposite: the protest can’t lawfully go ahead, or loses its legal protection, unless the state approves it.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Australia has signed, allows the first, not the second. United Nations guidance is instructive: having to apply for permission undermines protest’s status as a basic right.

Australia has already learnt this. In the 1970s and ‘80s, protests against the Vietnam war, the Bjelke-Petersen government and anti-queer discrimination were violently dispersed in South Australia, Queensland and NSW.

To avoid a repeat of this violence, governments responded with notification systems to facilitate protest and shield it from offences like obstruction.

Now those systems are being turned against protesters.

Crackdowns in NSW

In NSW, the Supreme Court has ruled people can be arrested for contempt of court for attending a protest a court has “prohibited” under the permit system.

Protesters who tried to march on February 9 2026, when the usual permit system was suspended, were met with blows and pepper spray.

In NSW, police have been accused of using force against protesters in the CBD because a gathering lacks an appropriate permit, even though attending an un-notified protest in that area is in fact legal.

Advocacy group Legal Observers NSW has recorded instances of police dispersing protests for giving less than seven days’ notice, though the law sets no minimum.

When people are policed harshly for not holding a permit, trust breaks down and confrontation becomes more likely — the opposite of what these schemes intended.

Seeking permission to protest is now the default

Protest is unlawful without permission from a council or other authority across much of Australia – in Tasmania, the Northern Territory, most major councils, and at key sites in Sydney and Melbourne’s city parks.

Even the “voluntary” schemes in NSW, Queensland and South Australia work like permits, because of the penalties protesters otherwise face.

In NSW, obstructing a road, station or light rail, which is broad enough to catch someone on a footpath, can bring a $22,000 fine and two years in prison; in SA, obstructing a public place can attract a $50,000 fine.

The burden falls unevenly and is hardest on those least able to navigate the forms, insurance and deadlines, such as small volunteer campaigns and migrant and First Nations communities.

In January 2024, the First Nations group Uprising of the People was charged an $8,000 “traffic control” fee five days before an Invasion Day rally in Darwin, and had to crowdfund to pay it.

In Alice Springs, community members wanting to protest have to pay $109 just to apply for a permit, with no guarantee it’ll be approved.

Do permit systems even work?

The usual justification is that permits reduce disruption and save police resources. We couldn’t find evidence of this.

Sydney, with its scheme, has had about as many large protests as Melbourne, which doesn’t have a permit scheme for CBD streets.

NSW Police has gone to court at least three times since 2023 to stop protests and spent more than $300,000 without preventing one. City of Melbourne data show no clear sign that protests drive away foot traffic.

Some laws, such as those introduced in NSW, can also be found by the courts to be unconstitutional for disproportionately undermining Australian’s implied freedom of political communication.

Most comparable jurisdictions have not adopted protest authorisation systems. The United Kingdom, United States, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa do not generally require permission to protest in public streets, and their courts have struck down attempts to do so.

Australia is quietly moving the other way.

A workable solution

None of this means organisers shouldn’t talk to authorities. Advance notice helps plan road closures and keep everyone safer.

The fix is to make our systems do what they were built to do — replace de facto permission with clear, proportionate notification.

Protest shouldn’t be unlawful because no one asked first. Spontaneous gatherings should be accommodated. Restrictions should be necessary, proportionate and reviewable, and police should facilitate and meet all protests, notified or not, with communication and de-escalation, not force.

The solution is clear and workable. Protest is a right, not a licence. Our laws should start treating it that way again.

The author would like to acknowledge Anastasia Radievska from the Australian Democracy Network for her work on the report that underpins this article.

Maria O'Sullivan, Associate Professor of Law, Member of Deakin Cyber and the Centre for Law as Protection, Deakin University, Deakin University

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

Who comes to mind when you think of someone emotionally intelligent? Someone who can read a room, defuse an argument, and who knows exactly what to say when a friend is struggling? For many people, that person is a woman. It’s such a widely held belief that popular psychology treats it as fact.

We decided to put that assumption to the test. Our new study, co-led by Dr Vera Hampel and co-authored with Leon Bach, reviewed nearly three decades of research, from 1995 to 2023, across 76 countries and more than 600,000 people. We wanted to answer a simple question: are women really more emotionally intelligent than men? The headline answer is yes, on average, women score higher.

But the more useful finding is the type of emotional intelligence women seem to excel at, and what it potentially costs the people who have it.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognise, understand and regulate emotions in yourself and in others. When we looked at each element of emotional intelligence, the female advantage turned out to be concentrated in the “others’ feelings” half of the equation.

This means recognising what someone else is feeling, understanding why and helping them manage it. A child has a meltdown, a colleague goes quiet after their idea gets dismissed in a meeting, a negotiation gets tense. Plenty of men are excellent at this too, and plenty of women aren’t; these are averages across hundreds of thousands of people, not predictions about any one person in the room.

Is that gap simply biology? We can’t rule biological or hormonal factors out entirely. But two patterns in our data point elsewhere. The female advantage is far smaller in children than in adults, and this gap has been narrowing across the three decades our data spans. That’s not what you’d expect from something fixed at birth. Although the data in our study cannot tell us the exact reasons these differences emerge, this pattern aligns with what you’d expect from something shaped through practice.

There’s a plausible source for that practice, too. Other research has found that parents use a wider vocabulary of emotion words with daughters than sons, and more often encourage girls to reflect on and articulate their feelings.

Boys, meanwhile, are more often steered toward managing emotions by suppressing them. Their sisters are encouraged to work through it with other people – exactly the kind of social and emotional skill our data shows women excel at.

Put simply, girls appear to get more practice reading and responding to other people’s emotions, starting early in life. Like any skill built through repetition, whether it’s learning a new language or picking up a new instrument, the more you practice, the more natural it becomes.

In fact a 2019 meta-analysis of 58 studies found that emotional intelligence can be trained. Gender didn’t seem to impact the effectiveness of learning how to be more emotionally intelligent.

That’s good news. If emotional intelligence is a trainable skill rather than a fixed trait, the gap isn’t destiny. That means men can benefit from these skills too, including in negotiations and at work.

But there’s a less comfortable implication, too. If women’s advantage here goes unrecognised as a skill and gets treated instead as “how women are”, it becomes very easy to take for granted. The colleague who’s good at defusing tension becomes the one who’s always expected to do so. A capability quietly turns into an obligation: unpaid and unrewarded.

This plays out in the workplace every day. Organisations benefit when employees manage team tension, support stressed colleagues and smooth over conflict. It is work that keeps a team functioning but almost never shows up in a performance review.

Two practical shifts need to follow our study findings. First, employers should name this work and reward it, in reviews and in promotion decisions. Second, invest in developing these abilities in all staff.

The same logic holds outside the office. In families and friendships, the person who remembers a friend is having a bad week and checks in without being asked, who notices when someone stops responding in the group chat, who always asks a family member about their day is doing real work too, and that work is often taken for granted precisely because it looks effortless.

None of this means women don’t have a real strength here. Our data shows a female advantage in emotion abilities. But a strength that’s assumed rather than trained, and expected rather than shared, isn’t something to reinforce. It’s untapped potential for men. The person everyone turns to when things get hard isn’t lucky or simply built that way: they’ve probably had more practice.

What we haven’t done is give everyone else that same opportunity or incentive to practice, or made clear emotional intelligence was a skill worth building in the first place.

Mary M. Hausfeld, Assistant Professor in Management, University of Limerick and Jochen Menges, Director of the Center for Leadership in the Future of Work, University of Zurich

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

We give our pet dogs shelter, veterinary care, affection, training and play. We decide when they eat, where they sleep, when they go outside, who they meet, and how they move through the world.

We love our dogs and we want them to be safe. But there’s a flipside. Our care often comes with confinement, restricted movement, limited social choice and constant supervision.

Separation anxiety is a growing issue. Diagnoses of dog behavioural issues rose tenfold between 2010 and 2020 in the United States. Dog behaviour specialists and organisations have emerged to help dogs cope with the challenges of modern pet life.

We often assume the long history of domestication has made dogs dependent on us. But this isn’t true. Most of the world’s dogs do not live as pets – they roam freely, without containment or ownership.

What can these dogs teach us about what constitutes a good dog life? In our new research, we explore what happened when 45 Western-trained dog behaviour specialists went to India to observe free-living street dogs. What they saw spoke to the tension at the heart of owning a dog. We love them, but we control them.

Learning to see free-living dogs

India has an estimated 60 million street dogs.

These dogs live alongside people. But they aren’t owned. They move through streets, markets and public spaces. They scavenge for food or are given leftovers by people.

Our participants were experienced professionals who had spent years working with pet dogs suffering from anxieties, aggression or other behavioural problems.

Importantly, they were willing to test their assumptions about dog welfare against direct encounters with dogs living very different lives.

Some expected to see dogs with a freedom or resilience missing from the lives of many pet dogs. But most expected to see hardship – dogs in conflict, in poor health or having to live in constant vigilance.

Their expectations point to the idea that dog safety and care is tied to human management and control.

Life on the streets

Our participants found the lives of India’s street dogs compelling. Many described them as socially skilled, physically robust and capable.

The dogs could independently thread their way through intensely busy city streets and move confidently through crowds. They solved conflicts with subtle signals through barks and postures rather than prolonged fights, and chose when to approach or disengage from people.

Participants felt the street dogs seemed calm and settled, rather than overwhelmed by the noise of traffic and crowds. This was a sharp contrast to their experiences of pet dogs, who could often escalate behaviour in response to smaller issues.

There is no universal template

It would be easy to turn our research into a simple comparison: street dogs are free, pet dogs are captive.

That’s not the point. The point is there’s no universal template for a good dog life.

Free-living dogs face serious risks that pet dogs largely avoid, from disease to injury to hunger to human hostility. We can’t simply give pet dogs the lives of free-living dogs.

Many pet dogs spend much of their lives indoors, behind fences, on leads, in cars or in crates. We often directly instruct them what to do and have highly scheduled routines.

When a problem such as anxiety or poor impulse control arises, an owner can often interpret it as a problem stemming from the dog. But dog behaviour is relational – it emerges from interactions between dogs and humans.

Is confinement care?

As the dog behaviour experts moved from city to city, many began questioning their internal models of what welfare looks like for a dog. Was good care equated with confinement and obedience?

As one put it:

when we tell our dogs you can only heel […] are we telling them to be stressed because we’re limiting their behavioural diversity?

Many questioned whether efforts to give pet dogs safe and loving lives might be making it harder for their beloved pets to develop confidence, adaptability and social competence.

The result might be dogs who struggle with anxiety when left alone or bark at strangers. Others might react aggressively to other dogs or panic in busy places.

These behaviours are real and often distressing. But humans often respond by doubling down on restraint and control.

Asking better questions

For our participants, the experience of interpreting street dogs as competent and independent led them to reflect on how pet dogs could be given more autonomy.

Some participants experienced a striking reversal in their thinking.

They arrived in India wondering how free-living dogs could survive without people constantly protecting them. They left wondering whether some common behavioural challenges might reflect not failures within pet dogs – but in the conditions we create for them.

Many participants told us their guiding question had changed from “how do street dogs survive?” to “how do pet dogs survive us?” by the end of the tour.

It wasn’t that free-living dogs necessarily live better lives. But to survive on the streets, they employ a wide range of skills – from social to navigation to finding food – that Western dog owners do for their pets. If pet dogs are too restricted, they become frustrated and act out.

What if, as one participant wondered, dog owners gave their dogs more control:

what happens when […] you’re not controlling every single aspect of their lives? When dogs are free to make their own decisions, they learn how to handle things.

Daniel Ramp, Associate Professor and Director, Centre for Compassionate Conservation, University of Technology Sydney; Kapil Vishwas Patwardhan, Doctoral Candidate, Transdisciplinary School, University of Technology Sydney, and Rosalie Chapple, Senior Research Fellow, University of Technology Sydney

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

Earth seems like a troubled place right now, but at least our cosmic surroundings appear peaceful. But this is not universally true, as explosions, collisions and other dangers lurk in other places and times.

In our new research, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, we scoured simulated universes to find the friendliest locations for life.

We discovered something reassuring: the Sun, sitting here in the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, is about as good as it gets.

The Goldilocks zones

Regions of the universe that would be friendly towards life are known as habitable or Goldilocks zones – they’re just right.

Whether life is actually there is another question. As astronomers and biologists explore how life could form on exoplanets (planets outside the Solar System), astrophysicists follow the structure and evolution of the universe to identify the nicest places, as well as those where life could be snuffed out in an instant.

So, where should we look for life?

For example, there is a Goldilocks zone in the immediate neighbourhood of stars. Too hot or too cold will not do. This “circumstellar habitable zone” is just right for liquid water instead of steam or ice.

Zooming out, we can look for the nicest places and times to live in our own Milky Way galaxy. A young star that’s too close to the galactic centre will suffer in the hustle and bustle of all the nearby stars, whilst stars that are too far away will be in a sterile environment, devoid of the chemicals essential for life.

Just as Earth is in the Sun’s circumstellar habitable zone, the Sun is in the Milky Way’s “galactic habitable zone”.

Let’s zoom out even more. What about other galaxies?

Simulating the universe

We followed synthetic galaxy evolution using the EAGLE (Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments) project – one of the most realistic simulations of the observed universe.

They track the expansion of space, gravity’s pull, and the physics of gas, stars and black holes, and provide us with a detailed map of what the universe looks like across hundreds of millions of light years.

With such a map, we asked: where might life be most welcome?

Finding life, avoiding catastrophes

With no observations of alien life, we must make assumptions. The hydrogen and helium produced in the Big Bang are too simple to make organisms, so we focus on generations of stars that have seeded the cosmos with heavier elements essential for life.

Exoplanet observations reveal that Earth-like rocky planets require a certain concentration of those heavier elements. However, too much could produce a hot Jupiter, a gas giant that sweeps through the planetary system, eating rocky planets on the way. This is best avoided.

Our breakthrough involves detailed modelling of those things that are bad news for life. Big stars blow up, sterilising their local environment. Bigger explosions, such as gamma-ray bursts, can fry a much larger volume. Palaeontologists think that the Ordovician mass extinction 450 million years ago might have resulted from a nearby explosion.

There are other dangers to avoid. We wouldn’t want another star to wander through our Solar System and disrupt Earth’s nicely circular orbit. So, steer clear of crowded galactic neighbourhoods.

Then there are the black holes. Most of these are small and don’t pose any danger, but in the hearts of galaxies lurk monsters. Weighing more than a million suns, these can roar into life as they swallow matter that gets too close. So, stay away as this can result in intense radiation that can strip the atmosphere off your planet.

A home among the galaxies

While we don’t know if life would form in these nice spots, they are the ones that offer the best conditions.

And the results tell us another thing: the Milky Way is rather nice.

This isn’t just a fondness for our own neighbourhood. We could have found that life should exist in earlier galaxies, smaller ones, or farther from galaxy centres.

We find that our universe has created plenty of opportunities for habitation, though it seems to be slowing down as the rate of catastrophes catch up with the creation of new planets. Our Milky Way seems typical in the galaxies that have been efficient in turning the raw materials of the cosmos into life-friendly environments.

Similarly, the Milky Way, and its kindred, have put their energetic and dangerous days behind them and settled into a relaxed retirement. These days, even in a billion years of wandering around our Milky Way, less than one star in a thousand would experience an extreme, life-annihilating extinction event.

The story is different for smaller galaxies, which are far more numerous than the Milky Way, as they are too crowded and too energetic.

So, rest easy. And if you get the chance, buying a property in the Milky Way is probably a secure investment, astronomically speaking.

Luke Barnes, Senior Lecturer in Physics, Western Sydney University; Geraint Lewis, Professor of Astrophysics, University of Sydney, and Miroslav Filipovic, Professor, Western Sydney University

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

Is there life elsewhere, or is Earth unique in the universe? This is one of humanity’s great unanswered questions.

One way to approach this mystery is to investigate how life began here on Earth. Our research explores the conditions where a mixture of molecules somehow transformed from chemistry into biology.

In a new study published in Scientific Reports, we shed new light on one possible step in this process: how a fragile sugar from outer space may have helped create the conditions for its own survival on Earth, where it eventually became the backbone of one of life’s most important molecules.

Recreating life’s beginnings

Scientists think life arose from a complex mixture of water, minerals and carbon-containing molecules: the proverbial primordial soup. These mixtures may have been in oceans, lakes or hot springs. They would have been shaped by changing temperatures, flowing water, mineral surfaces and evaporation, creating conditions in which increasingly complex chemistry could develop.

Researchers try to recreate these processes in laboratories, often using purified chemicals and carefully controlled mixtures. This situation helps isolate individual reactions and remove variables, but it can leave out important interactions in nature’s “messy” chemistry.

One molecule studied in these experiments is RNA. RNA plays a vital role in storing and using genetic information in modern organisms, and is thought to have been important in the origin and early evolution of life.

However, RNA doesn’t form easily. Its molecular backbone contains a fragile sugar called ribose. When heated, ribose can break down into brown goop, much as table sugar turns into caramel.

One thing that can protect ribose molecules is the element boron. In the form of borate (a molecule containing boron, oxygen and hydrogen), it binds to ribose and helps prevent it breaking down.

Experiments investigating this effect often use simple combinations of purified ingredients. We and our colleagues have been trying to make these experiments more realistic, based on what we know about ancient rocks, minerals and fossils.

The Puga hot springs

We also study modern environments we think may resemble the places where life began. One of these is a field of hot springs at Puga in India, high in the Himalayas.

The waters at Puga contain so much boron that borate salt crusts crunch underfoot like snow. Even so, these waters contain only a few percent of the boron concentration used in some laboratory experiments based on purified ingredients.

That’s because minerals containing boron often dissolve poorly in water. Instead, they precipitate to form crystals – like the borate salt crusts at Puga – leaving less boron and other elements in the water for the chemical reactions thought to be involved in the origins of life.

So could high concentrations of dissolved boron really have existed in those ancient environments?

A two-way relationship

In a new study using real minerals, including borate crusts from Puga, we show that ribose itself may help explain how high concentrations of boron could have existed in fluids on Earth before life began.

We found that ribose helps borate minerals dissolve and inhibits the formation of solid grains. This means more boron stays dissolved in the water and available for chemical reactions.

This new research suggests a two-way relationship. Borate protects ribose from breakdown, while ribose helps keep borate dissolved and available.

The world before life

Four billion years ago, when life is thought to have first formed, Earth would have looked very different from today. There would have been little oxygen in the atmosphere and far more active volcanism, creating sparse volcanic landscapes and green, iron-rich oceans.

A heavy rain of meteorites from the young Solar System would have bombarded the land. These meteorites would have delivered molecules to Earth from space, including water and carbon compounds.

Researchers estimate around a million tonnes of carbon could have arrived each year during this early bombardment. The Murchison meteorite, which fell in Victoria in 1969, hints at what it may have looked like.

Locals collecting fragments reported a strong kerosene-like smell from carbon-containing compounds within the meteorite. Scientists have since identified ribose among its contents, alongside other sugars.

In the absence of microbes, carbon-containing molecules could accumulate wherever supply outpaced chemical breakdown. For example, evaporation in shallow lakes and pools could concentrate organic molecules from space into rich chemical soups.

Primordial soup, on the rocks

Much origin-of-life research examines how minerals helped the chemistry of these soups become more complex. Our study highlights how the soup in turn affected the minerals of early Earth.

Some boron that would otherwise have formed mineral crusts and been buried, could instead have remained dissolved in primordial lakes and other waters. This could have changed the types of minerals formed at Earth’s surface.

Ribose itself was probably relatively rare. But other molecules, including ethylene glycol and glycerol, also bind borate.

Their effects on natural mineral deposits need testing, while known interactions between sugars and other minerals suggest broader possibilities. More abundant elements in Earth’s rocks, including silica and calcium, also interact with carbon molecules. This suggests carbon-containing primordial soups could have influenced how other minerals and rocks formed.

Today, organisms shape geology by building shells and coral skeletons through biomineralisation. We propose non-living carbon molecules may have begun influencing mineral formation even before life existed on Earth.

Whether these interactions reshaped entire landscapes remains an open question. But exploring them can help scientists test their assumptions about an alien world in our own distant past, improve experiments investigating our origins, and better understand where life might emerge elsewhere.

Luke Steller, Associate Researcher, Australian Centre for Astrobiology, UNSW ; Albert Fahrenbach, Associate Professor, School of Chemistry, UNSW , and Martin Van Kranendonk, Professor and Director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, UNSW

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

Earlier this week, United States president Donald Trump and representatives of six of the world’s most powerful tech companies signed the White House Accord on Super Intelligence.

The statement begins: “We believe that every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely,” then lays out a four-point plan for self-regulation by frontier AI companies.

The accord is a response to growing concerns, voiced by many tech bosses, academics and company insiders, that AI agents could soon be beyond human control, with some even claiming a 10% chance of AI wiping out humanity by the end of the decade. This follows high-profile hack attempts by AI agents on Canadian and Australian government websites.

The international political community has also responded. At the United Nations General Assembly last week, 22 world leaders signed a new AI safety declaration calling for an international AI safety regulator.

These public statements have grabbed headlines, but they are hardly novel. The recent history of AI is littered with similar declarations from governments and private industry making commitments to AI safety.

Ten years of agreements – and little change

Ten years ago, the Partnership on AI was formed to “address important questions about our future with AI”. Four of the six White House accord signatories are members, including Anthropic and OpenAI.

The partnership has published guidance for the safe deployment of foundation models, which includes a recommendation of “timely and responsible reporting of safety incidents”. When an OpenAI agent breached Medicare’s Statistics Reporting Service in June, it took three months for the company to notify the Australian government. A cynic might see this as evidence that tech companies regulating themselves is not working.

Governments too have signed plenty of AI safety agreements. In 2023, 28 countries and the European Union signed the Bletchley Declaration at the inaugural AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, in the UK. One prescient comment from the declaration: “We are especially concerned by risks in domains such as cybersecurity.”

The content of the Bletchley statement in 2023 and last week’s UN agreement are strikingly similar. Both call for shared international standards, strong human control, and shared responsibility between governments, industry and civil society.

Again, a cynic might ask why, if governments called for a change in approach in 2023, was there a need to reiterate this call three years later?

Summits and safety institutes

The Bletchley summit was the first in a series of AI summits, held in subsequent years in Seoul, Paris and New Delhi. These summits led to the creation of a network of ten AI safety institutes across the globe – though some have since renamed themselves (in the UK to the AI Security Institute, and in the US to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation).

Arguably the most successful of these institutes is the UK’s, which has been backed by 66 million pounds per year in funding, priority access to billions of dollars’ worth of computing power, and advance access to the latest frontier AI models for safety testing. By contrast, Australia’s AI Safety Institute was announced more than two years after the Bletchley Declaration and has around one-sixteenth the funding of its UK counterpart.

As former director of the digital research branch of CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, I worked directly with many of the global AI safety institutes. Good work is going on, but many of the global institutes suffer from a lack of funding compared to the deep pockets of tech companies – they are like a bee on a bear.

What can make AI safety agreements work?

AI safety declarations – whether led by government or industry, nationally or globally – are critically important. Even if their direct outputs can sometimes seem underwhelming, they play an important role in raising awareness and in galvanising leaders to take action.

That said, they need four things to maximise their chances of success: real funding, standing institutional machinery, enforceable consequences and specific commitments.

Real funding is necessary for any kind of work with the famously deep-pocketed AI companies. The UK safety institute, for example, has serious money and priority access to computing power, and has been able to do excellent work.

Standing institutional machinery is what lets the work happen. Agreements with AI companies allowed the UK and US institutes to jointly evaluate Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.5 before it was released in 2024, for example.

Enforceable consequences are needed to make safety declarations more than just lists of wishes. A 2025 study found evidence that a collection of voluntary commitments on AI safety which the White House secured from 15 AI companies in 2023 were followed only 53% of the time.

Specific commitments are what lead to real change. Broad declarations draw engagement but offer little in the way of action and enforcement. A sweeping statement from the February Delhi summit drew 92 signatories including the US and China. By contrast, September’s UN statement made specific calls for independent testing and incident reporting and only has around 30 signatories, with the US and China staying away.

What world leaders want

Even with all the right content, AI safety declarations are only as good as the motivations of the political leaders behind them.

In February 2025, one month after Trump’s second inauguration, I attended the Paris AI Summit. The mood among international leaders had clearly shifted.

The summits had started under then UK prime minister Rishi Sunak in 2023 as a genuine attempt to make AI safe. Very quickly, they headed in the opposite direction. Almost at once, global leaders began to focus on the growth opportunities from AI while downplaying the risks.

As long as key world leaders continue to palm AI safety off onto self-regulation by tech companies, declarations will remain statements of intent – while the technology itself continues to rush ahead.

Jon Whittle, Professorial Fellow (Artificial Intelligence), Melbourne Business School, The University of Melbourne

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

Australians who use Apple devices can once again access the world’s most popular adult content site, Pornhub.

That’s because Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, is taking advantage of recent child-safety features Apple has implemented in their devices in Australia. To use certain features – including access to adult content – Apple users now have to confirm they’re 18.

This method of age verification is akin to an approach I originally proposed in The Conversation in 2024. Importantly, this could be the start of a broader shift in the tech industry to a model that ensures child safety online with lesser privacy risks than we have right now.

Australia’s new era of age assurance

Since March 2026, Australians have typically had to prove they’re over 18 to access adult content online under new eSafety Commissioner requirements.

Some websites, including Pornhub, decided it was safer to simply block access to Australians, rather than rely on fallible age assurance methods.

Adult websites that chose not to block Australians predominantly turned to third-party identity providers such as Yoti, Persona, AgeGO and AgeVerif. Such platforms typically require users to upload selfies or video of their face, or to hand over credit card details or government identity documents.

There’s a number of drawbacks with this approach.

What’s wrong with how we currently do age assurance?

Adults wishing to prove they’re over 18 have to hand over sensitive, identifying information to a sea of identity providers. While these services are marketed as safe and privacy aware, the mere act of handing them your private information could reveal highly sensitive information about your online habits – especially when accessing adult content.

A data breach against an identity provider represents a significant risk for its users. Having many providers compounds that risk.

Privacy risks also exist for teens who are subject to repeated age checks when they want to access social media, online dating or chat applications.

And it’s been known for some time that none of the age assurance providers are infallible. Teens and children find ways to work around them and share that information with their friends.

Security is only as good as the weakest link. Having many providers creates lots of opportunity to find different workarounds.

How is Apple’s approach different?

Apple’s new online safety features cut out the weak link: identity providers. Instead of proving their age to many different providers, users instead prove their age once – to Apple.

This can happen the first time a user wishes to access sensitive content on any of their devices, or at the time they set up their Apple Account.

Apple has various methods for users to prove they are of age, including requiring government identity documents, credit card details, or the date of creation of their Apple ID account.

Importantly for adults, proving to Apple you’re 18+ reveals nothing about your online browsing habits.

Crucially for child safety, Apple devices default to mandatory safety settings for any users who haven’t proved they’re 18. This includes content filtering, such as blocking access to adult web sites, plus “communication safety” features that blur sensitive content in images and videos, such as nudity. These features integrate with Apple’s existing child-safety features.

The device can also share information about its user’s age with apps so they can implement additional safety protections. An example of this is Google’s SafeSearch feature, which blocks access to sensitive content in Google search and can’t be turned off if the user hasn’t verified they’re over 18.

Together, these features provide a child-safe by default experience in Australia, without the major drawbacks that come with using third-party identity providers.

Towards a universal model of online safety

I’ve argued before that tech companies should work together on online safety, with device makers like Apple doing age-assurance and implementing mandatory safety features for children.

Apple has now taken the lead in implementing this kind of model. Aylo is calling on Google and Microsoft to implement the same child-safe-by-default approach as Apple. And in August, Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, argued for much the same thing.

Encouragingly, both Google and Microsoft have already built some of the necessary infrastructure. The next step is to use it to provide the same kind of default device-level protections Apple has now introduced.

Ultimately, what we’ll need is industry-wide standardisation, so parents and children alike see uniform safety enforcement regardless of what kind of devices they use, and websites and apps can easily and reliably learn a user’s age from their device.

In the short term, we will hopefully see other sites following Pornhub’s lead by relying on child-safety features and age assurance provided by the user’s device, rather than third-party identity providers.

Doing so would lay the foundation for a much safer online world for parents and children alike.

Toby Murray, Professor of Cybersecurity, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

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

I spent most of my twenties driving around remote Australia in a self-built tiny home, researching from the road while attempting to live a life connected to the natural world. I loved this for many reasons: one reason was that life looks very different whether you are 50 kilometres, 500 kilometres or even 5,000 kilometres down the road. Everyone’s normal is different. I was also struck by how different my experience of space from the middle of the outback was.

As a political scientist with no more sophisticated a stargazing tool than my own eyes, I couldn’t believe it the first time I truly saw the Milky Way. I must have been in my mid-twenties, some five hours from the closest town – Alice Springs – on the edge of the Western Desert, tucked up in a swag, listening to wild dingoes in the distance and watching the branches of mulga trees around me dance, backlit against the majesty of the sky. I kept wishing the pale white clouds above me would clear so I could see the stars properly.

It was only the next day that the professor I was camped with commented on the clarity of the Milky Way the night before – so bright it resembled clouds.

What I’d experienced was partly naivety, but also partly the reality that even growing up in the relatively unpolluted western outskirts of Brisbane, Australia, I did not see the stars as some others do, my viewing curtailed by light pollution. While I still feel a mix of magic and fear when looking up into that inky darkness speckled with stars, I also recognise that, despite space being a global commons capable of generating wonder, we’d be wrong to assume humanity’s shared experience is the same experience.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for humans to connect with space as they have in the past – well beyond light pollution, some humans, more than others, are altering our relationship with the stars.

Come the mid-2020s and we arrive at a sector increasingly dictated by a global hegemon spinning out of orbit, spurred on by a “broligarchy” of techno-capitalist billionaires (and trillionaires?), hurtling towards military destruction and capitalist exploit, and largely staffed by representatives of less than half the population.

You don’t have to look far to see recent examples of how this is playing out, such as the US confirming it has deployed space control weapons or one of Trump’s top military advisors imploring the military to be “prepared to fight, endure and win […] from the seabed to cislunar space” – the space between the Earth and Moon, including Moon’s orbit.

This is all despite the Outer Space Treaty to which the US is a signatory designating such celestial objects such as the Moon be used “exclusively for peaceful purposes”.

If space is a final frontier – the absolute limit of human knowledge, understanding and exploration, the last great opportunity for humanity to do things differently – how and why have we ended up here?

The long answer is a complex stratagem of wealth, power, desire and opportunity. The short answer is men.

Men, specifically the mostly straight, often white kind, dominate most parts of the space sector at the most senior levels. When critical space technology is developed, men are the assumed users. A handful of nations and companies make a lion’s share of decisions – often more unilaterally than they should – and are almost exclusively led by men.

You might think you don’t have a role to play in the decisions being made about whether to mine the Moon or colonise Mars. You might not feel you know enough about the kinds of tech we need to invest in, and for what purposes, when it comes to the future of scientific development. And perhaps you don’t care about what countries and even companies can or cannot do in space.

But whether or not you think, know or care about these things, a small group of humans do feel they have the answers, and they are making calls on all the above and more. And I can tell you: they largely do not look like the more than 50% of the population who are women. They do not represent the full spread of nationalities or ethnic groups in the world. And they may not always have the best interests of human and planetary flourishing in mind when they make such decisions.

This is no coincidence. It’s an example of the patriarchy at work – more specifically, the space patriarchy. Within the aerospace sector, we see the replication of gender-based power structures and patriarchal ideologies.

If space is a frontier to do things differently and yet we are so far replicating the same patterns of commerce and control, then the problem isn’t just abstract: it has real, earthly roots and ramifications.

You see, space has been undergoing a few changes in recent years. Not all are good, and not all of us know what is happening.

Promise

It wasn’t always like this. The quest to explore space was once underpinned by the rhetoric of developing a truly global community. Government-sponsored spaceflights were mission-led and contributed towards international scientific goals and national interests, including “technological leadership, improving national security, creating high-quality jobs, or advancements in research”.

Before the space race inaugurated by the Cold War, the beginning of the Space Age and the first quests for spaceflight in the 1920s and 1930s were squarely focused on the idea of space as part of the global commons.

It was a movement both highly transnational and collaborative in nature, with space seen as a “peaceful domain for all humankind”. Space represented many things to many people, but a core tenet was its promise.

The promise of exploring new worlds and new life forms. The promise of exceeding our earthly limits. The promise of testing our human ingenuity and potential, of creating better futures for all based on our new learnings and space technologies that could become part of everyday life. Maybe you have even dreamt of one day being one of the first humans to see a day dawning on a different planet.

But that was a gentler time, at least in planetary terms. Now, we’re going through an existential crisis on Earth – not in the sense that philosophy students use the term while reading Sartre, but in its most literal sense: we are in a contest for our own survival.

Catastrophic climate change, the degradation of established political systems and the global rules-based order and technological development rapidly outpacing our ability to understand it have all converged to create a profound sense of uncertainty about humanity’s future.

Sure, some of the same benign rhetoric of the past around peace, prosperity and human potential is still being used when it comes to space, but the difference is that the incentives today are amplified. Space doesn’t only represent the opportunity for humans to become a multiplanetary species – for Mars to become a backup drive for humanity, as SpaceX founder Elon Musk puts it. It also represents the ultimate commercial payload.

Space is inherently politicised and competitive: a domain in which vast sums of money can be and are being made, and power can be wielded in galactic proportions. And so at this present moment of crisis, those with the power and the opportunity are increasingly turning their eyes skyward, not to the heavens but beyond it, in the hope of making a buck or a trillion. Make no mistake: space today is big business.

Still a global commons?

In terms of underlying goals, today’s space sector in many ways isn’t that different from the 20th-century space sector – but the scope of what’s possible has changed.

Whereas once sending a rocket to Mars was the ultimate triumph of human ingenuity, now colonising our second-closest neighbour is not beyond imagination, with the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) planning missions to the Red Planet in the 2030s.

Musk, who is aiming to get there first, has called it a “fixer-upper of a planet”, as if we can whack in some heating and gain a strong return on our investment. (Perhaps heralding a new intergalactic age of climate change, SpaceX’s website says of Mars, “It is a little cold, but we can warm it up.”) He sees settlement of Mars as “life insurance” – an opportunity for humanity if we destroy the planet we’ve already got.

These are not new ideas. Space philosopher Frank White, who coined the term “the overview effect” – the paradigmatic shift in perspective and values that astronauts experience following spaceflight – argued back in 1987 that space “may be the key to human survival and evolution and perhaps even more than that”.

In 2008, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking declared that “our only hope for long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth”.

But the “move fast and break things” philosophy of Silicon Valley is coming to dominate as private companies vie for power and control when it comes to space – and it seems as though what was once a global commons could become more akin to a battle arena.

Even if Musk’s key rival, Jeff Bezos, founder of space technology company Blue Origin, is reported to criticise some of Musk’s visions as “unmotivating”, Silicon Valley techno-optimistic visions for space as a place to offshore heavy industry similarly “offer little to the flourishing of humans and the planet”, as sociology professor Richard Tutton notes.

Meanwhile, the US has also shifted its vision for space. While military entanglement in the US space sector has always been a feature, the Trump administration’s declarations of space as a “warfighting domain” is new. In establishing the US Space Force as the sixth branch of the US Armed Forces, Donald Trump declared, “It is not enough to have American presence in space. We must have American dominance.”

Despite the rhetoric that space is or has been about scientific discovery, realising the promise of humanity and the collaborative opportunity of a lifetime, space has always been about power, (para)militarism and privatisation – and this is only accelerating under Trump. If you noticed that most of the space leaders, scientists and authors I’ve quoted so far are men, then you’ll understand why: the notion of conquest in space is premised on patriarchy.

Where are the women?

Space has had a history of being weaponised on the whims of world leaders – from the nuclear brinkship of Kennedy and Khrushchev in the early 1960s to the anti-satellite and missile-defence programs pursued by the US and Soviet Union during the 1980s.

Yet the past few decades have firmly reinforced the geopolitical reality of space as a tool of military leverage, surveillance and superiority – at the same time as space has also fallen hostage to capitalist extraction, where various individuals and corporations with huge amounts of wealth and power seek to dictate the agenda.

And this is why this compounding crisis should matter to everyone on Earth – even if you don’t care about rockets and Moon rovers. Because what we do in space is about who gets to consolidate power and wealth on Earth.

A new space race is emerging at an international level as states and private individuals jostle for access to the most valuable orbits and lunar resource capture and it has implications for all humanity. It matters who sets the agenda, whose values dominate and who is excluded from what we do in space.

Importantly, we cannot assume that technological progress is matched by social and political progress in this critical technology sector. NASA’s recent Artemis program seeks to return humanity to the Moon for the first time in about 50 years through a series of crewed and uncrewed missions. Its crewed missions were originally pitched as achieving an important global first: “For the benefit of all humanity, NASA and its partners will land the first woman and first person of color on the surface of the Moon.”

Come 2026, and while Christina Koch made history as the first woman to “return to the Moon” via flyby as part of the Artemis II mission, women have been scrapped entirely from Artemis III, despite more than half of NASA’s newest astronauts being women.

If women aren’t part of the final selection for Artemis IV, which will actually land humans back on the Moon (hopefully in 2028), it will set humanity back decades. Even if women do make it as part of Artemis IV, it’s damning that this close out we’re still questioning whether this will occur. You’d be wrong to assume we’d moved past these basic questions of whether we will ever land a woman on the Moon. Are we still okay with only our sons and not our daughters getting such opportunities?

The history of space is a story about women’s exclusion and the long-term consequences of patriarchal domination. But hope exists and exciting opportunities also abound, with space exploration and technological development representing a practical opportunity to learn to do better, to not repeat our most egregious mistakes of the past.

We should be embracing women’s expertise in developing new technologies, ensuring diverse perspectives and creating visions of an intergalactic world – if that is what ours is to become – that involve all of humanity, from the elite to the most vulnerable.

We should ensure space doesn’t continue to be corrupted, co-opted and captured by patriarchal capital interests that exclude or place barriers against women and discourage diversity, leading to worsening outcomes for humanity.

This is an edited extract from Space XX: Gender, Power and the New Space Race by Dr Elise Stephenson (Monash University Publishing)

Elise Stephenson, Deputy Director, Global Institute for Women's Leadership, Australian National University

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

It was pitched to investors as “the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in a generation”.

Firmus Technologies – a developer of artificial intelligence (AI) data centres – planned to raise A$7 billion from investors on the Australian Securities Exchange later this month.

Just days ago, bankers working on the deal declared investor interest in the A$11-a-share offer was “well in excess” of what was needed to go ahead.

The company and its backers claimed Firmus was worth almost A$44 billion, which would have made it Australia’s second-largest share market listing, behind Telstra in 1997.

Yet, by Friday morning, it was off.

What went wrong? And what are the lessons investors should apply to all companies to guard against hype and protect their money?

The warning signs were obvious

There were plenty of red flags ahead of this listing, covered in detail only yesterday in The Conversation, when the IPO was still meant to be going ahead.

Firmus is losing money. Only two of its data centres are currently operational, with the rest in the planning or construction phase.

Most remarkably, Firmus’ claimed value had soared almost eight-fold in less than a year.

In November 2025, a private funding round valued it at about A$6 billion. In August this year, it had climbed to more than US$10.5 billion (about A$15 billion).

Yet this month, Firmus declared its value was A$43.7 billion. At that price, Firmus would have been worth almost as much as retail giant Woolworths.

A sign of the market working

The role of the market is to digest a lot of information and price all of that into a reasonable value for each company. If investors believe a company is worth less than its IPO price estimate, they withdraw their interest.

In Firmus’ case, this declining interest from investors seems to be an example of the market working properly.

We never saw a public prospectus with all the details about this listing and Firmus’ financials; it was meant to be released yesterday, but it wasn’t.

However, a draft prospectus was being circulated to institutional investors here and overseas. They’ve looked at that – and the prospect of actually committing to buying those shares at A$11 a share – and many have decided “no thanks”.

That’s why the listing was withdrawn on Friday.

Look for the incentives behind any claim

As an economist, you always look out for incentives: why would someone say something? What might be in it for them?

There is a clear incentive for investment bankers to ramp up demand before any stock exchange listing. That’s because the higher the float price, the more they pocket, too.

So where did this demand go? It’s quite possible there was strong initial demand for Firmus shares, but it was only indicative. That usually comes down a bit before any listing – or down by a lot, as in Firmus’ case.

Some commentators have raised a more concerning possibility: that the level of investor demand in Firmus may have been misrepresented.

On Friday morning, after the Firmus listing was cancelled, The Australian Financial Review reported:

While demand for IPOs can move around, serious questions need to be asked about the sheer scale of the evaporation of orders from investors, or whether the communications were misleading to create the perception of frenzied support. The onus is now on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to come down hard on those flouting the rules.

We’ll have to see what emerges in coming weeks on this.

Is it a warning sign of an AI bubble?

Investors shouldn’t assume that Firmus’ issues are indicative of every other AI or data centre company.

A lot of this situation is specific to Firmus, including how quickly their quite outrageous valuation numbers ballooned in such a short time.

However, we did see similar things happening during the dot-com bubble a generation ago. Back then, a lot of companies were going public based on “thin air valuations” – projecting huge demand into the future, without the numbers to back it up.

That was echoed in what Firmus was doing now: operating with just 5% of data centre capacity up and running, while the remaining 95% they were talking about as underpinning their valuation hadn’t yet been built.

What are the lessons for investors?

Potential investors should look at the hard numbers as closely as they can.

If you can’t find out what a company’s revenue was in the past year, and where it expects its money will be coming from for the next five years, at least – that’s a red flag.

Of course, even if you have those figures, that doesn’t mean things won’t go wrong down the road. But understanding those key numbers is a must, before you ever invest.

The golden rules are to diversify your investment portfolio and try to minimise your fees. And if you are buying into a single company’s IPO, it’s safer to allocate limited amounts to those.

As a general rule: don’t invest in single stocks more than you can afford to lose.

Marta Khomyn, Senior Lecturer, Finance and Data Analytics, Adelaide University

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

Australia’s new Digital Duty of Care bill proposes a significant shift in online safety. Rather than simply responding to harmful content after it appears, platforms would be required to identify “all reasonably foreseeable risks” of harm in their services and take “effective measures” to tackle them.

The draft also brings a range of welcome legal protections and clauses to enable independent scrutiny of big tech platforms.

Among these, approved researchers and the eSafety Commissioner would be expressly permitted to use “sock puppet identities” to observe and test how platforms operate.

Critics have seized upon this provision to warn of government-sanctioned fake accounts, government surveillance, or to suggest ordinary Australians would need permission to remain anonymous online.

This is not what the draft bill states. Let’s unpack what the “sock puppets” provision actually entails.

What does the bill mean by a ‘sock puppet’?

Part of the concern may stem from the term itself. Online, a “sock puppet” often means a false identity deployed deceptively – to manipulate a discussion, make one person appear to be many, harass others, or disguise the source of a message.

The draft bill, however, separates the identity from how it’s used. It defines a sock puppet simply as a “false or fictitious identity” assumed while using, or doing anything in relation to, an online service.

It then sets out distinct purposes and limits for researchers and the eSafety Commissioner. Approved researchers must work at an Australian university and have ethics approval for their online safety research. They may create controlled accounts, observe and record what those accounts encounter, test platform features, and test how a service responds to particular actions.

For approved researchers, these accounts are not a licence to manipulate other users. They’re only allowed to engage with other users as much as it’s necessary to prevent the account from being closed, such as for inactivity.

Their main purpose is to observe and test the platform itself – a well-established research technique often called a “sock puppet audit” or “algorithmic audit”.

What is a ‘sock puppet’ audit?

Let’s say we want to know whether watching conspiracy videos leads a video platform to recommend more of them: the often discussed rabbit hole effect. Using a sock puppet audit, we can test whether particular behaviours lead a platform to steer users towards different content.

We create a set of otherwise identical accounts. Half watch the videos; half do not. We can then compare what the platform recommends to each group.

Researchers have used variations of this technique to study recommendation pathways on platforms including Twitter, YouTube and TikTok.

Sock puppet audits can also help us answer another important question: does the platform treat different kinds of users differently?

Researchers can create otherwise identical accounts that differ only in an assumed characteristic – such as age, gender, cultural identity, location, or interests – and compare their experiences. Do they receive different advertisements or recommendations? Are some directed towards different content or features? Do the platform’s safety systems intervene differently?

Pulling aside the curtain

In both types of audit, the fictitious identity is not there to fool the public. It’s allowing researchers to observe otherwise hidden differences in how platforms operate.

And those differences are difficult to study from the outside. Feeds, recommendations, advertising and safety systems respond dynamically to individual users. Platforms can see how these systems work across millions of users. Researchers, regulators and the public see only fragments.

Why does this type of research need legal protection? Because platforms ban fake accounts at their own discretion. And their terms of service, which typically require identifying personal information, have been used against researchers.

In 2023, X sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate for allegedly breaching X’s terms by scraping data to study hateful speech on the platform. While X was ultimately unsuccessful, Australia’s draft digital duty of care directly addresses this – platform rules wouldn’t be able to override researchers’ permission to use these identities. Researchers who use them in good faith would be protected from being sued under Australian law.

The duty of care doesn’t ban anonymous accounts

The proposed law also doesn’t ban anonymous or pseudonymous accounts for ordinary Australians. The word “anonymous” doesn’t even appear in the draft.

While the draft bill creates legal protections for limited use of sock puppets by approved researchers and the eSafety Commissioner, it doesn’t require everyone else to reveal their identity.

However, the eSafety Commissioner is given broader powers to perform its regulatory functions. This includes generating (legally permissible) material with or without AI, which can help the regulator to test a platform’s safeguards directly – for example, prompting an AI service to see whether it generates harmful material it otherwise claims to prevent.

Currently the list of permitted uses is “without limitation” and nothing in the draft requires eSafety to specifically report on how it uses these powers. The government should constrain the commissioner’s powers to generate material to clearly defined testing, and require regular public reporting.

But, as drafted, these provisions don’t give eSafety unrestricted power to covertly manipulate public debate. Instead they allow the regulator to test platforms and their claims, rather than simply take their word for it.

“Sock puppet” may be an unfortunate name for a research method. The term carries baggage associated with deception and manipulation. But used for carefully controlled research, its purpose is almost precisely the opposite: to expose critical public interest information about platforms that would otherwise remain hidden.

Daniel Angus, Professor of Digital Communication, Director of QUT Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology and Timothy Graham, Associate Professor in Digital Media, Queensland University of Technology

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

Protein has been everywhere lately. You may have seen food products promoting high protein content, or reels online telling you how to boost your intake.

One of the ways protein supports our health is by helping a meal fill us up (satiation) and keeping us feeling fuller for longer between meals (satiety). It does this by influencing our appetite hormones and other metabolic processes.

But protein is not the only nutrient that helps with satiation and satiety. And if we focus too much on protein, we may miss the big picture and forget about other important nutrients.

It’s time to put the spotlight on dietary fibre and where to get it – especially as most of us aren’t eating enough.

Let’s take a look at how much protein you need, how much fibre, and how they compare in keeping you feeling full.

First, do we really need more protein?

The recommended dietary intake of protein for Australian adults aged 19–70 years is 46 grams a day for women and 64g a day for men.

Across your day, this could look like eating:

• 200 millilitres of natural yoghurt (10.6g protein)
• a beef burger (31.5g protein)
• 20g almonds (3.9g protein)
• and for men – an extra 75g of cooked chicken thigh (18.2g protein).

Data from the 2023 National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey indicated that, on average, Australian women are eating 78.7g protein a day and men are eating 103.4g protein a day. This means most Australian adults are eating plenty of protein, above the recommended daily intake, even for those aged over 70 who need more.

What about fibre?

Dietary fibres are a class of carbohydrates that are resistant to human digestive enzymes. This means they’re not digested and absorbed like other carbohydrates (such as sugars and starches), allowing them to play other roles in the body.

Among the many beneficial health effects of dietary fibre – such as reducing the risk of heart disease, improving cholesterol levels and supporting healthy gut bacteria – it can also help to keep you feeling fuller for longer after a meal.

Not all dietary fibre is the same. Different types of fibre perform various functions in the body, based on how soluble they are in water (solubility), how much they thicken into a gel (viscosity), and whether gut microorganisms can ferment them (fermentability).

For example, the soluble viscous fibres present in many fruits and vegetables slow the passage of food through the stomach and intestine, helping to prolong satiety – that feeling of fullness between meals. They also slow the release of sugar into the blood after eating carbohydrates, which helps regulate blood sugar levels and delay hunger.

Both soluble viscous fibres and insoluble fibres (found in vegetable skins and wholegrain bread, for example) contribute to the physical expansion of the stomach after eating. This sends signals of fullness and satiation to the brain, helping us know when to stop eating.

Dietary fibres may also influence the production of appetite hormones, which promote satiety.

How much fibre do we need?

In Australia, it’s recommended adult women eat 25g of fibre a day and adult men eat 30g.

To get extra health benefits – such as reducing your risk of chronic (long-term) disease – a higher fibre intake of 28g a day for women and 38g a day for men is recommended.

Australians are not eating enough fibre

Data from the 2023 National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey indicated that, on average, Australian women are eating 19.2g a day and Australian men are eating 22.3g a day. Both are well below the recommended values.

Improving fibre intake is not just about increasing the overall quantity you eat, but also about getting a variety of different fibres with different properties.

You can get more soluble viscous fibres into your diet by eating fruit (such as apples, oranges and bananas), oats, legumes and pulses (including beans and chickpeas), and vegetables (think: peas, avocado, sweet potato and carrot).

Or you can take fibre supplements, such as Metamucil or Benefiber. People who can’t eat gluten should consult with a health-care professional first, as some supplements may contain gluten.

You can increase your intake of insoluble fibres by eating the skin of fruits and vegetables, wholegrain products (such as bread, pasta, brown rice and quinoa), nuts, seeds, and wheat or rice bran.

To get fermentable fibres in your diet, include things such as oats, legumes, unripe bananas, or cooked and cooled potato, rice, or pasta (cooking and cooling changes the structure of some of the carbohydrates, making them resistant to digestion).

Some good overall tips for improving your fibre intake are to:

• choose wholegrain, wholemeal and/or high fibre varieties of grain-based foods like bread, rice and pasta whenever possible

• enjoy a variety of different fruits and vegetables, aiming for two pieces of fruit and five servings of vegetables each day

• eat nuts and seeds as a snack

• look for ways to include legumes and different types of wholegrains with meals.

If you are planning on increasing your fibre intake, you should take it slow and also drink plenty of water to avoid potential digestive problems.

So which is more filling, protein or fibre?

Both contribute to increased feelings of fullness through multiple mechanisms.

And while protein has been generally accepted as the most important nutrient for satiety, one small study comparing fibre and protein directly found they were just as good as each other when it came to that lasting feeling of fullness between meals.

We would need more research directly comparing the two to determine which is more filling.

The takeaway

Choosing foods that are rich in either dietary fibre or protein – or even better, both, such as lentils, beans and nuts – will help to fill you up and keep you feeling fuller for longer between meals.

But since most Australians aren’t eating enough dietary fibre, increasing your fibre intake is likely to be more beneficial for your overall health than increasing how much protein you eat.

Margaret Murray, Senior Lecturer, Nutrition, Swinburne University of Technology

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

For many of us, running is one of the most accessible forms of exercise. It’s free and you don’t need equipment. But it is also one of the more likely to lead to injury.

Studies of novice runners report around 18 injuries per 1,000 hours of running, which is more than double the rate experienced by more advanced runners. Most injuries seem to occur to the knee, ankle and lower leg, and are more likely to be “overuse” injuries, rather than acute muscle sprains.

Overuse injuries tend to occur when a tissue is repeatedly loaded more than it can tolerate, without enough time to adapt.

This might happen because running starts to feel easier before your body is actually ready to do more.

So, what’s going on? And does improving strength alongside fitness help prevent injuries?

Fitness increases faster than muscle and bones adapt

When you start running, your cardiovascular system adapts quite fast. Blood volume increases within days, your cells’ mitochondria (which generate energy for exercise) can adapt in as little as two weeks, and the number of blood vessels in your muscle increases in around four weeks.

As a result, aerobic fitness measurably improves within as little as two weeks, and runs that felt hard in week one can feel manageable by week four. This can make it very tempting to go further and faster.

However, tendons and bones adapt on different scales and different timelines.

Tendon adaptations, such as becoming stiffer and stronger, typically take at least 12 weeks of consistent (and fairly heavy) loading.

Similarly, bone remodelling – which can make bones denser and able to withstand more impact – can take months, if not years.

Muscles sit somewhere in between. They can grow fairly quickly (within three to four weeks), but running on its own doesn’t do much to improve muscle strength or size.

This is important because, when you run, the calf muscles and Achilles tendon handle forces of several times your body weight with every stride – but running may not actually strengthen these tissues.

Basically, your heart and lungs adapt to running before your tendons and bones have caught up. This might explain why we see so many overuse injuries in runners.

Strength training and running injuries

Across sport, the evidence that strength training can help prevent injury is encouraging.

A large meta-analysis – which combined the findings of 25 studies, involving 26,610 participants – found strength training programs reduced sports injuries by more than 60%.

For runners specifically, however, the evidence is a little more mixed.

Another recent meta-analysis found that, on average, strength training programs don’t reduce injuries in runners.

However, they did note many interventions in their review had low adherence, meaning people didn’t stick to the strength training exercises. Those that were supervised did actually have a positive effect on injury outcomes, likely because of better adherence.

So strength training exercises might be effective – but only if you actually stick to them (funny, that…).

What the evidence does make clear is that strength training makes you a more economical runner, meaning you use less energy for every step you take.

So even if strength training only has a small impact on injury risk, it will make you better at running.

How to strength train for running

If you do want to sneak in some strength training to help prevent injuries and improve performance, you should prioritise the muscles and tendons that do the most work in running.

This means doing calf raises, split squats, squats, and deadlifts, with relatively heavy loads, for fairly low reps (5–6). This improves your maximum force output and strengthens tendons, which has been shown to improve running performance.

You might also want to do some plyometric exercises, such as pogo hops, tuck jumps, and single leg hops. These teach your body how to absorb and use force quickly.

Other ways to reduce running injuries

While some people advocate stretching as a way to prevent injuries, there is no strong evidence to suggest it will help.

However, there are a couple of things that do have some evidence behind them.

First, big spikes in how much and how often you run have been shown to lead to injuries. So, try not to increase your running distance by more than a couple of kilometres per week.

Second, running burns a lot of energy, and you need to have enough energy available to help recover after you run. As a result, eating enough carbohydrates and protein to meet your needs might help prevent overuse injuries such as stress fractures. Some research also suggests consuming more calcium and vitamin D might do the same.

Finally, there is some research indicating that running on grass reduces impact, compared to running on harder surfaces, like the road. So doing a couple of your weekly runs on grass might be a good way to give your body more time to adapt and recover between runs.

Hunter Bennett, Lecturer in Exercise Science, Adelaide University

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

Whether you’re struggling with jet lag, are a shift worker who sleeps during the day, or someone with more severe insomnia, you might have wondered if melatonin can help you get a better sleep.

Melatonin is a hormone made in the brain to regulate your daily sleep-wake cycle. It tells your internal body clock to get sleepy when it’s dark.

Melatonin supplements are a synthetic version of this hormone that people can take to help them sleep.

But they won’t work for all sleep conditions. So what can you take it for?

First, how does melatonin work?

Melatonin works by slowing or stopping neuron firing in the area of the brain called the hypothalamus. This is the brain’s master biological clock.

Your eyes detect when darkness falls, triggering the brain to produce melatonin.

Because you need lower light levels, or darkness, to trigger melatonin release, sleep can be a problem for people living at very high or low latitudes. In summer the sun may not set, or it is only dark for a few hours per day, and that affects melatonin production. And in winter the sun may never come up, or you get only a few hours of sunlight.

For those in the rest of the world, if you suffer from low levels of melatonin – which can happen as you age – it can make it harder to sleep.

When can melatonin help you sleep better?

There are several diseases and conditions that affect sleep, but only two have evidence that they are treatable with melatonin supplements.

Melatonin has been shown to be effective in reducing and preventing jet lag. It’s of most benefit if you fly across more than five time zones. This includes from Europe back to Australia and flying to the Americas from Australia. To be most effective, the melatonin should be taken as close to when you want to go to sleep as possible.

There appears to be some benefit to taking melatonin for those who have difficulty sleeping during the day due to shift work. It has been shown to improve the duration of your sleep after a night shift, but it doesn’t appear to improve other aspects of quality sleep, such as alertness, sleepiness, or fatigue at work.

General, or chronic, insomnia is when you regularly struggle to fall asleep, stay asleep, or when you often wake too early. Unfortunately, if you suffer from chronic insomnia, the evidence indicates melatonin supplements are unlikely to work.

The pain and discomfort of chronic kidney disease and cancer, and its treatment, can make it more difficult to sleep. But the science is unclear whether melatonin can help with sleep due to those conditions. So for either, it is best for you to speak with your doctor before trying a supplement.

People with dementia can have difficulty sleeping due to the disease’s ability to damage the brain’s internal clock. However, the science indicates that melatonin is not effective for this condition.

How to access the medicine

Melatonin is available in different doses and formulations in Australia.

While homeopathic products are available in Australia, they either do not contain melatonin or have a dose so low that they are ineffective. Any benefit will be from a placebo effect.

Pharmacists can supply controlled-release tablets that contain 2mg or less of melatonin for the short-term treatment of sleep problems for people aged 55 or over. These are available over the counter as a pharmacist-only medicine.

Controlled-release melatonin formulations release melatonin slowly and steadily in the body throughout the eight-hour sleep period. This is more suited for managing age-related sleep issues caused by reduced natural melatonin production as we get older.

Immediate-release products that contain 5mg or less of melatonin are also available. The short-lived peak of melatonin that comes from this formulation is more suitable for managing jet lag. Pharmacists can supply these to adults 18 years and older for jet lag.

All other formulations above these dosages are prescription-only. They are used for the short-term management of other types of sleep problems, including those that occur alongside neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.

What are the side effects?

Melatonin is generally well-tolerated. The side effects are generally minor and short-lived and include daytime sleepiness, headaches, nausea and dizziness.

Avoid taking melatonin before driving as it may affect your attention and reaction time.

A study has found that daily 1,000 to 6,600mg doses of melatonin may cause a loss of sleep and weight loss in people with depression and Huntington’s disease.

There is little research, and inconsistent results, about the side effects of longer-term melatonin use (greater than six months).

What else can help with sleep?

Other than taking melatonin, there are a few techniques that can be used to help with sleep. The first is to keep a regular bed and wake-up time, including on weekends. This can help to regulate your body clock.

If you’re unable to fall asleep after 20 minutes, get up and do something relaxing, then return to bed when you feel sleepy.

Avoid exposure to bright light from computers, televisions and phone screens one to two hours before bed, as this can prevent your body from releasing natural melatonin.

It’s also important to create a good sleeping environment. Make sure your bedroom temperature is cool, and the room is comfortable, quiet and dark enough.

Nial Wheate, Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Macquarie University and Wai-Jo Jocelin Chan, Pharmacist and Lecturer, UNSW ; University of Sydney

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

Many of us use digital health tools every day, such as period trackers, fitness apps or online quizzes to check our mental health.

These mobile apps, wearable devices, and diagnostics often based on artificial intelligence (AI), are shaped by the data they are trained on, and the knowledge and assumptions of the people who build them.

But the datasets behind these digital tools often represent a narrow segment of the population. So the resulting health technologies can cause real harm to those who are under-represented.

For example, algorithms used to diagnose skin conditions are often largely trained on light skin. We’ve known for almost a decade this can result in misdiagnosis in people with darker skin.

These injustices do not remain static. A biased AI algorithm may shape how health care is delivered, which may then inform how subsequent algorithmic models are developed. This creates self-reinforcing loops that can worsen health inequities over time.

Our recent article, which involves collaborators from ten countries, shows a better way of developing these digital tools.

If these tools are to be inclusive, equitable and truly valuable, we need to start having certain conversations even before a single line of code is written.

What’s the issue?

We draw together evidence showing digital health tools are mainly shaped by Western, Eurocentric approaches that may overlook diverse understandings of health and wellbeing.

They’re often built on invisible assumptions about what good health and wellbeing means, whose bodies are considered “normal”, and which forms of knowledge matter.

When it comes to shaping these health tools, technology companies, funders and research institutions hold the power. That is, they often influence which problems are prioritised and whose knowledge is recognised as legitimate.

Often these institutions do not consider the broader social and historical contexts that shape people’s health and wellbeing, which can inadvertently cause harm.

For example, an algorithm was used in US hospitals to identify people with complex medical needs so they could be referred to programs to improve their care.

However, researchers found under 18% of the patients the algorithm assigned extra care to were Black. This number should have been over 46%. The algorithm assigned risk scores based on annual health expenditure. However, Black patients tend to spend less on their health care due to a variety of reasons, including lower socioeconomic status and mistrust in the health-care system, partly driven by systemic racism.

So Black patients had to be significantly sicker than white patients to be flagged for extra care.

We outline how marginalised communities are often not consulted at all about new health technologies, or if they are, only after most key decisions have already been made. This includes consultations about whether digital technology is the best solution for the problem at hand.

We show that assumptions about some communities often prevent these communities from meaningfully shaping the technologies that directly affect their care. Assumptions might include “they are not digitally literate” or “they will not use this technology”.

We also highlight the tension between what funders and technology developers want or value (for instance, technological advancement and profit) and what communities value or even need.

Then there’s the issue of who owns the data collected as part of developing these health technologies.

For Indigenous and many other marginalised communities globally, their data may represent a cultural and economic asset connected to identity, sovereignty and collective rights.

What would be better?

Even before a single line of code is written, we can examine Western, Eurocentric assumptions about health and health care, by asking:

• what counts as health?

• whose knowledge is valued?

• which forms of wellbeing are prioritised?

• who gets to participate in shaping these technologies?

This way, community knowledge, often shared across generations orally, and people’s lived experience can meaningfully complement dominant Western-produced information to shape health technologies.

For example, for many Indigenous communities, health may encompass connections between body, mind, spirit, community and environment.

So AI models that include Indigenous communities’ understandings of the natural environment, climate and human health can help discern patterns of risk or resilience that may otherwise go undetected.

When done well, culturally appropriate digital technologies can have impacts beyond a Western understanding of health. For instance, such digital mental health programs for young Indigenous people help deepen cultural identity and honour traditional Indigenous knowledge. They help improve wellbeing and promote resilience.

Innovators also need to actively explore the values of the communities these technologies aim to serve, and make sure the technology’s values align.

An example comes from developing assistive technologies – those that help people with mobility, communication or cognition, for example.

One study of Indigenous people across Canada, Australia and the US showed people were more likely to adopt technologies when they enhanced family and community involvement in their care and nurtured stronger connections with health-care providers. Users preferred tools that promoted inter-dependence, rather than independence.

Communities should also be able to govern how their data are collected, analysed, linked, interpreted, shared and managed, a concept known as data sovereignty.

Why is this important now?

Building digital health differently requires more than creating technologies that are accessible or technically accurate. It requires changing how we think about health, knowledge, power and value.

This shift is more important than ever as digital health technologies, particularly AI, become increasingly embedded in health-care systems and everyday health decisions.

We thank the following co-authors of the paper mentioned in this article: Laura Vokey, Carrie Van Rensburg, Divya Kewalramani, Sipho Dlamini, Esmita Charani, Hasan Ferdous, Leo Anthony Celi, Chikondi Milanzi, and Anna Schneider-Kamp.

Mahima Kalla, Digital Health Transformation Research Fellow, Centre for Digital Transformation of Health, The University of Melbourne and Noushin Nazarian, PhD Candidate, School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne

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

Scientists who worked out how to control brain cells with light have won this year’s Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel were honoured for their research into “light-gated ion channels and optogenetics”.

Peter Hegemann, at Humboldt University of Berlin, and Georg Nagel, at the University of Würzburg, wanted to understand how a tiny, single-celled alga called Chlamydomonas senses light. Light-sensing is not unique to animals with eyes: organisms throughout the living world use light to detect their surroundings and respond to changes in their environment. Even single-cell organisms have proteins that respond to light. These proteins are used to move towards or away from light, to generate energy and to respond to the various demands of a 24-hour day.

Hegemann and Nagel discovered that Chlamydomonas has a beautifully ingenious mechanism of light detection that relies on a single protein called channelrhodopsin.

Channelrhodopsin is built into the outer membrane of the algal cell. Part of the protein faces the water outside the cell and part faces the inside. The protein also contains a small molecule called retinaldehyde, which is able to absorb light.

When light hits the retinaldehyde inside channelrhodopsin, it changes shape. This makes the channelrhodopsin protein change shape too. That change opens a tiny passage through the cell membrane. Positively charged particles, including sodium, can then flow from the water outside the alga into the cell. This movement of charged particles sends a signal inside the alga that helps it swim.

How fantastic to have solved such an interesting biological question, but why the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine? The answer lies in the way nerve cells work. Nerve cells use the movement of charged particles (called “ions”) across their membranes to control their activity. When positively charged particles flow into a nerve cell, they can make it more active.

The researchers realised that if they could put channelrhodopsin into nerve cells, they might be able to switch those cells on simply by shining a light on them. That is exactly what Hegemann, Nagel and the third Nobel-prize winner, Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and bioengineer at Stanford University in California, went on to do.

Switching on nerve cells with light

The ability to control nerve cells with light is called optogenetics. It has become a powerful research tool because scientists can use it to switch specific groups of nerve cells on and off and see what happens.

First, scientists deliver the gene for channelrhodopsin to the nerve cells they want to study. The gene is usually carried into the cells by a virus that has been altered so that it cannot cause disease. The cells then make the channelrhodopsin protein, which makes them respond to light.

In animals such as mice, scientists can shine light into the brain through a thin optical fibre. When the light reaches the cells, channelrhodopsin opens and the cells become active. Nearby nerve cells that do not contain the protein are unaffected.

Light can be aimed at a very small part of the brain and switched on and off extremely quickly. This makes optogenetics a powerful way to investigate how the brain works. For example, if scientists want to know whether a particular group of nerve cells is involved in memory, sleep, sensation or movement, say, they can switch those cells on with light and see what happens.

In one experiment in 2012, a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave mice a mild electric shock in a particular cage. They used optogenetics to tag the nerve cells in the brain’s memory centre that were active during that the fear-conditioning experiment. Days later, in a different cage, they switched those cells on with light. The mice froze in fear, as if they remembered the shock.

Mice that were not shocked did not freeze, which showed that the light was reactivating a specific memory. Deisseroth was one of the study’s authors.

Optogenetics has transformed scientists’ ability to investigate how the brain and nervous system work. It may also have a future as a treatment. Optogenetics is already in early-stage clinical trials for people with retinal degeneration. In these trials, researchers introduce light-sensitive proteins into nerve cells that remain in the retina after the cells that normally detect light – called rods and cones – have been lost. This can make surviving cells respond to light and restore some vision.

Researchers are also investigating whether optogenetics could eventually be used to treat neurological conditions, including Parkinson’s and epilepsy.

This year’s Nobel prize celebrates work that started with a question that may sound esoteric: how do Chlamydomonas swim toward light? This question has no obvious practical importance. It doesn’t address an urgent need in human health, nor is it a clear route to riches. The success of optogenetics is an illustration of the importance of continuing to ask questions simply to understand the world around us because it’s impossible to predict where knowledge will take us.

Robert Lucas, Professor, Neuroscience, University of Manchester

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

When you seek medical care, you hope that your doctor will present you with treatment options that are proven to be effective for your condition, that harms do not outweigh benefits and that recommended treatments are affordable and account for your personal situation.

But if your doctor has been influenced by messages, payments or gifts from drug companies, that is unlikely to be the case, as our team from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States found.

Pharmaceutical industry promotion is a global phenomenon. In the mid 2010s, companies in the U.S. spent just under US$30 billion annually to convince doctors to prescribe their products.

Figures in other countries are harder to come by but in the mid 2010s, close to CA$500 million was being spent in Canada on advertising in medical journals and on sales representatives who visit doctors’ offices. Between 2015 to 2024, 17,519 Australian doctors received AU$148.7 million from pharmaceutical companies for conferences, travel costs or consultancy fees.

In 2020, seven of the top 10 largest pharmaceutical companies globally spent more on marketing than on developing new drugs. Our research examines the relationship between pharmaceutical promotion and doctors’ prescribing.

Evidence shows the effects of promotion

Our Cochrane systematic review looked at the results of 93 studies involving millions of doctors and published largely over the past two decades. Due to their rigour, Cochrane reviews are considered the gold standard for evidence synthesis.

We examined what happens to the appropriateness, quantity and cost of prescriptions when doctors accept payments or meals from the pharmaceutical industry or rely on pharmaceutical representatives for their education or prescribing information.

We looked at the effects of a range of types of promotion: advertising and industry-sponsored education, gifts such as free meals and payments for consulting or advisory board membership and free drug samples.

The result is not good news for patients.

Doctors who receive gifts or payments prescribe less appropriately and issue more prescriptions — and those prescriptions tend to be more costly. Exposure to pharmaceutical advertising or education probably increases how many prescriptions a doctor issues and may increase costs and decrease appropriateness. The evidence on the effects of free samples is less clear, as there were fewer studies.

We also looked at whether conflict-of-interest policies make a difference. Some medical schools and hospitals have policies limiting interactions among students, trainees or doctors and the industry, such as banning sales visits or specific types of gifts. The result is more appropriate prescribing and possibly fewer prescriptions. The longer the exposure and the stricter the policies, the greater the effect.

Greater exposure to promotion has greater effects

The more company-sponsored meals that doctors ate and the more gifts or payments they received, the more their prescribing deteriorated. The more expensive the gift or the higher the value of the payment, the worse the outcome on prescribing.

A meal worth as little as US$20 led to more prescriptions for the drug made by the company providing the meal. With each additional meal, doctors issued more prescriptions.

Disturbingly, given the legacy of opioid addiction and deaths from overdose, the more meals from opioid manufacturers doctors received, the more opioids they prescribed.

‘I can’t be bought for the price of a sandwich’

Doctors recognize the commercial motivation behind industry’s interactions with them, but do not believe they are affected. Comments to the effect of “I can’t be bought for the price of a sandwich” are a common refrain. Our results convincingly demonstrate those denials cannot be justified.

Most doctors who interact with drug companies are not being bribed; companies do not require prescriptions in exchange for gifts. Clinicians are affected through the “gift relationship.” Receiving a gift of any kind or size, whether wanted or unwanted, creates an obligation — often unconscious — for individuals to repay what they have received.

Michael Oldani, a former sales representative who is now a medical anthropologist who researches pharmaceutical marketing tactics, describes the central role played by the gift relationship in an ethnographic analysis of the influence of sales representatives on prescribing.

Promotion also provides a reminder that focuses clinicians’ attention on promoted products so they’re more likely to think of these products when making a prescribing decision.

From transparency data to public health action

The extent of our review is possible because of a recent large expansion in research on pharmaceutical promotion due to the implementation of the 2013 Physician Payments Sunshine Act in the U.S., and other similar national transparency databases that record payments from drug companies to doctors.

The Sunshine Act alone includes payments to more than a million doctors. Another database records the several million prescriptions written by these doctors.

Combining these databases offers significantly more data, allowing for the identification of more precise associations between payments and prescribing. That includes showing that the greater the exposure, the greater the effect.

Our findings reinforce why pharmaceutical promotion must be addressed as a commercial determinant of health — a key pathway through which corporations negatively impact public health. Commercial determinants of health have been defined as “the systems, practices, and pathways through which commercial actors drive health and equity.” Commercial determinants play a key role in the obesity epidemic, the rapid global growth in noncommunicable diseases and the climate emergency.

Our review convincingly settles the debate about the effects of promotion on the way that doctors prescribe and shows that promotion is likely to be a major commercial determinant of (ill)-health.

The medical community and governments can no longer ignore the consequences of the promotion of medicines on prescribing. It is time for strong concrete action to be taken to put an end to the way that companies are allowed to influence doctors.

This article was also co-authored by Geoffrey Spurling, Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, Riaz Qureshi, Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and Lisa Bero, Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

Joel Lexchin, Associate professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto; York University, Canada; University of Sydney; Alice Fabbri, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Bath; Barbara Mintzes, Professor in Pharmaceutical Policy, School of Pharmacy and Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, and Quinn Grundy, Associate Professor, Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto

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

The awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to distinguished South African jurist and international judge Navanethem “Navi” Pillay is about more than just the recognition of an exceptional individual in the global fight for justice.

It’s clear that the prize also speaks to a bigger context. It comes at a time of pressure on and the questioning of the international legal order.

Pillay’s recognition affirms the conviction that international law, however imperfectly applied, remains indispensable to a peaceful world.

Making history

It is a proud moment for South Africa. She becomes the fifth South African to receive this honour, following resistance leader Chief Albert Luthuli in 1960, religious leader and activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984, and former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk in 1993.

She is the first South African woman to receive the peace award. Her prize is a further break with its historical tendency to mostly honour “highly educated white men from Europe and the US”.

Similar to her South African predecessors, the struggle against apartheid and white minority rule features as a crucial element of her contribution. However, there is an important difference. While Mandela became a global symbol of reconciliation, Pillay took the lessons of South Africa’s struggle into the international arena. There she became leader and institution builder in her own right.

She had the daunting task of being one of the very first international judges responsible for forging into being international institutions intended to ensure that those responsible for the gravest human rights violations are held accountable.

She was on the first bench of judges of both the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the United Nations (UN) following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) from 2003 to 2008.

Her personality and drive endowed these fledgling institutions with gravitas and legitimacy. Through her pioneering contributions, she has come to personify the global quest for accountability.

The Navi Pillay I know

As a scholar of international human rights law, I first met Pillay when she was president of the Rwanda tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania. She struck me then, and over time continued to impress me, as someone remarkably approachable. Humble, unassuming and generous with her time, she is also often described as courageous, principled, and unwavering.

I smiled when, in her characteristically down-to-earth reply to the Nobel committee praising her courage, she insisted she was merely applying her independent legal mind to the stark principles of justice.

When I first met her, I was with a group of human rights students from the University of Pretoria visiting Tanzania to observe proceedings. Judge Pillay’s demanding schedule prevented her from spending much time with us during the day. Yet she offered to meet us at her hotel that evening. To our surprise, she arrived driving herself, without a chauffeur or an entourage. She spent many hours answering questions and discussing the work of the tribunal.

Similar encounters continued over subsequent years. To me, these moments revealed her understanding of human rights institutions not as remote structures, but as belonging to people. This included young Africans who she hoped would one day help shape their future.

From apartheid to global justice

Pillay’s story is held together by a central belief, whether in response to apartheid in South Africa, genocide in Rwanda or the occupation of Palestinian territory: that law can restrain abusive power, protect victims and hold the powerful to account. She simply applied it on a bigger stage each time.

Born in 1941 in Durban, to a family of Indian Tamil origin, Pillay experienced racial and gender discrimination first-hand. Despite this, she built a legal career. In 1967 she became the first woman of colour to establish a legal practice in her province.

Like many lawyers opposed to apartheid, she sought to use the very legal system that sustained injustice to challenge its abuses. She represented political activists, exposed torture and challenged the treatment of political prisoners.

She was also involved in the Women’s National Coalition, which helped shape the equality provisions of South Africa’s democratic constitution. These prohibit discrimination on grounds including race, sex and sexual orientation. After apartheid ended, Mandela in 1995 appointed her as a High Court judge.

Rape as a crime against humanity

Later that year she took up office in Tanzania, where one of her most enduring global contributions came in the Rwanda tribunal’s landmark 1998 judgement.

During the trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu, accused of the slaughter of thousands, Pillay and another judge questioned witnesses about sexual violence. They helped bring these experiences into the open and contributed to the amendment of the indictment to include rape.

The result was a judgment that recognised rape as a crime against humanity. It established that rape and sexual violence could also constitute acts of genocide.

The decision constituted the first conviction for genocide by an international criminal tribunal and the first conviction of an individual for rape as a crime against humanity by such a tribunal. This opened the way for greater accountability for crimes committed disproportionately against women and girls.

As Pillay put it:

From time immemorial, rape has been regarded as spoils of war. Now it will be considered a war crime.

Human rights within the UN

From 2008 to 2014, Pillay served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the first woman from the global south to hold this position.

It required a different form of leadership. Rather than deciding cases as a judge, she had to engage governments, confront violations and persuade states to honour their international obligations. During her tenure, she managed to steer the UN’s human rights work through turbulent times, including the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and civil war in Syria. Her voice was a steadfast pillar of clarity: human rights could not be sacrificed to economic expediency, national sovereignty or political convenience.

Her tenure coincided with significant advances within the UN. She was a consistent advocate for the rights of equality based on sexual orientation and gender identity, anti-discrimination laws, and proper recording of hate crimes.

In 2001, her home city, Durban, hosted the UN’s World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The Durban Declaration set an international agenda against racism and xenophobia. It also acknowledged slavery as a crime against humanity.

Although she had no official role in the 2001 conference, as UN high commissioner she was closely involved in the subsequent review process. She defended the declaration against misrepresentation. She emphasised its condemnation of antisemitism, remembrance of the Holocaust and recognition of Israel’s right to security.

Despite boycotts by several western states, including the US, she helped steer the 2009 Durban Review Conference towards a consensus reaffirming the declaration, supported by 182 states. Her role exemplified her determination to overcome division and backlash without compromising fundamental human rights principles.

Pillay’s term was also characterised by a distinctive contribution to women’s rights by championing the recognition of preventable maternal deaths as a human rights issue, rather than merely a public health concern. Under her leadership, the UN Human Rights Office developed groundbreaking guidance in 2012 requiring governments to address discrimination, maternal healthcare and accountability for avoidable deaths.

Palestine and genocide

More recently, she took up her last official UN duty as chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel. The commission’s investigations and findings, including on the war in Gaza, have generated considerable controversy and strong criticism, particularly from Israel and the US.

Her dedication to this task illustrates an essential feature of her work: the application of legal principles becomes most difficult, and most necessary, when politically powerful actors reject scrutiny.

A time when hope is needed

The timing of this award is therefore particularly telling. It comes as, only days earlier, US president Donald Trump had called the ICC “evil” and urged all its members to resign. Responding to the prize, the US imposed sanctions on the ICC.

By honouring a former ICC judge, the Nobel committee chose to defend the very institutions that are now “under attack”, with their judges “sanctioned”.

The award also comes amid Israel’s growing international isolation. Pillay and her team concluded in 2025 that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

The commission’s findings do not constitute a binding judicial determination. But they do represent a significant contribution to documenting alleged atrocities and advancing the pursuit of accountability, despite intense political opposition.

Even as Pillay recently celebrated her 85th birthday, she may soon have another word on genocide. Since 2019, she has been sitting as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice in the case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar concerning alleged genocide against the Rohingya. Following a public hearing in January 2026, a judgment in this case is expected later this year, or in early 2027.

Her Nobel Prize does not suggest that international justice has triumphed. But it reminds us that the structures built to advance it remain worth defending. Recognising Pillay is an affirmation of what has been achieved, but also about what must not be lost.

Frans Viljoen, Professor of International Human Rights Law, SARChI Chair in International Constitutional Law, University of Pretoria

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

Rumours have been circulating for weeks about the United States imposing tougher sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), because of what US President Donald Trump sees as unfair targeting of Americans and Israelis for prosecution.

These sanctions finally came into effect on October 9 – the same day South African jurist Navi Pillay was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contribution to international law.

The motivations behind these two diametrically opposing moves speak to the fragility of international law. They also highlight that ICC member states – including Australia, Japan, EU states and Canada – might need to decide between Trump’s program to dismantle the ICC “brick by brick” and their own commitments to international justice.

A long enmity

The US has never been a strong supporter of the ICC. While it took part in negotiations that created the court’s founding treaty in 1998, it did so partly to ensure the crime of aggression remained off the court’s remit for decades.

Former President Bill Clinton did sign the Rome Statute in 1998, but it was never ratified. George W. Bush removed this possibility in 2002.

Congress went further later the same year by passing the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA) (aka “the Hague invasion act”). The concern here was to ensure no US citizen could fall under the ICC’s jurisdiction. The US has since entered into many bilateral agreements, including with ICC member states, to ensure US nationals are not handed over to The Hague.

Afghanistan accepted the ICC’s jurisdiction in 2003. In 2017, prosecutor Fatou Bensouda called for a full investigation that included allegations of CIA torture in “black sites” in Poland, Romania and Lithuania.

The appeals chamber confirmed this in March 2020. Consequently, the US imposed “smart sanctions” on two ICC officials – including Bensouda – in September 2020. It has also targeted the UN’s expert on the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese.

This prevented her from all financial dealings or travel to the US. In April 2021, with Joe Biden was in office, the sanctions were revoked. They were reimposed only 17 days into Trump’s second term, and they specifically targeted the new prosecutor Karim Khan. He had issued arrest warrants against Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister, Yoah Gallant in November 2024 regarding their handling of the Gaza conflict.

These allegations include war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not genocide.

Khan was removed from office earlier this year due to allegations of sexual abuse. However, there is also some suggestion it was due to his support for the Palestinian investigation.

The ICC has not publicly issued any further warrants against Israeli officials, but rumours circulate that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is the subject of a sealed warrant. And on hearing this rumour in May 2026, he ordered the forcible evacuation of the Bedouin village Khan Al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank.

Trump on the attack

Later in 2025, Trump went on to sanction numerous ICC judges, three Palestinian civil society organisations along with the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese. They were specifically targeted for their work on the Palestine case, which has drawn unprecedented attention to the Court within a wider debate about Israeli conduct amounting to genocide.

While the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found in January 2024 there was a plausible case of genocide in Gaza, its full determination in the proceedings between South Africa and Israel are not expected to be delivered until after Trump’s second term in office.

To date, the most authoritative merits-based finding of genocide by Israel hails from the UN Commission of Inquiry’s September 2025 report. This was the last report delivered by Navi Pillay as the Commission’s chair and it provides in forensic detail of how Israeli conduct fulfils four elements of genocide under the 1948 Convention.

The latest sanctions

It seems that with growing consensus emerging about the extent of Israeli crimes and the (small) chance of ICC action on the Afghanistan file, that this was enough to precipitate Trump’s latest round of sanctions.

These new sanctions differ significantly from the earlier “smart sanctions” that had only targeted Palestine-related ICC officials and human rights organisations.

The October 9 package targets the ICC as a whole, freezing all property holdings and blocking services and transactions with The Hague-based institution. It will mean the transfer of funds, salaries, cloud services, insurance and travel are significantly threatened, given US dollar hegemony.

While it is unclear if these new measures will criminalise US individuals and entities that engage with the court on a pro bono basis, it blocks any formal relationship. Uncertainty tends to produce a chilling effect, and it is likely that many will choose to avoid assisting the court with its investigations for fear of sanction themselves. If the full force of the measures is implemented, the court will struggle to carry on many of its functions, especially without strong European backing.

The ban is not all stick. It contains a carrot providing the court with a 180-day grace period allowing certain activities (including IT services and ICC pension funds) to continue. Over this period, the Trump administration expects “meaningful progress” or even these softening measures will lapse. It seems the administration is calling on its allies as member states of the court to push for a radical shift within the ICC, especially relating to the Afghanistan and Palestine investigations.

Yet the court has already responded by stating firmly that its mandate is not political and that it will “not be deterred” from “safeguarding the international order grounded upon the rule of law”. The Netherlands, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, the UK and Japan have also issued a statement, reaffirming their continued and unwavering support for the independence, impartiality, and integrity of the ICC. However, as it stands, this will not go nearly far enough either to protect the court or placate a Trump administration bent on destroying it.

Two alternatives must be considered.

First, some powerful states do have sticks they can use against the US. For example, the European Union could resort to the “nuclear option” and impose its own blocking statute. This would require all individuals and entities under EU jurisdiction to not comply with the US sanctions. The ramifications are significant as parties could find themselves with opposing obligations. The US could also respond with a raft of counter measures.

While the EU did not mention this possibility in its statement affirming support for the ICC on October 10, these new US moves will embolden Spain and the Netherlands in their push to see it implemented.

A softer option is to turn to the example of Navi Pillay. In receiving the Nobel (instead of Trump himself), she embodied the values and institutions Trump is seeking to destroy.

Her stellar career in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, in developing the field of international criminal justice, as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and finally in bravely issuing her finding on Israel’s genocide proves that the international legal order is indeed under attack, but it still has some powerful and persuasive advocates.

Michelle Burgis-Kasthala, Professor of International Law, La Trobe University

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

When Karl Deisseroth was studying to be a doctor in the 1990s, he took a rotation working with psychiatric patients. It would start him down a path of discovery about how the brain works that would eventually lead him to become a Nobel laureate.

The brain is billions of fragile, extremely vulnerable, transparent, very fast-acting cells. It’s a very challenging system to study, and of course, buried within the skull and doing very complex things … I was very much impressed with the magnitude of the challenge.

Deisseroth, today a professor in the schools of medicine and engineering at Stanford University in the US, spoke to The Conversation Weekly podcast about his research, and the experience of being jointly awarded the 2026 Nobel prize for physiology or medicine with two German scientists, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel.

Deisseroth’s contribution was for pioneering the field of optogenetics, the ability to control nerve cells with light to investigate how their activity shapes our feelings and behaviour. To do this, he used a gene from a single-celled pond algae, discovered by Hegemann and Nagel.

We were able to find cells that were involved in hunger and thirst, basic survival drives. We were able to identify cells and pathways controlling aggression and defensiveness and parenting, nurturing of the young … all the different parts of anxiety … memory, motivation. The general applicability became clear over the subsequent years.

Listen to Deisseroth talk about his research journey, and his hopes for the future of optogenetic research, on The Conversation Weekly podcast.

Disclosure statement

Karl Deisseroth has received funding from the NIH and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He was the founder of MapLight Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company.

Credits

This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Gemma Ware, Grace Jennings-Edquist and Isabella Podwinski. Mixing by Lloyd Barrett and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newsclip in this episode from the Nobel Prize.

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Gemma Ware, Head of Audio, The Conversation UK, The Conversation

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