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Climate change is likely driving a drier southern Australia – so why are we having such a wet year?

As the climate changes, southern Australia is likely to keep getting drier on average, particularly in the southwest.

However, this year has been wet. And yesterday the Bureau of Meteorology announced we are now in another La Niña event. This common large-scale climate pattern lasts for months, and will increase the odds of further wet weather across the country.

So despite the long-term trend towards drier conditions, we find ourselves in a wetter-than-usual period. What gives?

Current Climate Change Assessments

Rainfall has been declining in much of southern Australia in recent decades (see below). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment report – which draws on the latest climate research – found the recent drying trend in southern Australia is likely to continue, particularly during the cool season.

Cool-season rainfall in southwest Western Australia has already decreased, and ongoing drying in this area is assessed to be very likely. There’s strong evidence this trend contains a “signal” of climate change, otherwise known as a climate change “fingerprint”.

We understand the drying has been driven by changes in dominant weather patterns. And future projections of drying in the southwest are among the strongest in the world.

The situation in the southeast of Australia is not as clear, but there’s strong evidence for an ongoing decrease in rainfall here, too.

Yet, we find it has been wet in many southwest and southeast regions this year – including in the cool season. In fact, some areas received “very much above average” rainfall in the ten months to the end of October, seemingly defying the drying trend.

Variability Is King In Australia

Australia has always been the land of droughts and flooding rains. It’s normal to be beset by a multi-year drought, before experiencing major floods. Year-to-year variability here is large compared with most of the world’s other land regions.

In 2021, we’ve seen a wet swing of the climate needle due to several global climate drivers. Alongside the Pacific now being in the La Niña phase, the Indian Ocean Dipole is in a negative phase.

When we see these drivers line up, we know the deck is stacked for a wetter season. This is what we’ve always found, and we can count on Australia’s climate variability to remain, through this century and beyond.

So does a wet year cast doubt on our assessment of climate change? No.

In the 2020 State of the Climate report, released by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, we noted recent rainfall trends are tracking within projections.

In fact, we showed rainfall trends since the baseline of 1986-2005 to 2020 are tracking in the dry end of projections for the southwest and Victoria. This suggests that if anything, the projections are likely conservative.

Of course there are wet years, such as this year and also Victoria in 2010. But the longer-term trend has been downward. This is consistent with what we expect from climate change, after drawing on multiple lines of evidence and climate modelling.

2021 is not extraordinary in the long-term context. Even if the whole of 2021 ends up being very wet, it won’t shift the long-term trend by much. Only a persistent wet trend over decades or longer would raise questions about our assessment of climate change and current projections.

What Does A ‘Drier’ Climate Look Like?

As the global climate warms, global average rainfall is increasing – and we expect most regions of the world will actually become wetter.

But there are some regions which will get drier, including southern Australia, the Mediterranean and southern Africa. So what will this look like?

A trend towards a drier climate will come with a lot of ups and downs. For example, between 1900 and 2020 southwest Western Australia’s annual rainfall varied between about 393mm and 1035mm (-40% and +55% from the average). This is a huge range.

Climate projections suggest a persistent rainfall reduction of up to 15% in the southwest of Australia is plausible over the first part of this century. Change later in the century will depend on whether we limit further climate warming.

If we do limit it, we can expect the rainfall to decrease by up to 20%. If we don’t, it will decrease by up to 35% – with larger reductions very plausible in the cool season. In either case, these projected average changes are still smaller than the year-to-year variability recorded in Australia over many decades.

But this doesn’t mean the trends and projections aren’t important. A persistent and ongoing shifting towards drier conditions, with drier (and hotter) dry spells is a huge challenge for Australia’s water managers and primary producers. And with a lower rainfall average, the chances of unprecedented dry periods are higher.

Wet Extremes Expected

But not every year will be a drought. There will still be wet days, months and years.

In fact, wet extremes are likely to increase despite the drying trend. Even in regions where the average rainfall is expected to decrease, there is a projected increase in intense rainfall bursts and rainfall extremes.

This includes intense hourly rainfalls that can lead to flash floods, as well as major rainfalls from “atmospheric rivers”, which are strong channels of concentrated moisture that stream through the atmosphere above us, delivering water for extreme rainfalls.

So for parts of southern Australia, a likely outcome is lower rainfall on average, but an increase in extreme rainfall events. With lower water availability overall, punctuated by intense flood risk, we can anticipate significant challenges ahead.

Michael Grose, Climate projections scientist, CSIRO

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

Coal plants are closing faster than expected. Governments can keep the exit orderly

The international climate summit in Glasgow aimed to “consign coal power to history”. But while some major coal-consuming countries have agreed to phase out the fossil fuel in the 2030s, Australia is not one of them.

Under its recently released plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, the federal government modelled a scenario where the electricity sector still burns coal in 2050 – but only a very small amount.

Despite the federal government’s insistence on keeping coal alive, the states are making progress phasing it out. But a messy, state-by-state approach is almost certainly a higher-cost outcome for consumers than if Australia had a credible, enduring climate and energy policy at the national level.

As recent Grattan Institute analysis finds, if the phase out of coal is managed well, we can keep the lights on and slash emissions at low cost.

Coal Economics Don’t Suit Today’s Grid

Australia exports far more coal than we consume. But we still have 25 gigawatts of coal-fired power stations, 23 of which produce power for the National Electricity Market (the NEM). These coal-fired power stations are ageing – two-thirds of this capacity is scheduled to close by 2040.

Market conditions are making it hard for these plants to stay profitable, as renewable energy has flooded into the NEM in recent years. Rooftop solar has dramatically cut demand for grid-electricity in the middle of the day, effectively eating coal’s lunch.

On days with abundant wind and sunshine, wholesale electricity prices routinely drop so low they become negative, financially penalising any generators making power at those times.

What’s more, coal-fired power stations are less flexible than batteries, hydroelectric dams, and responsive gas-fired generators. This makes it hard for coal plants to ramp up output when electricity prices are high, or ramp down when prices are low or negative.

The economics of coal-fired generators are simply not well-suited to a system with lots of solar and wind-powered electricity.

Coal Stations Shutting Earlier Than Expected

Poor economics - combined with higher maintenance costs and increased risk of technical failure - make it difficult to justify keeping ageing coal plants open.

So far this year, three coal-fired power stations have had their closure dates brought forwards: Yallourn in Victoria, and Eraring and Mt Piper in NSW.

Faster closure means less coal generation capacity in future years. For example, the early closures of Yallourn and Eraring will reduce the expected coal generation capacity in 2030 by 1.5 gigawatts.

But the current closure schedule would still leave at least six coal-fired power stations operating in Australia after 2040.

As noted by the CSIRO in July, this is incompatible with Australia pursuing the Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5℃ this century.

So What Are The States Doing?

South Australia closed its last coal-fired power station in 2016, and NSW is set to be next with the Mt Piper station due to close in 2040. That leaves Victoria and Queensland.

Victoria’s Loy Yang A and B power stations use brown coal, making them some of the cheapest but most polluting plants to operate. Victoria has also legislated its commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050 and, by 2030, Victoria plans to use 50% renewable energy.

Pushing even more renewable energy into the state boosts the odds of the remaining coal-fired power stations leaving. In fact, the owners of each of the Loy Yang plants have hinted that their closure dates will come forward.

Queensland is more complicated, as it has Australia’s youngest fleet of coal-fired power stations. Five of them are due to close after 2040.

But of those five, four are partly or fully owned by the Queensland government. That means the timing of their closures is as much a political as an economic question.

Queensland also boasts some of the best renewable resources in the country, including vast tracts of land suitable for renewable energy projects. Combined with its 50% renewable energy target by 2030, the state government has the levers it needs to pull coal-fired generation out of the system by 2040 or earlier.

We Need Strong, National Policy

Grattan Institute analysis finds that a mostly renewable system with no coal – and only a limited role for gas – can maintain a reliable electricity supply while slashing emissions cheaply.

This is because the cost of wind and solar have plummeted, and energy storage such as batteries can help to smooth out daily fluctuations in demand and supply. For rare, sustained periods of high demand, low solar and low wind (which occur every few winters), gas is the lowest-cost backstop solution, at least until the economics of hydrogen become much better.

Achieving this outcome by 2040 or earlier will require significant, timely investment in the transmission network within and between states, allowing states to share their supplies and reducing the overall cost to consumers. Keeping a lid on the costs of transmission projects is also crucial – the risk of cost overruns is higher the more complex the project.

There will, of course, be challenges to ensure an orderly coal exit. For example, unexpected closures or breakdowns of coal plants can lead to shortages in electricity supply because investors in the electricity market don’t have enough time to build new capacity.

A national policy to coordinate coal exit would reduce uncertainty for the electricity system.

Grattan has previously recommended coal plant operators nominate a window of time within which their plant will close, combined with a payment of at least $100 million into an escrow fund. The operators’ money would be released only if the plant closes within its nominated window – if it exits unexpectedly, the money would be kept by the market operator to deal with any reliability problems.

Governments could also require that nominated closure windows occur before 2040, not after, if they want to achieve a coal-free NEM by that date. Alternatively – and more efficiently – they could establish an emissions standard for the NEM with tradeable certificates, allowing market participants to meet the emissions standard in the lowest cost way.

Unfortunately, current political reality indicates neither side of politics wants to be seen to support any policy resembling a carbon price, even though carbon pricing has the overwhelming support of Australian economists and the business community.

So, the renewable energy targets of the states are most likely to determine how quickly the NEM becomes coal-free. But if governments can muster the courage, our work shows that it’s possible to achieve a vastly lower-emissions electricity system in less than two decades.

James Ha, Associate, Grattan Institute and Alison Reeve, Deputy Program Director, Energy and Climate Change, Grattan Institute

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

5 big ideas: how Australia can tackle climate change while restoring nature, culture and communities

Australia’s plan to reach net zero emissions by 2050 relies heavily on unproven technologies to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, among other things.

But we already have solutions based in restoring nature and Country. In fact, nature-based solutions can deliver one third of promised global cuts in emissions.

Our new report, which brings together expertise from across Australia, reveals how we can make this happen using proven approaches including:

• Indigenous-led work on Country

• keeping our existing forests and woodlands safe from land clearing

• restoring ailing ecosystems

• simplifying access to carbon markets and

• mapping ways of working with nature rather than technology to store emissions.

Here are five big ideas to store emissions while benefiting communities, our economy and our natural and cultural heritage.

1. Seek Indigenous Leadership To Heal Damaged Country

The catastrophic bushfires of the 2019-2020 summer have driven repeated calls to return to Indigenous leadership in managing Country to prevent similar disasters.

Indigenous-led cool burning practices and land management can make Country safer and keep carbon-storing forests and ecosystems intact. Indigenous management of Country could be integrated in national and state employment, industry and health policy.

This shift will mean a deeper respect for Indigenous leadership and a willingness to learn from Indigenous relationships with Country.

Indigenous ranger programs have been highly successful, helping both Country and its people. Expanding these programs into new places – including cities – would build on their success.

This will require re-framing our relationship and attitudes to Country, removing policy barriers, enabling access to Country, restoring water rights and increasing investment. If we can get this right, it would change the nature of our relationship with Country and provide tangible benefits toward national carbon, social and biodiversity goals.

For instance, the Yumbangku Aboriginal Cultural Heritage and Tourism Development Aboriginal Corporation uses Indigenous management to restore Turraburra, a large drought-affected degraded grazing property in Queensland.

Iningai custodians are reintroducing cultural burning and restoring artesian waterways and sacred rock waterholes as part of measured emissions-reduction projects on Turraburra.

In response, their Country is thriving, and life is returning to the land. These custodians have told us having Country back means healing for the whole community as well as for Country.

2. Look After What We Have

The easiest and cheapest way to both reduce and store emissions is by keeping the vegetation we still have. Australia’s plants – from deserts to forests to ocean – play a vital role.

Australia has committed to end deforestation within nine years, but this seems highly optimistic given Australia’s depressing record of land clearing.

Restoration helps pollinator-dependent farming industries and boosts the economy more than cutting down forest.

In our heating climate, trees keep local areas significantly cooler and wetter. Forested watersheds reduce the cost of providing clean water. And intact vegetation boosts resilience to floods and storms, and stops soil eroding into rivers.

To stop clearing, tighter environmental laws are key. The scathing 2021 independent review of Australia’s key environment protection law shows it fails to stop habitat loss and proposes a more strategic approach to sustainable development.

We could also extend stewardship and landcare programs, so they involve more landholders and regional communities. For instance, the Murray Wetland Carbon Storage Project has brought together scientists, landowners, natural resource managers, communities and government to restore wetlands across 41 sites, with replanting, fencing, environmental water, weed and pest control.

3. Map Pathways To Use Nature And Culture To Get To Net Zero

We need a clear collective vision for net zero which embeds Country, culture, community and nature as vital methods of cutting and storing emissions. This vision would support action where it’s most needed, and bring policy coherence.

Under this vision, we could work to restore habitat connections across catchments and landscapes. We could embed culture and nature-based emissions reduction in community development, urban infrastructure, adaptation and catchment management strategies.

What does this look like? Consider Sydney’s coastline, where researchers and community members plan to bring a vital seaweed species back to its original range.

This species, crayweed, supports abalone and rock lobster, two of Australia’s most valuable fisheries. The team is working to restore crayweed forests destroyed by urbanisation and sewage.

4. Measure The Things We Value To Demonstrate Success

We urgently need better accountability to ensure emissions reduction projects and programs deliver the benefits they claim. Robust monitoring also helps create premium carbon products.

Accountability must be culturally appropriate and measure the most important benefits for each project. Indigenous-led work demonstrates that cultural, social and biodiversity benefits must be central.

Requiring non-Indigenous projects to report robustly on cultural, social and biodiversity benefits would ensure projects deliver for Indigenous people, the wider community, and the ecosystems on which we all depend.

Savanna burning in Northern Australia has been a strong success story for renewing culture and Country. Indigenous-led approaches to assessing benefits have successfully attracted funding to sequester carbon through both government and voluntary markets.

Indigenous groups are now leading conversations on extending this success to other places and ecosystems, such as through an Indigenous-led southern forest fire credits scheme under development.

5. Simplify Access To Carbon Markets And Incentive Schemes

At present, the methods we use to produce high-quality carbon credits through government emissions reduction schemes are often costly, complex and time-consuming. In short, they require specialist expertise to navigate.

These challenges act as a barrier, particularly for small organisations, and are inequitable for less resourced communities.

If we reduce the administrative burden, more small projects could embark on emission reduction. That means offering accessible methods of assessing projects, streamlining permits, and investing in Indigenous and community-based agencies to provide support.

New incentive schemes to reduce emissions in cities could also be a game-changer, like green roof retrofitting or the City of Melbourne’s Urban Forest Fund which enables property owners to partner with the city to deliver vertical greening, convert carparks into gardens, and build food-producing rooftop parks.

If we draw together methods of producing carbon credits across catchments, land and seascapes, we could provide pathways into a market likely to boom. In Victoria, a team of researchers, government, industry, landholders and Traditional Owners at #VicWetlandRehab are restoring degraded coastal wetlands by fencing and weeding.

To date, this program has restored 130 hectares of saltmarsh in Western Port Bay and Gippsland, home to some of Victoria’s most endangered birds, frogs and plants. The team is now planning to work with landholders and Traditional Owners to map priority areas for restoration along the entire Victorian coastline.

Rachel Morgain, Senior research fellow, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne; Brendan Wintle, Professor in Conservation Ecology, School of Ecosystem and Forest Science, The University of Melbourne; Judy Bush, Lecturer in Urban Planning, The University of Melbourne; Michael-Shawn Fletcher, Associate Professor in Biogeography, The University of Melbourne, and Thami Croeser, Research Officer, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University

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

Australia’s marine industries deliver $80b a year. But without more scientists, the ‘blue economy’ is at risk

Australia is a marine nation. First Nations people have deep and unbroken connections to sea, 85% of us live within 50km of the coast, and our ocean territory is twice that of our land mass.

A large part of our economy – the “blue economy” – depends on the sea: tourism, ports, energy, transport, fisheries and aquaculture, and emerging industries like renewable energy, offshore aquaculture, and biotechnology.

Together, these industries are worth more than A$80 billion a year. By 2025, this figure may be $100 billion.

To manage our oceans and coasts to support a growing blue economy means we need to understand them, and that means we need science. At the National Marine Science Committee (NMSC), we have surveyed how well Australia is delivering this science. As we show in a new report, the story is mixed.

The Plan

The NMSC is Australia’s peak body for marine research. Its members are almost 40 universities, research institutions and state and federal agencies.

In 2015, the Committee created a blueprint for growing Australia’s blue economy: the National Marine Science Plan: 2015-25.

This plan identified seven grand challenges facing our marine estate:

• marine sovereignty and security

• energy security

• food security

• biodiversity conservation

• sustainable urban coastal development

• climate change adaptation

• equitable, balanced resource allocation.

The plan also made eight recommendations involving initiatives, investment, and priorities to address the challenges.

We are now halfway through the plan’s ten-year scope. While many of the recommendations are on track, others need some work.

The Report Card

Our oceans face unique challenges, from climate change to managing increasing resource use. Despite pandemic disruptions, scientific progress has continued.

Highlights from the past five years include increasing Australia’s marine research capacity with a new icebreaker for working in the Antarctic and operation of the research ship RV Investigator for 300 days at sea. Coastal research vessels have also continued operations, and the Integrated Marine Observing System has expanded.

The new report shows science has already helped deliver better outcomes for the blue economy, through things like strategies for fishery harvesting to balance consumer demands with economic and ecological sustainability.

The report also identifies further steps needed to ensure all recommendations are fulfilled. It offers three new recommendations, too.

First, integrate the knowledge, rights, capabilities, and aspirations of Traditional Owners into conventional marine science.

Second, establish national policy guidelines for open access to government-funded or regulatory data. This would include access to historical datasets and expand the Australian Ocean Data Network.

And third, develop an approach to increase the resilience of our coasts.

An Unprecedented Opportunity

After the economic shock of the pandemic, there is enormous interest in Australia’s blue economy and our ocean health. This can be realised via national and international initiatives and funding focused on sustainable growth.

The Australian government has joined 13 other nations in the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy committing to sustainably manage 100% of their marine estates by 2025.

This year also kicks off the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. The world’s eyes will be on the oceans for the next ten years.

Since 2015, Australia has been building its national marine science capability. Recent initiatives include the Reef Trust Partnership, Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), Marine Bioproducts CRC, investments in marine and coastal science under the National Environmental Science Program, and the [Australian Ocean Leadership Package].

The foundations are there, and the task now is to strengthen and embed our marine science sovereign capability.

A Call To Action

The report calls on actions from broad sectors of society to ensure Australia’s blue economy continues to grow. It asks:

• the research community to build on and amplify existing resources to establish truly national research programs that incorporate all stakeholder needs

• industry to work with marine scientists and governments to ensure science underpins operational decision-making, risk assessments and future planning, and to create efficient, sustainable businesses

• government to focus on and invest in the blue economy as an important plank in post-COVID economic recovery and a way to create long-term social, cultural and environmental benefits

• the community to recognise the responsibility we all share as a marine nation, and to play an active role in ensuring the long-term health of our oceans and coasts for all Australians.

With a strong blue economy, we can chart a course through the uncertainties of the future and create long-term prosperity for all Australians.

This article was written in conjunction with Dr David Smith, Chair of the National Research Providers Network for Fisheries and Aquaculture.

Toni Moate, Chair, National Marine Science Committee and Director, CSIRO National Collections and Marine Infrastructure, CSIRO; Anthony Boxshall, Chair – Marine and Coastal Council, Victoria, and Associate Professor, The University of Melbourne; David Souter, Chief Research Officer, Australian Institute of Marine Science, and Michelle Heupel, Director, Integrated Marine Observing System, and Adjunct Professor, University of Tasmania

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

Just like how humans recognise faces, bees are born with an innate ability to find and remember flowers

We’ve all watched a honeybee fly past us and land on a nearby flower. But how does she know what she’s looking for?

And when she leaves the hive for the first time, how does she even know what a flower looks like?

Our paper, published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, set out to discover whether bees have an innate “flower template” in their minds, which allows them to know exactly what they are looking for even if they’ve never seen a flower before.

A Story Of Partnership

Plants and pollinators need each other to survive and prosper. Many plants require animals to transport pollen between flowers so the plants can reproduce. Meanwhile, pollinators rely on plants for nutrition (such as pollen and nectar) and nesting resources (such as leaves and resin).

As such, flowering plants and pollinators have been in partnership for millions of years. This relationship often results in flowers having evolved certain signals such as colours, shapes and patterns that are more attractive to bees.

At the same time, bees’ reliance on flower resources such as nectar and pollen has led them to be effective learners of flower signals. They must be able to tell which flowers in their environment will provide a reward and which will not. If they didn’t know the difference, they would waste time searching for nectar in the wrong flowers.

Our findings show bees can quickly and effectively learn to discriminate between flowers of slightly different shapes – a bit like how humans can expertly tell faces apart.

The Amazing Brains Of Honeybees

Honeybee brains are tiny. They weigh less than a milligram and contain just 960,000 neurons (compared to 86 billion in human brains). But despite this, they demonstrate exceptional learning abilities.

Their learning extends to many cognitively challenging tasks, including maze navigation, size discrimination, counting, quantity discrimination and even simple math!

So we know bees can learn all sorts of flower-related information, but we wanted to discover how they find flowers on their first foraging trip outside the hive. We also investigated whether experienced foragers developed a bias in their foraging strategies and flower preferences.

To test this, we prompted two groups of bees to discriminate between sets of flower images. One group was raised in a hive inside a greenhouse with no flowers, and had therefore never been exposed to flowers. We put a colour mark on these bees at birth, so we could track them once they emerged from the hive to forage two weeks later.

The second group consisted of experienced foragers which had encountered many flowers in their lives.

We trained both groups to discriminate between images of two flowers found in nature, using a reward of sugar water for choosing the correct option when directed. We also trained both groups to discriminate between the same flowers with the petals separated and randomly scrambled.

How well and how quickly the bees learnt to discriminate between the images of whole flowers, versus how long they took to discriminate between the scrambled petals, would tell us which information they preferred to learn.

Both the flower-naïve and experienced foragers learnt to discriminate between the images of whole flowers better, and more quickly, than the scrambled petals. However, the flower-naïve honeybees appeared to have less bias as they also learnt to discriminate between the scrambled information, while the experienced foragers could not.

The results reveal flower-naïve bees have an innate flower template that aids them with learning new flowers and discriminating between them. At the same time, experienced foragers become biased towards certain flower shapes as they gain foraging experience.

Overall, bees use an innate flower template to first find flowers, and also draw on their past knowledge as they become more experienced.

Innate Recognition In Other Animals

While our findings on honeybees are remarkable, they do tie into similar capabilities in other species.

Different species have evolved brains which tune into important stimuli. For example, humans and other primates can detect, process, recognise and discriminate between the faces of other members of their species. Research has shown even human infants can detect and recognise other people’s faces very well.

Our preference for faces, and ability to recognise them, has probably evolved due to the importance of needing to discriminate between friends, enemies and strangers. This is akin to the bees needing to process images of whole flower shapes better than scrambled petal images – due to the importance of recognising flower shape for survival.

Similarly, social paper wasps evaluate their relationship with hive-mates based on the different facial markings of friends and foes. Just like bees, they do this using a combination of innate mechanisms and lived experience.

Scarlett Howard, Postdoctoral research fellow, Deakin University and Adrian Dyer, Associate Professor, RMIT University

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

Harder foods make for stronger skulls, giving hand-reared animals the best chance of survival in the wild

Each year, thousands of wild animals across the world are rescued. They can include young animals saved from abandonment, injury, disease or the death of their parents. Animal carers around the world work tirelessly to help these little animals heal and grow until they are ready to be released back into the wild.

But there can be differences between what captive animals are fed and what wild animals eat. Captive diets can include processed or pre-portioned foods, such as minced meat, peeled, diced or pureed fruit, or feed pellets.

While these kinds of foods generally meet the nutritional demands of growing animals, they are much easier to eat than a typical meal in the wild, and this can have drawbacks for young animals that are trying to grow fit and strong.

In my new research, published today in the journal Integrative Organismal Biology, my colleagues and I show how a diet of exclusively soft foods can hamper skull development in growing animals.

Over the past few decades there have been many documented examples of captive animals – including lions, monkeys and marsupial gliders – that have differently shaped skulls to their wild counterparts. These differences are most often found around the bones and locations of muscles used for feeding, prompting some researchers to suggest they are due to differences in diet.

Our research therefore asked whether growing up on a diet that doesn’t need much biting can impact the ability of an adult skull to bite effectively.

Fortunately, we had access to a large, ready-made data set that could help answer this question. Back in 2012, as part of a different research project, 40 rats were fed contrasting diets, from weaning all the way to adulthood. Some ate hard pellets that needed plenty of biting and then chewing; others ate the same food but after it was first ground into powdered meal. When they reached adulthood, CT scans were taken of their skulls.

Using these scans, I created three-dimensional digital models of each rat’s skull, and carried out bite simulations to compare the amount of stress each skull model experienced when subject to the same biting forces. Greater stress would indicate thinner bone.

Biting Off More Than They Can Chew

Bones are often thought of as simple, hard objects. But bone is actually a complex living tissue that constantly adapts to its job. Every time a bone is used to perform an action, it bends a tiny bit. The more often a bone bends over time, the thicker it can grow – especially when lifting or moving heavier things.

Sure enough, my simulations showed that the skulls of rats fed powdered meal experienced the most stress during biting. This supports the idea that the rats that ate softer foods while growing up had less bone deposited in their skull, leaving the skull weaker as a result.

What does this mean for rehabilitation and release of our furry friends during conservation programs? Well, it’s similar to exercise. When someone goes running to prepare for a race, they aren’t just training their bones and muscles to run faster, they’re also reducing their risk of injury by conditioning their body to perform a demanding task.

If rescued baby animals are raised on diets full of soft, processed, peeled, chopped, blended or portioned foods, much of the biting and chewing has already been done for them. This means the bones and muscles of their skulls won’t be as conditioned for the tougher foods they may need to eat in the wild. This might leave them more vulnerable to being injured or going hungry when ultimately released.

Naturally, these factors would vary between species. So, these findings simply serve as an additional consideration for all those fantastic animal carers who give their time and effort to conserving our native animals.

D. Rex Mitchell, Postdoctoral Fellow, Flinders University

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

Invasive species are threatening Antarctica’s fragile ecosystems as human activity grows and the world warms

We tend to think Antarctica is isolated and far away – biologically speaking, this is true. But the continent is busier than you probably imagine, with many national programs and tourist operators crisscrossing the globe to get there.

And each vessel, each cargo item, and each person could be harbouring non-native species, hitchhiking their way south. This threat to Antarctica’s fragile ecosystem is what our new evaluation, released today, grapples with.

We mapped the last five years of planes and ships visiting the continent, illuminating for the first time the extent of travel across the hemispheres and the potential source locations for non-native species, as the map below shows. We found that, luckily, while some have breached Antarctica, they generally have yet to get a stranglehold, leaving the continent still relatively pristine.

But Antarctica is getting busier, with new research stations, rebuilding and more tourism activities planned. Our challenge is to keep it pristine under this growing human activity and climate change threat.

Life Evolved In Isolation

Biodiversity-wise, much of the planet is mixed up. The scientific term is homogenisation, where species, such as weeds, pests and diseases, from one place are transported elsewhere and establish. This means they begin to reproduce and influence the ecosystem, often to the detriment of the locals.

Most life in Antarctica is jammed onto tiny coastal ice-free fringes, and this is where most research stations, ships and people are.

This includes unique animals (think Adélie penguins, Weddell seals and snow petrels), mosses and lichens that harbour tiny invertebrates (such as mites, waterbears and springtails), and an array of microbes such as cyanobacteria. The adjacent coast and ocean team with life, too.

The more we learn about them, the more outstanding life at the end of the planetary spectrum becomes. Just this week, new scientific discoveries identified that some Antarctic bacteria live on air, and make their own water using hydrogen as fuel.

When the Southern Ocean was formed some 30 million years ago, natural barriers were created with the rest of the world. This includes the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the strongest ocean current on the planet, and its associated strong westerly surface winds, icy air and ocean temperatures.

This means life in Antarctica evolved in isolation, with flora and fauna that commonly exist nowhere else and can cope with frigid conditions. But the simplicity of Antarctica’s food webs can often mean there are gaps in the ecosystem that other species from around the world can fill.

In May 2014, for example, routine biosecurity surveillance detected non-native springtails (tiny insect-like invertebrates) in a hydroponic facility at an Australian Antarctic station.

This station, an ice-free oasis, previously lacked these interlopers, and they had the potential to alter the local fragile ecosystem permanently. Thankfully, a rapid and effective response successfully eradicated them.

Pressures from climate change are exacerbating the challenges of human activity on Antarctica, as climate change is bringing milder conditions to these wildlife-rich areas, both on land and sea.

As glaciers melt, new areas are exposed, which allows non-Antarctic species greater opportunity to establish and possibly outcompete locals for resources, such as nutrients and precious, ice-free space.

So Far, We’ve Been Lucky

Our past research focused on non-native propagules – things that propagate like microbes, viruses, seeds, spores, insects and pregnant rats – and how they entrain themselves into Antarctica.

They can be easily caught on people’s clothing and equipment, in fresh food, cargo and machinery. In fact, research from the last decade found that visitors who hadn’t cleaned their clothing and equipment carried on average nine seeds each.

But few non-native species have established in Antarctica, despite their best efforts.

To date, only 11 non-native invertebrate species – including springtails, mites, a midge and an earthworm – have established across a range of locations in the warmer parts of Antarctica, including Signy Island and the Antarctic Peninsula. In the marine realm, some non-native species have been seen but it’s thought none have survived and established.

Microbes are another matter. Each visitor to Antarctica carries millions of microbial passengers, and many of these microbes are left behind. Around most research stations, human gut microbes from sewage have mingled with native microbes, including exchanging antibiotic resistance genes.

Last year, for example, a rare harmful bacteria, pathogenic to both humans and birds, was detected in guano (poo) from both Adélie and gentoo penguin colonies at sites with high rates of human visitors. COVID-19 also made its way to Antarctica last December.

Both these cases risk so-called “reverse zoonosis”, where humans spread disease to local wildlife.

What Do We Do About It?

Three factors have helped maintain Antarctica’s near-pristine status: the physical isolation, cold conditions and co-operation between nations through the Antarctic Treaty. The Treaty is underpinned by the Environmental Protocol, which aims to prevent and respond to threats and pressures to the continent.

There is unanimous commitment from Antarctic Treaty nations towards preventing the establishment of non-native species. This includes adopting a science-based, non-native species manual, which provides guidance on how to prevent, monitor, and respond to introductions of non-native species.

But time is of the essence. We must better prepare for the inevitable arrival of more non-native species to prevent them from establishing, as we continue to break the barriers protecting Antarctica. One approach is to tailor the newly developed 3As approach to environmental management: Awareness of values, Anticipation of the pressures, Action to stem the pressures.

This means ramping up monitoring, taking note of predictions of what non-native species could sneak through biosecurity and establish under new conditions, and putting in place pre-determined response plans to act quickly when they do.

Dana M Bergstrom, Principal Research Scientist, University of Wollongong and Shavawn Donoghue, Adjunct Researcher, University of Tasmania

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

The seas are coming for us in Kiribati. Will Australia rehome us?

Our atoll nation is barely two metres above sea level, and the waters are coming for us.

Despite the progress and momentum of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, we are still not moving fast enough to avoid the worst of climate change.

It is heartening that more than 190 countries and organisations agreed to rapidly phase out coal power and end support for new coal power stations. More than 100 countries signed a pledge to cut methane emissions 30% by the end of the decade, and about the same number agreed to stop deforestation on an industrial scale in the same timeframe.

But even with these agreements, we in Kiribati face the death of our homeland. Co-author Anote Tong led our country as president for 15 years, alongside lead author Akka Rimon, who was foreign secretary between 2014 and 2016.

The problem is speed. Our land is disappearing faster than global action can stem climate change. Delays and a lack of global leadership mean the existence of small island states like Kiribati is now in the balance.

That means we must urgently find ways to rehome our people. It is very difficult to leave our homes, but there is no choice. Time is not on our side. We must prepare for a difficult future.

What we need is a model where displaced people can migrate to host nations when their homes become uninhabitable. Countries like Australia need workers – and we will soon need homes.

This is, increasingly, a question of justice. Australia’s actions, in particular, raise questions over how sincere it is in honouring its recent commitments at COP26.

As the world’s largest exporter of fossil gas and the second largest exporter of coal, Australia’s reluctance to change is putting its neighbours in the Pacific at risk of literally disappearing. It is the only developed nation not committed to cut emissions at least in half by 2030.

In Glasgow, Fiji urged Australia to take real action by halving emissions by 2030. Did it work? No. Australia also refused to sign the agreements on ending coal’s reign, with prominent politicians undermining the COP26 agreement as soon as the conference was over.

We desperately hope the commitments Australia did make at COP26 are not just words on paper. But if they are, that makes our need for certainty even more urgent.

Let us speak plainly: If Australia really does plan to sell as much of its fossil fuel reserves as possible and drag its feet on climate action, the least it can do is help us survive the rising seas caused by the burning of its coal and gas.

To Migrate With Dignity

Eighteen years ago, the Kiribati government – then headed by Anote Tong – introduced a “migration with dignity” policy as a way for I-Kiribati people to adapt to climate change.

We gave our I-Kiribati workers international qualifications tailored for jobs in demand overseas. After this, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand set up a scheme to allow workers to migrate to New Zealand if they had an offer of a job. Each year prior to COVID, 75 people from Kiribati were able to migrate through the scheme.

New Zealand is the first and only country currently offering a permanent labour migration program from Kiribati. While welcome, we will need more places for I-Kiribati as climate change intensifies.

Like New Zealand, Australia has expanded its seasonal worker schemes for Pacific workers, and is now moving towards a longer stay, multi-visa arrangement under its Pacific Labour Scheme. We expect this scheme will evolve into a permanent migration scheme similar to New Zealand.

While we wait in hope for a true safe haven for our people, our diaspora is growing. I-Kiribati are moving now to Pacific countries higher above the water level such as Fiji, the Cook Islands, Niue, Samoa and Tonga.

Are we scared? Of course. We are on the front line of this crisis, despite having done amongst the least to cause it. It is difficult to leave the only home we have known. But science does not lie. And we can see the water coming.

Labour migration will not solve climate change, but it offers hope to those of us who will be displaced first.

This is a vital question of climate justice. This upheaval is caused by high-emitting economic powerhouses like the US, China, and the European Union. But the vulnerable are paying the full cost. That is not fair.

As climate change worsens, other global leaders must consider how best to support adaptation through labour mobility. Far better to plan for this now than to let climate change rage unchecked and trigger ever-larger waves of refugees.

The Question Of Climate Justice

Consider this: in 2018, each person in Kiribati was responsible for 0.95 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. By contrast, each person in the United States was responsible for 17.7 tonnes. Despite this imbalance, the US has taken little responsibility for what is happening to Kiribati and other low-lying nations.

We are hopeful this may change, given US President Joe Biden recently pledged to make his nation a leader in climate finance by supporting nations worst hit by climate change and with the least resources to cope. It’s also encouraging that new laws have been proposed to allow people displaced by climate change to live in America.

We must work to slash emissions and devise solutions for the problems caused by the warming.

International law must recognise climate displaced populations and create ways we can be rehoused.

While other solutions such as climate-proofing infrastructure or even floating islands have been proposed for Kiribati, these cannot happen overnight and are very expensive. By contrast, labour mobility is fast and advantageous to the host country.

Kiribati’s current government is working to increase skills and employability in our workforce. We are doing our part to get ready for the great dislocation.

When I-Kiribati have to migrate, we want them to be able to do so as first class citizens with access to secure futures rather than as climate refugees.

We are doing all we can to stay afloat in the years of ever angrier climate change. But it will take the global village to save our small village and keep alive our culture, language, heritage, spirits, land, waters and above all, our people.

Akka Rimon, PhD Student, Australian National University and Anote Tong, Distinguished Global Leader-in-Residence, University of Pennsylvania

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

Curious Kids: how do birds make their nests?

I would please like to know how birds make their nests? How do they know how to weave the twigs together and what makes the twigs stick together? – Miguel, age 10, Brisbane

Hi Miguel, thanks for this great question!

The first thing to know is not all birds make nests. For example, emperor penguin fathers carry their precious egg on their feet (to keep it off the frozen ground).

Some birds, such as cuckoos, will lay their eggs in someone else’s nests. Others lay them on the ground among leaves or pebbles, or on cliffs with very little protection.

For the birds that do build nests, there is one main goal: to keep their eggs and chicks safe.

Many Places To Build A Nest

Many birds also make their nests in tree hollows, including parrots. That’s just one reason it’s important to not cut trees down!

Meanwhile, kookaburras use their powerful beaks to burrow into termite nests and make a cosy nest inside. And the cute spotted pardelote will dig little burrows in the side of earth banks – with a safe and cosy spot for its eggs at the end of the tunnel.

Some birds, such as brush turkeys, spend months building huge mounds on the ground which can heat up from the inside. The male turkey makes sure the ground is exactly the right temperature inside the mound, and then lets the female lay the eggs inside. He’ll take big mouthfuls of dirt surrounding the eggs to check it’s not too hot or cold.

What Materials Do They Use?

Birds construct many different types of nests. There are floating nests, cups, domes, pendulums and basket-shaped nests. They can be made out of sticks, twigs, leaves, grasses, mosses or even mud.

Magpie-larks (also called “peewees”), apostlebirds and choughs make mud bowl nests that look like terracotta plant pots. To do this, they gather mud and grasses in their beaks and shake it around to mix it with their saliva. They can then attach it to a branch and build upwards until the nest is complete.

In fact, bird saliva is a really strong and sticky material to build nests with. Birds will often mix saliva and mud to make a type of glue. And some swiftlets make their nests entirely out of solidified saliva. People will even eat these nests in bird’s nest soup!

Willie wagtails use another type of glue - sticky spiderwebs. They “sew” grasses together using spider webs and the webs help keep the nests strong against wind and water, too. They have to perfect the technique of gathering the spiderweb though, otherwise it can get tangled in their feathers.

Magpies and crows, both common visitors to our gardens, are also clever nest builders. Not only can they expertly layer their sticks into a bowl, but they also use many human-made materials in their nests. You might find them using fabric, string or a wire to hold a nest together.

Some birds such as red kites have even been seen “decorating” their nests with human rubbish. And Australian babblers line the inside of their nests with a thick wall of kangaroo poo, followed by soft fluff, to keep their chicks warm.

The Building Process

To actually weave the nests, birds will usually create a base by layering sticks or twigs in the place they want it. Then they use their beaks and feet to weave a chosen materials through, to hold the sticks in place.

They can pull strips of material with their beaks over and under, just like weaving a rug. They can even tie knots! Nests can take a really long time to make, so they’re often reused year after year. Weaver birds are so good at weaving, they can build complex nests that cover entire trees and have several chambers.

To summarise, birds are really intelligent animals. They use their intelligence, along with their beaks and feet, to find the most clever ways to make nests with whatever materials are available. And they get better at this by learning from others, such as their parents or peers.

Kiara L'Herpiniere, PhD Candidate, Wildlife Biologist, Macquarie University

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

Could we really deflect an asteroid heading for Earth? An expert explains NASA’s latest DART mission

A NASA spacecraft the size of a golf cart has been directed to smash into an asteroid, with the intention of knocking it slightly off course. The test aims to demonstrate our technological readiness in case an actual asteroid threat is detected in the future.

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) lifted off aboard a SpaceX rocket from California on November 23, and will arrive at the target asteroid system in September, next year.

The mission will travel to the asteroid Didymos, a member of the Amor group of asteroids. Every 12 hours Didymos is orbited by a mini-moon, or “moonlet”, Dimorphos. This smaller half of the pair will be DART’s target.

Are We Facing An Extinction Threat From Asteroids?

We’ve all seen disaster movies in which an asteroid hits Earth, creating an extinction event similar to the one that killed off the dinosaurs millions of years ago. Could that happen now?

Well, Earth is actually bombarded frequently by small asteroids, ranging from 1-20 metres in diameter. Almost all asteroids of this size disintegrate in the atmosphere and are usually harmless.

There is an inverse relationship between the size of these object and the frequency of impact events. This means we get hit much more frequently by small objects than larger ones – simply because there are many more smaller objects in space.

Asteroids with a 1km diameter strike Earth every 500,000 years, on average. The most “recent” impact of this size is thought to have formed the Tenoumer impact crater in Mauritania, 20,000 years ago. Asteroids with an approximate 5km diameter impact Earth about once every 20 million years.

The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteoroid, which damaged buildings in six Russian cities and injured around 1,500 people, was estimated to be about 20m in diameter.

Assessing The Risk

NASA’s DART mission has been sparked by the threat and fear of a major asteroid hitting Earth in the future.

The Torino scale is a method for categorising the impact hazard associated with a near-Earth object (NEO). It uses a scale from 0 to 10, wherein 0 means there is negligibly small chance of collision, and 10 means imminent collision, with the impacting object being large enough to precipitate a global disaster.

The Chicxulub impact (which is attributed to the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs) was a Torino scale 10. The impacts that created the Barringer Crater, and the 1908 Tunguska event, both correspond to Torino Scale 8.

With the increase of online news and individuals’ ability to film events, asteroid “near-misses” tend to generate fear in the public. Currently, NASA is keeping a close eye on asteroid Bennu, which is the object with the largest “cumulative hazard rating” right now. (You can keep up to date too).

With a 500m diameter, Bennu is capable of creating a 5km crater on Earth. However, NASA has also said there is a 99.943% chance the asteroid will miss us.

Brace For Impact

At one point in their orbit around the Sun, Didymos and Dimorphos come within about 5.9 million km of Earth. This is still further away than our Moon, but it’s very close in astronomical terms, so this is when DART will hit Dimorphos.

DART will spend about ten months travelling towards Didymos and, when it’s close by, will change direction slightly to crash into Dimorphos at a speed of about 6.6km per second.

The larger Didymos is 780m in diameter and thus makes a better target for DART to aim for. Once DART has detected the much smaller Dimorphos, just 160m in diameter, it can make a last-minute course correction to collide with the moonlet.

The mass of Dimorphos is 4.8 million tonnes and the mass of DART at impact will be about 550kg. Travelling at 6.6km/s, DART will be able to transfer a huge amount of momentum to Dimorphos, to the point where it’s expected to actually change the moonlet’s orbit around Didymos.

This change, to the tune of about 1%, will be detected by ground telescopes within weeks or months. While this may not seem like a lot, 1% is actually a promising shift. If DART were to slam into a lone asteroid, its orbital period around the Sun would change by only about 0.000006%, which would take many years to measure.

So we’ll be able to detect the 1% change from Earth, and meanwhile the pair will continue along its orbit around the Sun. DART will also deploy a small satellite ten days before impact to capture everything.

This is NASA’s first mission dedicated to demonstrating a planetary defence technique. At a cost of US$330 million, it’s relatively cheap in space mission terms. The James Webb Telescope set to launch next month, costs close to US$10 billion.

There will be little to no debris from DART’s impact. We can think of it in terms of a comparable event on Earth; imagine a train parked on the tracks but with no brakes on. Another train comes along and collides with it.

The trains won’t break apart, or destroy one another, but will move off together. The stationary one will gain some speed, and the one impacting it will lose some speed. The trains combine to become a new system with different speeds than before.

So we won’t experience any impact, ripples or debris from the DART mission.

Is The Effort Really Worth It?

Results from the mission will tell us just how much mass and speed is needed to hit an asteroid that may pose a threat in the future. We already track the vast majority of asteroids that come close to Earth, so we would have early warning of any such object.

That said, we have missed objects in the past. In October 2021, Asteroid UA_1 passed about 3,047km from Earth’s surface, over Antarctica. We missed it because it approached from the direction of the Sun. At just 1m in size it wouldn’t have caused much damage, but we should have seen it coming.

Building a deflection system for a potential major asteroid threat would be difficult. We would have to act quickly and hit the target with very good aim.

One candidate for such a system could be the new technology developed by the US spaceflight company SpinLaunch, which has designed technology to launch satellites into orbit at rapid speeds. This device could also be used to fire masses at close-passing asteroids. 

Gail Iles, Senior Lecturer in Physics, RMIT University

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

The Beatles: Get Back review – Peter Jackson’s TV series is a thrilling, funny (and long) treat for fans

The Beatles’ Get Back project, undertaken in January 1969, has finally been completed. Again.

For most of the last 50 years it has been known as Let it Be, a film and LP record released in 1970. The project, conceived by Paul McCartney, was originally intended to be a television special documenting the band’s preparation for a live concert (their first in two and a half years). Because of the performance element, the Beatles decided to get back to their roots and only develop material that could be played without adding overdubs.

As it happened, the concert didn’t go ahead, the Beatles famously deciding instead to play a short unannounced gig on the roof of their headquarters. The TV special became a feature film, and the audio was handed over to the “wall of sound” producer, Phil Spector (leading to controversial results).

Meanwhile, in the early 1980s, the Beatles withdrew the film version (a fly-on-the-wall documentary directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg) from circulation.

Lindsay-Hogg’s Let it Be is remembered as a portrait of a band in the process of breaking up. And indeed, George Harrison did briefly quit the band early into the four-week project, though Lindsay-Hogg’s documentary does not cover this episode.

Let it Be was seen as a downer in part because the Beatles, especially Lennon, were keen to trash it in the light of the band’s breakup (which occurred just weeks before the release of Let it Be, both film and album). As Lennon said in December 1970, the shoot was “hell”, and Spector was “given the shittiest load of badly recorded shit”.

A Different Tenor

While the newly released The Beatles: Get Back, directed by Peter Jackson, covers Harrison’s departure and return, Jackson’s film is tonally different from Lindsay-Hogg’s. According to Jackson, the dour account of Let it Be is inaccurate, since there is much “joy” and friendship evident in the 60 hours of film and 150 hours of audio tape that has been sitting in a vault for half a century.

Much of this audio has long been available as bootlegs, informing written accounts of this period of the Beatles’ history. The audio without the video, however, doesn’t always tell the whole story.

While Jackson and his team haven’t shied away from the moments of friction, ennui, and aimlessness experienced by the band, the tenor of Get Back is more upbeat than Lindsay-Hogg’s version (though there is perhaps more levity in that film than Jackson or its reputation allows).

But Get Back is not just a recut of Let it Be; it is a documentary in its own right, a film about the making of a film. Lindsay-Hogg is now a character in the drama of trying to work out what the project is about, and how it will end.

Unlike the cinema verité style of Let it Be, Get Back gives much-needed context in the form of titles naming the protagonists and songs, as well as explaining what is happening. The use of a day-by-day countdown to the live performance gives the otherwise shapeless events a sense of narrative and even tension.

Get Back was to be a feature film with a theatrical release, but COVID-19 led to a rescheduling and reconceptualising of the work, so that it became a documentary for Disney+. Recent reports were that the series would be a three-part series with a six-hour running time.

The Climactic Rooftop Concert

As it turns out, that running time is closer to eight hours. (Let it Be is a mere 80 minutes long.) Almost all of these eight hours show the Beatles at work on a sound stage (at Twickenham Film Studios) or in an ad hoc recording studio (put together in the Beatles’ Apple headquarters, when – after Harrison’s walkout – it was decided that Twickenham wasn’t conducive to creativity).

The Apple studio is clearly more pleasant, and the tone is further lightened when the Beatles are joined by an outsider, their old friend Billy Preston, on keyboards (a crucial moment for the project).

There is nevertheless something of a hermetic feel to most of Get Back, so that when the Beatles and Preston head up to the rooftop to play in public – the cinematic “payoff” that the band and Lindsay-Hogg had been looking for throughout the project – there is a palpable sense of release.

And the famous rooftop concert, presented with creative use of split screen, is stunningly good (and is also, for the first time, presented in its 42-minute entirety).

After the countless run throughs and takes of the same songs over the preceding weeks (as well as numerous covers and early Beatles tunes), the sense of energy and the quality of playing gives the film the climactic moment that it needs, complete with police officers demanding, albeit politely, that the Beatles stop breaching the peace of London’s West End.

Cigarettes, Cups Of Tea, And White Bread

Get Back is very different from Let it Be in part due to Jackson’s editing, especially his use of montage, which produces a dynamic, sometimes frenetic, energy. Beyond these stylistic elements, Get Back is notable as a technical feat.

It looks and sounds astonishingly good, not something that was ever said about Let it Be. Jackson and his technical team have employed the kind of film restoration techniques used in his war documentary They Shall Not Grow Old (2018).

The vision in Get Back is beautifully saturated, sharp, and less grainy than Lindsay-Hogg’s film. Harrison and Starr, in their sartorial splendour, often resemble their cartoon equivalents from Yellow Submarine (1968).

If there is anything unvarnished about Jackson’s film it is the sight of people apparently living off cigarettes, cups of tea, and white bread. Also notably “historical” is the homosocial nature of the project; almost all of the active participants are men. Even Yoko Ono, who sits beside Lennon throughout, is almost entirely silent (save for her vocal participation in a couple of impromptu jams).

While the film has been painstakingly restored, the soundtrack has been almost remade. Much of the audio was recorded on mono quarter-inch tape. Jackson’s technical team used machine learning to effectively “remix” these mono tapes, allowing Jackson to hone in on individual voices masked by other sound sources (voices or musical instruments).

This is an extraordinary technological breakthrough, allowing key conversations to be heard properly for the first time, and for the remixing of the play throughs and rehearsals of songs, which weren’t being recorded as “takes” on the eight-track system.

Get Back is a treat for any Beatles fan. It’s a reminder, too, if one is needed, that some classic songs were recorded for the project. (Given that McCartney supplied at least three of these classics – Let it Be, The Long and Winding Road, and Get Back – it’s unsurprising that he has long been unsatisfied with the way they were originally showcased.)

But Jackson’s film isn’t all sweetness and light. Lennon, for instance, is dismissive of Harrison’s I, Me, Mine, and he makes a throwaway joke about Bob Wooler, a Liverpool disc jockey whom Lennon assaulted in 1963. Also notable is the relative absence of George Martin, who largely hands production duties to his sound engineer, Glyn Johns, surely a sign that Martin found something amiss with the project.

And indeed numerous sequences show a band lacking focus and discipline. Get Back, then, is unquestionably a mixed bag: thrilling, compelling, and funny, but also sometimes just a little boring.

In this, Jackson has been true to the original project. His extraordinary TV series is essential viewing for anyone interested in popular music.

David McCooey, Professor of Writing and Literature, Deakin University

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

Pythagoras’ revenge: humans didn’t invent mathematics, it’s what the world is made of

Many people think that mathematics is a human invention. To this way of thinking, mathematics is like a language: it may describe real things in the world, but it doesn’t “exist” outside the minds of the people who use it.

But the Pythagorean school of thought in ancient Greece held a different view. Its proponents believed reality is fundamentally mathematical.

More than 2,000 years later, philosophers and physicists are starting to take this idea seriously.

As I argue in a new paper, mathematics is an essential component of nature that gives structure to the physical world.

Honeybees And Hexagons

Bees in hives produce hexagonal honeycomb. Why?

According to the “honeycomb conjecture” in mathematics, hexagons are the most efficient shape for tiling the plane. If you want to fully cover a surface using tiles of a uniform shape and size, while keeping the total length of the perimeter to a minimum, hexagons are the shape to use.

Charles Darwin reasoned that bees have evolved to use this shape because it produces the largest cells to store honey for the smallest input of energy to produce wax.

The honeycomb conjecture was first proposed in ancient times, but was only proved in 1999 by mathematician Thomas Hales.

Cicadas And Prime Numbers

Here’s another example. There are two subspecies of North American periodical cicadas that live most of their lives in the ground. Then, every 13 or 17 years (depending on the subspecies), the cicadas emerge in great swarms for a period of around two weeks.

Why is it 13 and 17 years? Why not 12 and 14? Or 16 and 18?

One explanation appeals to the fact that 13 and 17 are prime numbers.

Imagine the cicadas have a range of predators that also spend most of their lives in the ground. The cicadas need to come out of the ground when their predators are lying dormant.

Suppose there are predators with life cycles of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 years. What is the best way to avoid them all?

Well, compare a 13-year life cycle and a 12-year life cycle. When a cicada with a 12-year life cycle comes out of the ground, the 2-year, 3-year and 4-year predators will also be out of the ground, because 2, 3 and 4 all divide evenly into 12.

When a cicada with a 13-year life cycle comes out of the ground, none of its predators will be out of the ground, because none of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 divides evenly into 13. The same is true for 17.

It seems these cicadas have evolved to exploit basic facts about numbers.

Creation Or Discovery?

Once we start looking, it is easy to find other examples. From the shape of soap films, to gear design in engines, to the location and size of the gaps in the rings of Saturn, mathematics is everywhere.

If mathematics explains so many things we see around us, then it is unlikely that mathematics is something we’ve created. The alternative is that mathematical facts are discovered: not just by humans, but by insects, soap bubbles, combustion engines and planets.

What Did Plato Think?

But if we are discovering something, what is it?

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato had an answer. He thought mathematics describes objects that really exist.

For Plato, these objects included numbers and geometric shapes. Today, we might add more complicated mathematical objects such as groups, categories, functions, fields and rings to the list.

Plato also maintained that mathematical objects exist outside of space and time. But such a view only deepens the mystery of how mathematics explains anything.

Explanation involves showing how one thing in the world depends on another. If mathematical objects exist in a realm apart from the world we live in, they don’t seem capable of relating to anything physical.

Enter Pythagoreanism

The ancient Pythagoreans agreed with Plato that mathematics describes a world of objects. But, unlike Plato, they didn’t think mathematical objects exist beyond space and time.

Instead, they believed physical reality is made of mathematical objects in the same way matter is made of atoms.

If reality is made of mathematical objects, it’s easy to see how mathematics might play a role in explaining the world around us.

In the past decade, two physicists have mounted significant defences of the Pythagorean position: Swedish-US cosmologist Max Tegmark and Australian physicist-philosopher Jane McDonnell.

Tegmark argues reality just is one big mathematical object. If that seems weird, think about the idea that reality is a simulation. A simulation is a computer program, which is a kind of mathematical object.

McDonnell’s view is more radical. She thinks reality is made of mathematical objects and minds. Mathematics is how the Universe, which is conscious, comes to know itself.

I defend a different view: the world has two parts, mathematics and matter. Mathematics gives matter its form, and matter gives mathematics its substance.

Mathematical objects provide a structural framework for the physical world.

The Future Of Mathematics

It makes sense that Pythagoreanism is being rediscovered in physics.

In the past century physics has become more and more mathematical, turning to seemingly abstract fields of inquiry such as group theory and differential geometry in an effort to explain the physical world.

As the boundary between physics and mathematics blurs, it becomes harder to say which parts of the world are physical and which are mathematical.

But it is strange that Pythagoreanism has been neglected by philosophers for so long.

I believe that is about to change. The time has arrived for a Pythagorean revolution, one that promises to radically alter our understanding of reality.

Sam Baron, Associate professor, Australian Catholic University

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

Concerned about overeating? Here’s what you need to know about food addiction

For many of us, eating particular foods can be comforting: a pick-me-up during a hard task; a reward after a long day at work; a satiating end to a lovely dinner.

But some people have a compulsive and uncontrolled urge to eat particular foods, especially hyper-palatable “junk” foods. This can impact on their day-to-day functioning, and their ability to fulfil social, work or family roles.

People who struggle with addictive eating may have intense cravings, which don’t relate to hunger, as well as increased levels of tolerance for large quantities of food, and feelings of withdrawal.

Rather than hunger, these cravings may be prompted by low mood, mental illness (depression and anxiety), high levels of stress, or heightened emotions.

“Food addiction” or “addictive eating” is not yet a disorder that can be diagnosed in a clinical setting. Yet patients often ask health professionals about how to manage their addictive eating.

These health providers generally acknowledge their patients’ addictive eating behaviours but may be unsure of suitable treatments.

Food addiction is commonly assessed using the Yale Food Addiction Scale.

The science of addictive eating is still emerging, but researchers are increasingly noting addiction and reward pathways in the brain triggered by stress, heightened emotions and mental illness are associated with the urge to overeat.

How Common Is It?

Many factors contribute to overeating. The abundance of fast food, junk food advertising, and the highly palatable ingredients of many processed foods can prompt us to eat whether we are hungry or not.

However, some people report a lack of control over their eating, beyond liking and wanting, and are seeking help for this.

Around one in six people (15-20%) report addictive patterns of eating or addictive behaviours around food.

While food addiction is higher among people with obesity and mental health conditions, it only affects a subset of these groups.

How Can You Tell If You Have A Problem?

Typically, food addiction occurs with foods that are highly palatable, processed, and high in combinations of energy, fat, salt and/or sugar while being low in nutritional value. This might include chocolates, confectionery, takeaway foods, and baked products.

These foods may be associated with high levels of reward and may therefore preoccupy your thoughts. They might elevate your mood or provide a distraction from anxious or traumatic thoughts, and over time, you may need to eat more to get the same feelings of reward.

However, for others, it could be an addiction to feelings of fullness or a sense of reward or satisfaction.

There is ongoing debate about whether it is components of food that are addictive or the behaviour of eating itself that is addictive, or a combination of the two.

Given people consume foods for a wide range of reasons, and people can form habits around particular foods, it could be different for different people.

It Often Starts In Childhood

Through our research exploring the experiences of adults, we found many people with addictive eating attribute their behaviours to experiences that occurred in childhood.

These events are highly varied. They range from traumatic events, to the use of dieting or restrictive eating practices, or are related to poor body image or body dissatisfaction.

Our latest research found addictive eating in teenage years is associated with poorer quality of life and lower self-esteem, and it appears to increase in severity over time.

Children and adolescents tend to have fewer addictive eating behaviours, or symptoms, than adults. Of the 11 symptoms of the Yale Food Addiction Scale, children and adolescents generally have only two or three, while adults often have six or more, which is classified as severe food addiction.

The associations we observed in adolescents are also seen in adults: increased weight and poorer mental health is associated with a greater number of symptoms and prevalence of food addiction.

This highlights that some adolescents will need mental health, eating disorder and obesity services, in a combined treatment approach.

We also need to identify early risk factors to enable targeted, preventative interventions in younger age groups.

How Is It Treated?

The underlying causes of addictive eating are diverse so treatments can’t be one-size-fits-all.

A large range of treatments are being trialled. These include:

• passive approaches such as self-help support groups

• trials of medications such as naltrexone and bupropion, which targets hormones involved in hunger and appetite and works to reduce energy intake

• bariatric surgery to assist with weight loss. The most common procedure in Australia is gastric banding, where an adjustable band is placed around the top part of the stomach to apply pressure and reduce appetite.

However, few of the available self-help support groups include involvement or input from qualified health professionals. While providing peer support, these may not be based on the best available evidence, with few evaluated for effectiveness.

Medications and bariatric surgery do involve health professional input and have been shown to be effective in achieving weight loss and reducing symptoms of food addiction in some people.

However, these may not be suitable for some people, such as those in the healthy weight range or with complex underlying health conditions. It’s also critical people receiving medications and surgery are counselled to make diet and other lifestyle changes.

Other holistic, personalised lifestyle approaches that include diet, physical activity, as well as mindfulness, show promising results, especially when co-designed with consumers and health professionals.

Our Emerging Treatment Program

We’re also creating new holistic approaches to manage addictive eating. We recently trialled an online intervention tailored to individuals’ personalities.

Delivered by dietitians and based on behaviour change research, participants in the trial received personalised feedback about their symptoms of addictive eating, diet, physical activity and sleep, and formulated goals, distraction lists, and plans for mindfulness, contributing to an overall action plan.

After three months, participants reported the program as acceptable and feasible. The next step in our research is to trial the treatment for effectiveness. We’re conducting a research trial to determine the effectiveness of the treatment on decreasing symptoms of food addiction and improving mental health.

This is the first study of its kind and if found to be effective will be translated to clinical practice.

If you feel you experience addictive eating, talk to your GP or contact an accredited practising dietitian for assessment and support.

Tracy Burrows, Professor Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Newcastle and Megan Whatnall, Post-Doctoral Researcher in Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Newcastle

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

Adele has successfully asked Spotify to remove ‘shuffle’ from albums. Here’s why that’s important for musicians

Adele’s long awaited, newly released fourth studio album, 30 was guaranteed to make waves in the international music scene as Adele’s first full-length record in over six years. This week it made the news for a different reason.

In response to Adele’s request, Spotify has hidden the shuffle button from all albums accessed via the streaming music platform. In a viral tweet immediately following the release of “30”, Adele commented “We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason… our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended. Thank you Spotify for listening.”

To which Spotify’s official Twitter account responded, “Anything for you.”

The move is likely to be well-received by Adele’s popstar peers, such as Lady Gaga who implored the public listen to her album Chromatica start to finish when it released in 2020.

Shuffle Away

Spotify’s shuffle button randomises songs. It is neither new nor unique. In the early 1980s, shuffle was available on CD players and MP3 players. It served as a staple for Spotify’s largest competitor Apple, via iTunes and long-forgotten devices such as the iPod and iPod shuffle.

Shuffle is essentially a random number generator that picks the next songs based on chance. The problem is true randomness means the same song might sometimes play repeatedly. In 2014, Spotify tweaked their algorithm to make shuffle seem more random.

Shuffle is still available on Spotify for playlists, but users must now access it via a menu when listening to albums as opposed to having the option right next to the play button. A statement from Spotify hailed their “new premium feature […] to make play the default button on all albums”. This change applies to all albums, not just Adele’s 30, and features on both mobile and desktop versions of Spotify.

Spotify has faced dissatisfaction and criticism from musicians who decry the appalling low streaming payout rates to artists, and academics who raise concerns over the platform’s lack of transparency around data.

But Spotify has rarely changed course in response to critique – yet Spotify willingly removed the feature from album pages upon Adele’s request to preserve the continuity of her album – a sign of the artist’s immense clout.

The Album Is Not Dead

Spotify’s decision to hide the shuffle button contrasts accusations that Spotify is responsible for “killing” the musical album as we once knew it.

As the largest music streaming service by paid subscription, Spotify is a powerful force in the global music industry. Artists, labels and production companies have taken note from Spotify as to what works and doesn’t work on a music streaming platform.

Though revenues from streaming are far lower than purchases or individual downloads, superstar artists like Drake have taken advantage of streaming services to garner billions of streams that pay out millions of dollars in revenue.

Even so, the numbers are underwhelming for mid-tier and independent artists. According to Digital Music News a niche EDM artist who managed the impressive feat of having listeners stream their music one million times over four months only generated about US$5,000 (A$6,924) in 2013.

One important issue is curated playlists. Much like radio stations, Spotify features playlists of the top charting songs in various regions, but unlike radio stations Spotify has a vast library of playlists to match every genre, mood, and moment handpicked by curators or created and shared by other users.

Producing “playlistable” songs that are more likely to be placed on a popular genre or mood playlist is now a crucial strategy to build a following, attract labels and earn a living in music – but doing so comes at a cost. Orphan songs separated on a playlist from their album will not be experienced as part of a story in the context as artists like Adele intended.

The imperative to create popular singles is not new, the music industry is and has been centred around the hits, but the shifting logic of digital music streaming puts pressure on artists to examine carefully the cost and benefits of creating longer form art.

Beginning in 2014, Billboard started calculating album equivalent units, or the number of streams that would count as one album sale when determining an album’s position on Billboard Charts. Having more songs on an album means more streams, which could translate to a higher chart position. It also means more money.

Artists have released longer albums, such as Kanye West’s recent album Donda (Deluxe) with a track listing topping 30 songs. This strategy could be seen to lead to more padding and fewer hits, ultimately diluting powerful records with bland or forgettable tunes, “as if artists are curating playlists rather than crafting cohesive projects”, according to this VICE article.

Adele’s insistence on the importance of streaming the twelve tracks on 30 in their proper order, and Spotify’s capitulation to her request, will resonate with artists who have been urged by labels, publishers, or the industry writ large to create “playlistable” singles or lengthier albums.

Long Live The Album

The death of the album has been forecast for over a decade and streaming services like Spotify have been one of the many potential culprits blamed. Yet artists are still releasing full, artistically realised albums in 2021.

In 2015, I released an album with my band on streaming services including Spotify and Apple. My band-mates and I experienced firsthand the time and expenses needed to produce a full-length original album. We agonised over the track listing and waited until the full album was finished before we released any of our songs.

Six years later, I fully agree with Adele. I prefer to listen to my album in its intended order and I hope others will too. Like me, the average artist lacks Adele’s persuasive influence to change the design of a major music streaming platform in order to tell a more cohesive musical story.

But that’s exactly what Adele and Spotify have done. Now you are encouraged to stream 30 by Adele in the order the artist intended.

D. Bondy Valdovinos Kaye, Assistant researcher, Queensland University of Technology

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

It’s 30 years since Freddie Mercury died. His music is still the soundtrack of our lives

Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara in 1946) died on this day 30 years ago. A prolific songwriter, arranger and music producer, a consummate theatrical entertainer and one of the 20th century’s best-known lead singers, Mercury fronted Queen from 1970 until his death in 1991.

Artistically, he challenged many of the prevailing pop and rock parameters, willing to take musical risks and happy not to be part of the mainstream. He fearlessly pushed artistic boundaries, believing in the spontaneity of live performance: every show was different.

The Composer

As a composer, Mercury drew on an eclectic range of genres. He wrote songs with poetic and heartfelt lyrics, witty metaphors and memorable melodies, with Queen drawing influences from The Everly Brothers, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and the Beach Boys.

Mercury’s 1979 composition Crazy Little Thing Called Love pays homage to Elvis Presley. In the song, Mercury subtly models aspects of Presley’s vocal tone and rockabilly styling in the catchy chorus.

He gives us just a hint of his vocal range in the bridge, on the lyrics “she gives me hot and cold fever” where Mercury effortlessly uses an octave yodel.

In 1975’s Bohemian Rhapsody, perhaps Queen’s most famous song, Mercury took genre crossing to a new level. This six-minute epic is unrivalled in complexity of form, lavish production, vocal layering and the sheer number of choral overdubs.

The song, which topped the British charts for almost nine weeks, was described by Mercury as a “mock opera” .

The Singer

Technically masterful, Mercury possessed a voice that was powerful, agile, and highly expressive. A lyric rock tenor with over three octaves in range, Mercury could belt into his upper register with his signature fast vibrato, or use a controlled pure falsetto with smooth legato phrasing.

Strong musicianship, excellent pitch and vocal control enabled Mercury to draw on a broad array of note choices, dynamics, tone colours and vocal effects. His vocal timbre could depict a delicate vulnerability, especially with his falsetto, or use dynamic extremes to accentuate lyrics with screams and growls.

Mercury demonstrated his versatility, genre crossing and creative exploration on the 1985 song Living On My Own.

Here, he employs scat singing and the opening syncopated repetition of a single note hints at Ella Fitzgerald’s influence. It is a driving, high spirited and fearless vocal solo. Mercury solos again at the end of the song with a loose vocal reference to Duke Ellington’s It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).

The Performer

Queen’s appearance at the historic Live Aid Concert at London’s Wembley Stadium in July 1985 remains one of the greatest rock performances of all time.

Mercury and band were in stellar form, having just completed a world tour for their album The Works, recorded in 1984. When the entire crowd of 72,000 joins Mercury in beating out the rhythm to We Will Rock You, it is electrifying.

Further evidence of Mercury’s masterful stagecraft can be found in a bootleg video of Queen performing in Sydney in 1985.

Twelve minutes into the footage, Mercury slowly struts to the piano and improvises a segue into Somebody to Love in a gospel style with a call and response with the audience.

His years of touring experience provided him with an arsenal of stagecraft prowess: strutting, holding poses, dressed in his glam rock style, with white spandex.

Audiences adored his showmanship and flamboyance.

The Influencer

30 years on from his death, Mercury’s incredible compositions are still part of the soundtrack of our lives.

Somebody To Love was used in the films Happy Feet (2006) and Ella Enchanted (2004). Lady GaGa coopted her name from Queen’s Radio GaGa.

Ceelo Green attributes his falsetto usage to his collection of Queen albums.

Kurt Cobain listened to Queen’s News of the World on 8-track.

Katy Perry has acknowledged Mercury as a major influence, performing Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now during her Hello Katy tour in 2009. P!nk included the iconic stadium songs We Are the Champions in her tour in 2019.

Many filmmakers have told his story: Bryan Singer’s film Bohemian Rapsody (2018) is joined by a suite of documentaries. Next month, the BBC are releasing a new documentary, this time looking at his tragic death from AIDS at just 45.

30 years on, Mercury is remembered as a powerful songwriter, filled with on-stage magnetism, creativity and intelligence, a hard work ethic and a passion for perfection.

Leigh Carriage, Senior Lecturer in Music, Southern Cross University

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

Why researchers are turning to music as a possible treatment for stroke, brain injuries and even Parkinson’s

You probably don’t realise it when you’re listening to your favourite song, but music has an incredibly powerful effect on the human brain. Singing, playing an instrument or listening to music have all been shown to activate numerous areas of the brain that control speech, movement and cognition, memory and emotion – often all at the same time. Remarkably, research also suggests that music can physically increase brain matter, which could help the brain repair itself.

More intriguing is the impact that music can have even in cases where the brain may not be functioning as it should. For example, studies show that for people with Alzheimer’s, music can often spark a reaction, helping patients access memories that were previously lost. There’s also evidence of patients who have suffered brain damage and lost the ability to speak that can still sing when music is played.

Given the powerful effect that music has on the brain, researchers are investigating whether it can be used to treat many different neurological conditions – such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease or brain injury. One such treatment currently being investigated for use is neurologic music therapy.

Neurologic music therapy works a bit like physiotherapy or speech therapy, in that it aims to help patients manage symptoms and function better in their daily life. Therapy sessions use musical or rhythmical exercises to help patients regain functional skills. For example, patients relearning to walk after an accident or trauma might walk to the rhythm of music during a therapy session.

Talking, Walking, Thinking

So far, this type of therapy has shown promise in helping stroke survivors to recover language, improve walking and recover physical movement better than other standard therapies.

Researchers have also investigated whether neurologic music therapy can treat other movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease. Most studies in this area have used a technique called rhythmic entrainment exercises, which uses the brain’s ability to synchronise with a beat unconsciously – such as having to walk to a specific speed of music or beat.

Compared to doing therapy without music, neurologic music therapy has been shown to improve walking and reduce moments of “freezing” (a temporary, involuntary inability to move) in Parkinson’s patients.

Studies have also investigated whether this type of therapy can treat cognitive issues in people who have suffered a traumatic brain injury or have Huntington’s disease. For these types of conditions, neurologic music therapy focuses on activating and stimulating areas of the brain which may have been damaged – such as the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain responsible for planning, decision-making, problem solving and self control. This might involve the patient switching between playing two types of musical instruments when they hear a change in the music they’re playing along to (such as the tempo becoming faster or slower).

One research study found that these types of activities improved concentration and attention for patients with traumatic brain injury. This in turn had a positive impact on their wellbeing, and lowered feelings of depression or anxiety.

Music And The Brain

It’s thought that the reason neurological music therapy works is because music can activate and simulate so many different parts of the brain simultaneously. For patients with neurological conditions, it’s often the connections in the brain that are causing problems, rather than a specific area itself.

Research shows that music can uniquely form new connections in the brain. Listening to music also improves neuron repair better than other activities – such as listening to an audiobook – which may mean the brain functions better and builds new connections.

Music is believed to have long lasting effects on the brain, too. So much so that a musician’s brain is actually better connected than people who haven’t played music. This could be important for people with neurological conditions, as music could help to repair damaged connections over time.

This activation of multiple areas of the brain may be the reason why neurologic music therapy is more successful than other standard therapies alone. Given that many neurological conditions affect the connections in the brain, music’s ability to activate multiple areas simultaneously may help bypass these problem connections and build new ones – allowing people to overcome certain symptoms, or better manage them.

Though more research still needs to be done before neurological music therapy is used widely across healthcare systems, early results from studies show how much promise this therapy could hold. Research is also underway to see whether it can be used to help people with age-related diseases, such as dementia or Alzheimer’s.

Rebecca Atkinson, Doctoral Researcher in Neurologic Music Therapy, University of Brighton

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

New religious discrimination bill will cause damage to Australian society that will be difficult to heal

Australia is not a particularly religious country. Australians have a reputation for being largely ambivalent about the place of religion in their lives and in society.

But while increasing numbers of people claim “no religion” in the census, Australia is one of the most religiously diverse countries in the world. Despite this, the legal protections for religious freedom are weak.

If we had a human rights charter, religious freedom would be protected alongside other rights we have committed to uphold. In the absence of a charter, the protection of people’s rights becomes more complex than it should be.

However, a bill to protect people from discrimination on the basis of religion should be a law that most Australians would welcome, just as we welcomed, for example, the Sex Discrimination Act and the Disability Discrimination Act.

Our religious diversity is part of what makes Australia a robust and vibrant country. So this law should be a statement of how much we value this diversity and our commitment to creating a society where everyone feels safe and valued. What we have had, however, is a toxic debate that has unnecessarily divided the community.

The Morrison government has released its long-awaited third and final draft of the Religious Discrimination Bill.

It has been stripped of some of the more controversial clauses, including those that allowed doctors to claim a conscientious objection in the provision of healthcare services, and the so-called “Folau clause” that restricted the capacity of large organisations to address issues related to employees expressing religious beliefs at odds with their values.

However, the bill has maintained the extreme privileging of “statements of belief” which, if they meet certain conditions (and the bar is set low), can override all relevant state laws and other Commonwealth anti-discrimination laws.

This is deeply concerning for anyone who might find themselves accused of “sinfulness” in the name of deeply held beliefs.

This bill began its life as a concession to both conservative Christian leaders and lobby groups, and right-wing culture warriors, in the heated debate about marriage equality.

Born out of a politically constructed dichotomy between religious freedom and equality rights, and drafted at least partly in response to a handful of high-profile cases (Israel Folau and Julian Porteous), the first two versions pitted religious believers against equality rights advocates.

Lost in the middle were Indigenous peoples and people from minority religious groups, who have historically been the ones to actually suffer the effects of prejudice, harassment, discrimination, abuse and even religiously discriminatory legislation.

The Religious Freedom Review Panel, chaired by Philip Ruddock, was already aware of and concerned by this shift. It noted “the limited focus given to religious freedom in more general discussions about diversity, understanding and tolerance” and recommended the government conduct more research into “the community experience of religious freedom”.

Also lost in this no-win battle has been a fulsome understanding of religion itself. Religion has been cast narrowly as that which divides people (the saved, the sinful and the rest). At the same time, religious “belief” is widely understood as little more than personal assent to a series of propositions about so-called morality issues, such as sexuality, euthanasia, abortion, gender identity, marriage and divorce.

Another disappearance in the debate over this bill has been the theological diversity within religious traditions, especially Christianity. The Australian Christian Lobby and its allies present as speaking for all Christians. But the ACL speaks only for a minority of Christians.

ACL media statements and appearances are usually met with an avalanche of responses in my social media feeds from committed church people, lay and ordained, eager to declare the ACL does not speak for them.

This bill effectively protects religiously framed speech and religiously defined practices that discriminate and potentially cause harm.

It serves those who seek to maintain control over people’s bodies.

The churches, just like governments and other public institutions, must be open to challenges to their power. The most recent iteration of the discourse of religious freedom (and my research has found three different religious freedom discourses over the past 35 years) has churches and Christians being framed as a threatened minority. In this narrative, they are besieged by an increasingly belligerent, even aggressive secularism.

However, the churches maintain significant political influence, as the history of this bill has demonstrated. They also exercise power and social influence as large employers and providers of government-funded community and education services.

As the Ruddock Report found, there is little evidence Christians are being persecuted in Australia. A small number of high-profile individuals being challenged to consider the potentially damaging influence of their speech, and a few high-profile cases in overseas jurisdictions very different to ours, did not justify the over-reach of the second draft of the bill.

The final version of the bill does offer protections for people from minority religious groups. It has withdrawn the more idiosyncratic and demeaning parts of the second exposure draft.

But it still allows for discrimination by religious groups against LGBTIQ+ people, women and people on the basis of their religion. If passed, it will entrench in law the idea that LGBTIQ+ people are still not quite like everyone else – for this is the effect of state-sanctioned discrimination.

The bill will also legitimise the fallacy that the rights of LGBTIQ+ people are incompatible with religious freedom. It has already successfully wedged the ALP.

In setting free the expression of religious beliefs from the responsibility to take account of how even “well-meaning” statements of judgment and condemnation can harm people, the divisions this debate has created within Australia’s social fabric will be difficult to heal.

Elenie Poulos, Honorary Postdoctoral Associate, Macquarie University

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

Schools can still expel LGBTQ+ kids. The Religious Discrimination Bill only makes it worse

The Religious Discrimination Bill is back, this time in its third iteration. The Coalition party room unanimously endorsed the bill on Tuesday, but a number of Liberal MPs voiced concerns about what it could mean for LGBTQ+ students and teachers at faith-based schools and universities.

Attorney General Michaelia Cash has said no child should be “suspended or expelled from school on the basis of their sexuality or gender identity”, and that discrimination against students is “unacceptable”.

However, the bill does nothing to protect LGBTQ+ students and teachers. It allows more, not less, discrimination by religious schools.

The Prime Minister’s Long Lost ‘Promise’

In October 2018, the Prime Minister promised to ban religious schools from expelling students on the basis of their sexuality.

This requires removing the exemptions in the federal Sex Discrimination Act which permit religious schools to expel LGBTQ+ students and sack LGBTQ+ teachers. The reason can be as simple as “they’re bisexual”, or “they’re transgender” – as long as this fits within the school’s religious beliefs.

More than three years later, these exemptions still remain. Religious schools can, today, expel kids just for being gay. While many might not choose to do this and are supportive of the LGBTQ+ community, there have still been cases of non-supportive religious schools who have sacked teachers for being gay.

Despite this, the federal government has continually kicked the can down the road on this reform.

Michaelia Cash last week asked the Australian Law Reform Commission to provide detailed advice on the Sex Discrimination Act exemptions. This comes some 30 months after the Commission was first asked to conduct an inquiry into this issue.

But here’s the kicker – they can only report back 12 months after the Religious Discrimination Bill becomes law.

At best, this is likely to be early 2023, since the Religious Discrimination Bill seems destined to head to a Senate inquiry. An entirely new law will then need to be drafted and passed through parliament to change the Sex Discrimination Act exemptions.

The best-case scenario is that religious schools lose the right to sack LGBTQ+ staff and expel LGBTQ+ students in, wait for it… 2024. A student who was in year 7 when this change was promised will have graduated from high school by the time it is implemented.

And even then, if only suspension and expulsion were banned – the attorney general only promised to address these two outcomes – this wouldn’t stop religious schools mistreating LGBTQ+ students in other ways. Schools could still ban same-sex relationships, or refuse to use a transgender student’s pronouns.

So What Does The Religious Discrimination Bill Have To Say About It?

If the Sex Discrimination Act exemptions are eventually removed, that still isn’t the end of the story.

Federal Labor has expressed concern at how the Religious Discrimination Bill may adversely affect LGBTQ+ students and teachers at religious schools. Their concern is well founded.

The bill’s main purpose is to prohibit discrimination on the basis of religious belief or activity. This means, for example, that an employer would not be able to sack someone on the basis they are Jewish, or Muslim.

However the bill also contains very wide exemptions. These are situations in which discrimination is allowed.

Religious schools are permitted to discriminate on the basis of a person’s religion. They only need to prove that an individual of the same religion as the school “could reasonably consider” the school’s actions to accord with their religious beliefs.

It is a test not seen in any other Australian discrimination laws. It is such a low bar that religious schools can likely rely on it for almost everything they do.

This means that even if the Sex Discrimination Act exemptions are removed, the Religious Discrimination Bill could provide an alternative route for religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQ+ teachers and students.

For instance, a non-supportive religious school may teach that gay couples should not be allowed to marry or have children. They could then discriminate against any staff and students who do not adhere to this belief – such as a teacher who marries their same-sex partner.

To partly address this, the government added a clarification in the second draft of the bill that it “does not” permit conduct that is unlawful under the Sex Discrimination Act.

However, the third draft of the Bill has watered this down. It now simply says that conduct covered by the bill “may” still be discriminatory under the Sex Discrimination Act. The subtle change from “does not” to “may” makes a big difference, and puts LGBTQ+ teachers and students at risk.

And because of the controversial “statement of belief” provisions in the bill, religious schools are largely free to tell trans students that their gender identity is against the laws of God, or to tell lesbian parents they are evil for depriving their child of a father. Even if other discrimination laws ban such statements being made, this bill overrides them.

No matter how you cut it, the Religious Discrimination Bill permits far too much harm in the name of religion.

Oh, And One More Thing…

As if this wasn’t enough, the latest version of the bill adds a second override provision.

This allows religious schools to hire and fire on the basis of any religious views, even where such views are irrelevant to the position in question. The school only needs to share publicly their policy on this.

Although some state and territory laws provide stronger protection for staff at religious schools, the bill overrides these laws.

Victoria, for instance, is considering a new law which would bar religious schools from employment discrimination except for key faith-based roles, such as religious education teachers. It would mean religion cannot be used to discriminate against maths teachers, or gardeners.

This new provision in the Religious Discrimination Bill would reverse that protection, and open up Victorian teachers and staff to discrimination.

In the last 40 years of discrimination laws in Australia, there is hardly a single example of a federal law overriding discrimination protections granted under state and territory laws. In this Bill, there are two: both with severe consequences for the LGBTQ+ community.

Unless the Morrison government takes swift action to correct this course, being an LGBTQ+ student or staff member at a non-supportive religious school is going to become even harder than it already is.

Liam Elphick, Associate Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Monash University and Alice Taylor, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Bond University

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

Ending online anonymity won’t make social media less toxic

In recent months the government has proposed cracking down on online anonymity. The idea is that attaching online posts to a person’s real name will reduce abuse and increase accountability.

Online bullying and misinformation are growing problems, and government action to address them is overdue.

However, limiting anonymity alone won’t make social media less toxic. It will only work combined with broader reforms to platform design and business models, which drive polarisation, negativity, abuse and misinformation.

Reforms must also protect free speech and account for power imbalances between citizens and the state. The mooted changes come alongside suggestions of public funding for defamation actions by parliamentarians. Cynics might view these two suggestions together as an effort to silence reproach.

Potential Anonymity Reforms

In April this year, a parliamentary committee recommended requiring users to provide ID documents before opening social media accounts.

This was not implemented, but in June the Online Safety Act was changed to empower the e-Safety Commissioner to require platforms to disclose personal information of alleged online bullies.

In September, the High Court held that media outlets can be liable for defamatory third-party comments on their social media posts.

Government comments indicate intent to further regulate online anonymity. Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently described social media as a “coward’s palace”, pressuring platforms to expose the identities of anonymous trolls.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce also criticised platforms professing to be “vessels of free speech” while enabling users to conceal their identities.

Risks

There are risks with the proposed policy direction. First, anonymity regulation alone may be ineffective in stopping abuse and misinformation.

Second, reforms must be scrutinised to ensure they serve public rather than political interests. While the state stifling dissent may seem less of a concern in a democracy like Australia than in authoritarian regimes, it is important to ensure new measures won’t unreasonably compromise free speech and privacy.

This concern is underscored by politicians issuing legal threats to citizens for voicing online critiques.

In combination with Australia’s defamation laws, removing online anonymity may further expose users and chill democratic debate.

Complex Drivers Of Toxicity

Anonymity is only one factor contributing to online toxicity.

Most current platforms are designed to maximise user engagement. Platform algorithms, in combination with human behaviour, mean negative and angry content outcompetes positive content. This promotes negativity, polarisation and extremism.

Engagement-driven business models also incentivise fake news. Mistruths attract more engagement, so falsity is 70% more likely to be retweeted than fact.

Research further shows sharing of political misinformation is driven by partisanship more than ignorance. Online polarisation therefore propels misinformation in aid of the culture wars.

For example, the COVID-19 hashtag “#Danliedpeopledied” was driven by hyper-partisan and fake accounts. An anti-vax “infodemic” now spreads online, propelled by tribal influencers and anti-vaxxer communities.

Online toxicity is exacerbated by social media’s addictiveness. Each “like” and comment gives users “a little dopamine hit”. Outrage and negativity equal more engagement, which means more dopamine rewarding the behaviour.

Connection

While we turn to social media for company and validation, heavy use can make us feel alone. Isolation may leave us more susceptible to tribes that foster belonging.

Tribalism can encourage group attacks, reinforcing tribal connection. Social media “pile-ons” can be devastating for the target. Such bullying would probably not occur in person. But online, we have fewer physical and visual cues to encourage empathy.

While some (especially anonymous trolls) find courage on social media, others are frightened off. Negative online encounters can create a “spiral of silence”, discouraging moderate users from participating. This creates more room for fringe voices emboldened by the echo chamber.

What Reforms Are Needed?

Anonymity regulation will only help with bullying and misinformation if part of broader reforms tackling other drivers of toxicity, like engagement-driven polarisation. This means addressing platform business models and design – a complex task.

Reforms must also be fair.

First, anonymity regulation must apply equally to parliamentarians. Some politicians have used fake accounts to confect support, which undermines healthy debate.

A parliamentary code of conduct could define standards for politicians’ behaviour, both online and offline. Regulating truth in political advertising may curtail dishonesty.

Second, if anonymity is regulated, it is even more crucial to ensure citizens are not gratuitously sued or threatened by politicians for voicing opinions online.

Protection of reputation and accuracy are important, but we must safeguard fair debate. Politicians enjoy free speech bolstered by parliamentary privilege and media platforms.

Social media has disrupted politicians’ domination of political discourse, which helps explain the recent explosion of defamation threats and actions by politicians.

Any anonymity regulation must be balanced by free speech protections, including more robust defamation defences accounting for power imbalances between citizens and the state.

Given their positions of power, politicians should accept a higher threshold of criticism.

This article was co-authored with Andrew Ball, who is an Associate Director at IT consultancy firm Accenture.

Shireen Morris, Senior lecturer, Macquarie University

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

Curriculum is a climate change battleground and states must step in to prepare students

There is a pressing need to prepare for the impact of the climate crisis on schools and school education in Australia. A Western Australian parliamentary inquiry into the response of the state’s schools to climate change reflects this need. It is investigating current and potential mitigation and adaptation strategies undertaken in schools.

The inquiry seeks to prepare for the impacts of a heating planet on the infrastructure and provision of school education. It is investigating the actions, benefits and barriers to climate change responses in schools. But, oddly, its terms of reference exclude curriculum.

Curriculum is the bread and butter of schooling. And research shows it’s an effective means to reduce and adapt to climate change impacts.

When it comes to climate change, however, curriculum is a battleground. It may not be as visible as the student climate protests, but it is a crucial sphere in which the future of the world is understood, imagined and created. For educators, what they do, what they teach and the possibilities they imagine often start and end with the curriculum.

Yet, in Australia, there is no substantive national climate change education or curriculum.

Why Does The Curriculum Neglect Climate Change?

The 2008 Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, made by all the nation’s education ministers, referred to climate change and the embedding of sustainability across the curriculum. But under the stewardship of the federal education minister, these references were removed when the declaration was updated and agreed to by the ministers in 2019. We have also seen the withdrawal of federal funding and support for school sustainability initiatives and national action plans over the past decade.

The piecemeal curriculum approach to climate change has left schools and teachers to “fend for themselves” if they want to teach climate change.

The lack of national vision and strategy reflects the federal government’s failure to lead responses that match the scale of the climate crisis. It bodes poorly for achieving a national approach to climate change education.

While the states have constitutional responsibility for school education, reforms over the past two decades have only strengthened the federal government’s influence over education. This includes influence over the national curriculum, which it has not hesitated to exercise.

Schools Can Make A Difference

With the federal government at odds with states that wish to pursue ambitious climate change agendas, or simply to make climate change an educational priority, those states must go it alone. The Victorian government, for instance, is consulting on its Education and Training Climate Change Adaptation Plan 2022-2026. It seeks to embed a climate-change lens in decision-making across the many facets of its education sector, including curriculum.

The education policy architecture created over the past two decades is meant to serve the national interest. When it comes to climate change education, the absence of the federal government in this sphere is glaring.

There is still cause for modest hope that schools are getting it right when it comes to climate change. However, the response of Australia’s school system to the climate crisis is like that of other systems around the world: diffuse and fragmented. Thus, schools are largely “unexploited as a strategic resource to mitigate and adapt to climate change”.

Onus Is On The States To Act

Perhaps, then, the states need to better assert their constitutional rights over schooling. They could use the national policymaking architecture to create and administer an ambitious national response to climate change that includes curriculum.

Australian schools and young people need to be prepared for their climate futures. This means every teacher must be a climate change educator and every school an incubator of informed and empowered citizens.

With a federal government missing in action, state-led responses to climate change, such as the schools inquiry in WA, must be unapologetically ambitious. To do less is to abdicate their constitutional role.

When it comes to climate change education, to repurpose the words of then Labor MP Gordon Bryant in a 1958 parliamentary debate over the role of the states, the dead hand of the federal government should not be allowed to strangle the education systems of this country.

Brad Gobby, Senior Lecturer in Curriculum, Curtin University and George Variyan, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Monash University

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

Every dollar invested in research and development creates $3.50 in benefits for Australia, says new CSIRO analysis

Each dollar invested in research and development (R&D) would earn an average of A$3.50 in economy-wide benefits for Australia, according to evidence compiled in a new report from CSIRO.

Many Australians know research and development drives economic growth and improves our well-being and prosperity. However, few could describe the size of the relationship between Australia’s research and development spending and economic growth, or compare this to performance on other typical investment returns.

Examples of future industries that could be unlocked by research and development in Australia include the quantum technology and hydrogen industries. Examples of emerging technologies that could change the way Australians work and live include artificial intelligence and robotics.

This is significant, given recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show business spending on research and development as a proportion of GDP is just half the OECD average, and the lowest it has been since 2003.

We hope our analysis will raise awareness of the value of this kind of spending, and its importance for Australia’s economic recovery and long-term resilience. Investing in innovation now is crucial for the future.

In consultation with government and academic stakeholders, our team at CSIRO Futures, the strategic and economic advisory arm of Australia’s national science agency, used a new yet simple economic approach to quantify the return on investment in overall research and development spending for Australia.

By adapting a method originally developed in the US, we calculated return on investment by defining the relationship between domestic gross spending on research and development, and the growth in per capita gross domestic product (GDP) that follows as a result. This method encompasses both successful and unsuccessful research and development investments, and quantifies only monetary benefits (excluding non-monetary social and environmental benefits).

Our approach also accounts for delays between research and development investments and payoffs, and for the capital costs of integrating research and development into the economy. For example, an innovation of new computer software must be built into existing computer systems, and might therefore take a decade before its use becomes widespread.

Overall, we calculate that $1 of research and development investment creates an average of $3.50 in economy-wide benefits in today’s dollars, and a 10% average annual return for Australia.

By removing the considerations of delays and capital costs, we can also calculate an upper boundary on our estimate – that is, the maximum theoretical return on investment barring any hurdles along the way.

This unadjusted result, which does not account for the additional time and costs associated with integrating research and development into the economy, is estimated as creating $20.80 in economy-wide benefits, and a 104% average annual return for every dollar spent on research and development in Australia.

Even with our conservative estimate of $3.50 return on the dollar, the expected benefits of investing in innovation are high compared with many other types of investments. For example, Australia’s ten-year government bond returns have historically averaged around 7% per year. Private investments in the ASX200 stock index have typically yielded around 10% annually.

Perhaps even more significantly, even our conservative estimate of $3.50 return on investment suggests research and development has a cost/benefit ratio well in excess of $1 to $1. This means there is a strong economic case for this kind of spending.

But research and development investment is risky, right? This may be much less of a problem at a national level. While cost or time overruns are never favourable for any investment, building this uncertainty into our findings shows research and development investment remains economically viable even if this happens.

Results from sensitivity analysis demonstrate that if the costs of research and development spending or delays of payoffs increase by 20%, the most conservative (combined adjustment) results only fall to $3.30 return on investment, with annual yields of 9.5% (at lowest). These are still strong returns.

Our findings imply that so far, Australian innovation investments - whether they be in new products and services or in creating new industries - have been well worthwhile, and that increasing future investment could capture substantial economy-wide returns.

As our estimates only capture the economic benefits of innovation, actual returns are likely to be much higher when also considering the broader social and environmental benefits of Australian research and development. 

Katherine Wynn, Lead Economist, CSIRO Futures, CSIRO; Jasmine Cohen, Economic Consultant, CSIRO Futures, CSIRO, and Mingji Liu, Senior Economic Consultant, CSIRO

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

How to make roads with recycled waste, and pave the way to a circular economy

It cost A$49 million to add 12.5 kilometres of extra lanes to Western Australia’s Kwinana Highway, south of Perth’s CBD. That’s not unusual. On average, building a single lane of road costs about about A$5 million per kilometre.

What is unusual about this stretch of extra freeway is not the money but the materials beneath the bitumen: two stabilising layers comprised of 25,000 tonnes of crushed recycled concrete, about 90% of which came from the demolition of Subiaco Oval (once Perth’s premier football ground).

Recycling building and construction materials remains the exception to the rule in Australia. The National Waste Policy agreed to by federal, state and territory governments has a target of 80% resource recovery by 2030. It’s currently about 40%.

Of the 74 million tonnes of waste generated in Australia in 2020, masonry materials comprised about 22.9 million tonnes. Plastics, by comparison, comprised about 2.5 million tonnes. Of the 61.5 million tonnes of “core waste” managed by the waste and resource recovery sector, 44% (27 million tonnes) came from the construction and demolition sector, compared with 20% (12.6 million tonnes) from households and local government activities.

Most of this waste – concrete, brick, steel, timber, asphalt and plasterboard or cement sheeting – could be reused or recycled. It ends up in landfill due to simple economics. It’s cheaper to buy new materials and throw them away rather than reuse and recycle.

Changing this equation and moving to a circular economy, in which materials are reused and recycled rather than discarded in landfill, is a key goal to reduce the impact of building and construction on the environment, including its contribution to climate change.

The Economics Of ‘Externalities’

The fact it is more “economic” to throw materials away than reuse them is what economists call a market failure, driven by the problem of “externalities”. That is, the social and environmental costs of producing, consuming and throwing away materials is not reflected in the prices charged. Those costs are instead externalised – borne by others.

In such cases there is a legitimate – and necessary – role for governments to intervene and correct the market failure. For an externality such as carbon emissions (imposing costs on future generations) the market-based solution favoured by most economists is a carbon price.

For construction material waste, governments have a few more policy levers to help create a viable market for more recycling.

Using Procurement Policies

One way to make recycling more attractive to businesses would be to increase the cost of sending waste materials to landfill. But this would likely have unintended consequences, such as illegal dumping.

The more obvious and effective approach is to help create more demand for recycled materials through government procurement, adopting policies that require suppliers to, for example, use a minimum amount of recycled materials.

With enough demand, recyclers will invest in further waste recovery, reducing the costs. Lower costs in turn create the possibility of greater demand, creating a virtuous circle that leads to a circular economy.

Australia’s federal, state and territory governments all have sustainable procurement policies. The federal Sustainable Procurement Guide states the Australian government “is committed to transforming Australia’s waste into a resource, where most goods and services can be continually used, reused, recycled and reprocessed as part of a circular economy”.

But these policies lack some basic elements.

Three Key Market-Making Reforms

Our research suggests three important reforms could make a big difference to waste market operations. This is based on interviewing 27 stakeholders from the private sector and government about how to improve sustainable procurement.

First, government waste policies that set aspirational goals are not supported by procurement policies setting mandatory minimum recycled content targets. All contractors on government-funded construction projects should be required to use a percentage of recycled waste materials.

Second, the nature of salvaging construction materials means quality can vary significantly. Cement recycled from a demolition site, for example, could contain contaminants that reduce its durability.

Governments can help the market through regularly auditing the quality of recycler’s processes, to increase buyer confidence and motivate suppliers to invest in production technologies.

Third, in some states (such as Western Australia) the testing regimes for recycled construction products are more complex than that what applies to raw materials. More reasonable specifications would reduce compliance costs and thereby the cost of using recycled materials.

Salman Shooshtarian, Research Fellow, RMIT University; Savindi Caldera, Research Fellow and Project Development Manager, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University; Tayyab Maqsood, Associate Dean and Head of of Project Management, RMIT University, and Tim Ryley, Professor and Head of Griffith Aviation, Griffith University

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