The ancient, intimate relationship between trees and fungi, from fairy toadstools to technicolour mushrooms

Environmental scientists see flora, fauna and phenomena the rest of us rarely do. In this series, we’ve invited them to share their unique photos from the field.

You may be familiar with the red toadstool with white spots, which are often the homes of fairies in children’s stories. These toadstools are also a small part of grander magical story: they are striking examples of mycorrhizas.

Mycorrhizas (pronounced my-cor-rye-zas) is the name for fungi associated with the root systems of many plants including trees, shrubs, groundcovers and grasses. These relationships are mutually symbiotic, which means both members benefit.

Fungi have a deeply ancient evolutionary origin, and colonised land with the first plants around 500 million years ago to form these partnerships. We humans often underestimate their importance to the ecosystems that have shaped life on earth.

So let’s take a closer look at how this relationship works and why it’s so important for Australian ecosystems.

An Intimate Relationship

Fungi come in a beautiful diversity of shapes, sizes and colours. The following photos by my co-author Mark Brundrett are just a few examples of those growing in southwest Australia.

Mycorrhizas are not to be confused with fungi that decompose dead plant matter (saprophytes) or those that cause disease (pathogens).

Saprophytes are fungi that recycle nutrients, and these can also be large and impressive. They can create tree hollows, which provide shelter for nesting birds and other animals such as possums.

The ethereal ghost fungus, for example, is a saprophyte. It famously glows green in the dark, and recycles nutrients in ecosystems by breaking down dead wood.

The primary role of mycorrhizas, on the other hand, is to provide resources such as phosphorus and nitrogen to flowering plants. They also effectively increase the absorptive surface area of the plant’s root system, allowing plants to take up much-needed water and nutrients so they grow better and more quickly.

In return, the plants provide carbohydrates, a product of photosynthesis, which mycorrhizas require to grow.

There are five different types of mycorrhizas, and two of these are particularly important in Australian ecosystems. One type is called “ectomycorrhiza”, where fungi wrap their hyphae (long, very fine hair-like structures that contact the soil) around the plant roots underground but don’t penetrate the root cells.

The other, called “endomycorrhiza”, is where fungi grow into the plant root, penetrating and branching within the root cells to form what look like little, microscopic trees. This is about as intimate a relationship between different types of organisms as you can get!

Mushrooms As Big As Dinner Plates

We often become aware of the presence of mycorrhizas only when conditions for reproduction are right, and a mushroom or toadstool emerges from the ground. Such conditions may only occur every five to ten years. For some species, there may be centuries between reproductive events.

For many of us, our experience with mycorrhizal fungi begins in very early childhood when we first catch sight of those spotty red and white toadstools, called the fly agaric or Amanita muscaria.

These fungi are often depicted in children’s book illustrations, such as Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, and a number of Enid Blyton’s tales. I recall conifers, such as pine trees, often growing nearby in the background of these pictures. This was no coincidence, Amanita muscaria forms mycorrhizal associations with many conifers, as well as oaks.

The mycorrhizal fungi associated with eucalypts can be less showy, with many being 75-100 millimetres across and a creamy, light tan in colour. They quite often pop up in home gardens, frequently in lawns, where they’re very obvious and usually within 4 to 5 metres of a tree trunk.

Others are spectacular, including the bright purple, orange or green Cortinarius species shown in the photos below. In fact, the beauty and diversity of our fungi now supports a new ecotourism industry in Australia, particularly in Tasmania.

Some fungi are most impressive in the spring following bushfires, such as the abundant orange cup fungus shown below that stabilises ash beds.

Indeed, most plants form mycorrhizal associations. Those that don’t include plants from the common vegetable families brassicaceae (think broccoli, cauliflower, kale) and chenopodiaceae (spinach, beetroot, and quinoa). Neither do members of the proteaceae family, such as native banksias and grevilleas. These plants invest in very complex roots rather than fungal associations.

Who’s Really In Control?

Because we are so familiar with many of the plants in our environment, we are inclined to think it’s them that control their relationship with mycorrhizal fungi.

But it is possible mycorrhizal fungi exercise much more control. Or perhaps, the relationship is a perfect mutualistic symbiosis where partners share everything, including control, equally. We just don’t know yet.

Members of the fungus kingdom work in synchrony with the plant kingdom to support all terrestrial life, including animals such as ourselves. We may not think about fungi very often, but we cannot survive without them.

One of the surprise elements of Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, was that the Earth and its inhabitants existed as part of an experiment designed and controlled by white laboratory mice.

I sometimes wonder if the fate of the Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems rests on mycorrhizal fungi. If so, perhaps we need to show them greater respect.

Gregory Moore, Doctor of Botany, The University of Melbourne and Mark Brundrett, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia

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

Queensland has an important network of private conservation areas, but they’re dangerously exposed to mining

Australia has the world’s largest network of privately owned conservation areas that protect a range of rare wildlife, from bilbies to endangered fish.

There are some 6,000 non-government conservation areas across the continent, which are owned by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups, individuals and NGOs. They build a more comprehensive protected area network than public protected areas can achieve alone, ensuring more species have a fighting chance against the changing climate.

These lands cover more area in Queensland than any other state. But our new research finds Queensland’s laws fail to protect them from the hidden impacts of mining on the groundwater sustaining them.

This is because private investments in conservation land aren’t legally protected in the same way as commercial assets or capital, nor like national parks. To safeguard these crucial habitats and ecosystems against the threats of mining, we need legal reform in Queensland and an urgent exploration of these vulnerabilities across Australia.

Beyond National Parks

Governments rightly encourage growth in Australia’s privately protected areas. Conservation landholders invest in restoring degraded land, re-introduce ecologically and culturally important species, and carefully design innovative habitat protection measures.

For example, the Olkola Aboriginal Corporation of Cape York has developed a successful carbon abatement project and a long-term plan to save the totemic endangered Alwal (golden-shouldered parrot), and defend it from mining.

Likewise, a non-profit organisation owns the Mount Rothwell reserve. After successfully reintroducing the mainland eastern barred bandicoot in 2004, the reserve now protects over 80% of the species’ population in the largest feral predator-free ecosystem in Victoria.

Privately protected areas also safeguard some of Australia’s most threatened and under-protected habitat types. This includes critically endangered grassy box woodlands in New South Wales, and the Fitz Stirling biodiversity hotspot in Western Australia.

Investing in privately protected areas also makes economic sense. A 2020 Ernst & Young report shows investing in privately protected areas can provide significant stimulus to support Australia’s recovery from COVID.

Why Private Conservation Land Is Vulnerable

But Australia’s environment laws leave privately protected areas exposed to resource development projects, both within and outside the boundaries of the land.

Unlike national parks, mining projects are allowed to be developed within privately owned nature refuges against the land owner’s wishes. This has been a longstanding concern of conservationists worldwide.

Only very small areas of environmentally valuable private land in Queensland are protected from mining under legal arrangements that are very rarely applied. This includes a single declared Special Wildlife Reserve (a recent legal upgrade from nature refuge arrangements), and parts of Queensland’s strategic environmental areas.

Both privately protected land and national parks are also at risk from development projects operating outside their boundaries. One of the biggest threats is the impact of mining on groundwater, the focus of our research.

Groundwater is natural life support for arid Australia, with ecosystems and landscapes – such as desert springs, wetlands, rivers and forests – dependent on it. Alongside the potential for water contamination, a major threat mining and gas developments pose on groundwater is over-extraction.

Mines and gas developments can require billions of litres of fresh water each year to operate, competing with water that ecosystems need to survive. These impacts can last for hundreds or even thousands of years, though the details aren’t always fully disclosed.

We untangled the complex web of environmental, mining and water laws regulating mining and gas developments in Queensland, and found three key biases that leave nature refuges vulnerable.

1. Land title boundaries can act like legal blinkers on risk

Even if there are scientific studies predicting long-range impacts, there are no requirements for miners or governments to tell conservation landholders that a mine will likely affect them, unless their land is next door.

If a conservation landholder isn’t aware of an impact to their land, then they can’t object to a project or appeal a decision to approve it, and might make futile ecological investments. They also can’t protect infrastructure like bores, which miners’ assessment processes have overlooked in the past.

2. Policies focus on damage to built and commercial infrastructure

This includes damaged roads and fences, or dead livestock. Laws and policies don’t consider or require compensation for damage to ecological investments in conservation areas. This is despite governments claiming progress in private conservation land towards international conservation targets.

3. Cumulative impacts can be ignored

Queensland’s environmental laws don’t require a government decision-maker deciding on whether to approve a mining project to consider cumulative effects. The damage from one project might seem tolerable on its own, but not when it’s considered alongside others in the region. Some policies briefly mention this, but they aren’t detailed or legally binding.

Queensland’s water laws are better, but still only require companies and governments to predict impacts to springs, and suggest strategies to respond. This means preventing and mitigating impacts – such as shrinking or drying spring-fed wetlands – is legally optional and they can ignore other groundwater-dependent ecosystems and climate change.

What Needs To Change?

Removing these legal blinkers requires law reform:

• all landholdings scientifically predicted to experience changes due to a mine should be notified

• any protection, mitigation and compensation provisions should recognise investments in conserving and restoring native species and ecosystems, not just houses, fences and livestock

• risks to nature refuges must be understood as cumulative to avoid a death by a thousand cuts.

In the meantime, conservation landholders can take steps to protect themselves. For example, sector leaders could aggregate public information about resource development applications and alert conservation landholders who might miss them.

Landholders should document how they rely on bores and how they invest in conserving and restoring ecological assets. They could apply for licences to use groundwater for ecological or wildlife purposes to better defend their water resources.

Our complex laws haven’t kept up with Australia’s increasing reliance on private investment in wildlife conservation. Securing permanent environmental benefits from private land means protecting it from the compounding, long-term effects of extractive industries.

Rebecca Louise Nelson, Associate Professor in Law, The University of Melbourne and Rebecca Spindler, Adjunct associate professor, UNSW

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

Labor’s plan to green the Kurri Kurri gas power plant makes no sense

Is it possible to have your cake and eat it too? Federal Labor is certainly giving it a go by supporting government plans for a fossil gas/diesel peaking plant in the Hunter Valley currently under construction – as long as the plant switches to green hydrogen by 2030.

This is disappointing for three reasons.

One, we don’t actually need the Kurri Kurri power station. It will be a government-built white elephant.

Two, retrofitting it to burn hydrogen would be so expensive as to be unrealistic.

And three, burning hydrogen for power is about the least useful thing you can do with it.

The gas/diesel plant under construction and Labor’s hydrogen proposal came from the realm of politics. It should have stayed there.

Why Did Labor Switch Its Position?

Labor has long been split on the Kurri Kurri power station, which has been touted as a way to augment dispatchable generation. At first, Labor denounced the Morrison government’s plans, with climate change spokesman Chris Bowen describing it as a “cynical attempt to pick a fight on gas and continue the climate wars, or to reward the major Liberal donor who owns the Kurri Kurri site”.

Now they say it will create jobs and help provide reliable and affordable electricity.

As a nod to climate change action, Labor leader Anthony Albanese and climate spokesman Chris Bowen announced the switch with the caveat that Kurri Kurri will use green hydrogen to power 30% of its production when the plant enters service in 2023 and 100% by 2030. Labor says it is prepared to spend up to another $700 million on the plant.

It has been widely suggested the proposed plant is the government’s way to take advantage of Labor’s internal divide.

When the plant was first proposed for the small town 35 km inland from Newcastle, Energy Security Board chair Kerry Schott questioned its viability. “Nobody is going to build it from the private sector because it doesn’t stack up,” she said.

She’s right. It didn’t stack up then and doesn’t stack up now, regardless of how it’s powered.

The Power Plant No One Needs

When my colleagues and I took a deep dive into this proposed power station, we found there was no need for it until at least 2030. That’s the best case. But as time goes by it is increasingly unlikely it will ever be needed as much cheaper and more efficient alternatives including batteries come to meet the increasing demand for stored energy.

That’s to say nothing of the fact the initial proposal would only have had enough gas stored to run for six hours and then take a day to recharge. Snowy Hydro has since upped these plans to 10 hours of storage.

And Snowy Hydro’s price tag of $600 million? Fiddlesticks. It will cost vastly more. We estimate well over $1bn when costs of the pipelines, storage and other infrastructure are included, even without hydrogen. As a result, there is no way Kurri Kurri would attract enough income to recover its costs. It’s hardly surprising private investors are steering clear. Why bankroll a dud?

But Isn’t It Good To Make Gas Plants Greener?

You can add up to 10% of hydrogen to conventional gas fired turbines without trouble. And you can use hydrogen as the primary fuel in turbine-based power plants, as South Korea has done using hydrogen produced as a by-product in the process of refining oil.

The problem is the two Kurri Kurri turbines ordered by the government can run on a maximum of 15% hydrogen. Snowy Hydro suggests the turbines could be extended to a maximum 30% hydrogen mix, with changes to the internal equipment and piping. But the gas lateral pipeline/storage system is only being constructed to accommodate a 10% mix, and would need to be completely rebuilt to transmit a higher blend.

In short, converting Kurri Kurri to hydrogen means completely rebuilding the plant and its pipeline and storage infrastructure. These are not minor changes.

Let’s imagine Labor is elected and proves determined to press ahead with these plans. Where, exactly, will they get the green hydrogen from and how will it be stored to run the plant? At present, the world has no large scale source of climate-safe hydrogen produced from water. While there is a great deal of interest in large scale electrolysis – the process where we split water to get hydrogen and oxygen – there is a long road ahead.

Let’s Not Waste Time On Distractions

Is that the end of the issues plaguing this plant? Nope. Even if we get to the point where green hydrogen is plentiful, burning it in a combustion turbine is one of the most wasteful ways to use it.

That’s because combustion turbines are very inefficient ways to produce electricity. They waste half the energy they consume in the form of heat vented to the atmosphere. That alone makes the use of hydrogen in turbines uneconomic. In fact, we doubt hydrogen will ever be used in combustion turbines to produce electricity. There is absolutely no need to bother doing so, given much better alternatives already exist. Batteries already dominate the market for new storage in Australia and elsewhere and this will surely continue.

We’d be much better off using green hydrogen to decarbonise more difficult industries, such as the production of fertiliser, in industrial processes and chemical manufacturing, and for long-distance land or sea heavy freight where hydrogen still has a weight advantage over batteries.

There are enormous challenges to be met in the transition towards renewable energy and away from fossil fuels. These kinds of obviously economically and technically infeasible proposals serve only to set us back. We should give these plans short shrift.

Independent engineer Ted Woodley contributed to this article.

Bruce Mountain, Director, Victoria Energy Policy Centre, Victoria University

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

The $1 billion Great Barrier Reef funding is nonsensical. Australians, and their natural wonder, deserve so much better

Today, the federal government is due to report back to UNESCO on its efforts to protect the Great Barrier Reef. The government’s announcement last week of A$1 billion of additional funding is welcome, but it will do little to allay UNESCO’s concerns.

Climate change is the number one threat to the Great Barrier Reef. While the new funding is meant to address other threats to the natural wonder and may improve its resilience, failing to address the climate threat is both disappointing and nonsensical.

As the below graph shows, ocean temperatures on the reef in December last year were the warmest on record. With this comes the risk of a fourth mass bleaching event this decade.

The Great Barrier Reef came close last year to being put on a list of World Heritage “in danger” sites. The funding announcement seems primarily about appeasing UNESCO, with one eye also on the upcoming federal election. But saving the Great Barrier Reef is not about throwing money at it – what matters is how the dollars are spent.

By The Numbers

The $1 billion package proposed by the government comprises:

• 58% to address the land-based causes of water quality issues impacting the World Heritage Area

• 26% to reduce crown-of-thorns starfish and prevent illegal fishing

• 9% for new scientific technologies

• 7% allocated to local communities – including Traditional Owners – for habitat restoration, citizen science and reducing marine debris.

The measures to be funded are all important. But they’re nowhere near as important as addressing the root cause of climate change: greenhouse gas emissions. Most of the $1 billion should have been used to help Australia phase out fossil fuels.

What’s more, the federal and Queensland governments continue to approve new coal and gas projects. Doing all this, while knowing the grave threat climate change poses to the Great Barrier Reef, demonstrates the incoherence of government policies.

Devil In The Detail

When we drill further into the detail, it becomes even more clear the funding package is not as impressive as it may first appear.

The $1 billion funding has been allocated over nine years. This is far beyond the time frame to which any government can sensibly commit, given four-year election cycles. A major funding increase is needed urgently, and certainly within a single term of government.

Also, federal Labor’s funding proposal for the Great Barrier Reef must be increased.

Another concern is the funding allocation for new scientific technologies such as coral seeding, developing heat-resistant corals and cloud brightening. Some of these technologies may have produced positive results at a small scale. But none has yet proved feasible at the wide scale necessary to make a real difference for the Great Barrier Reef.

Efforts to address water quality are important. After climate change, poor water quality is the most pressing problem facing the reef. It’s largely caused by nutrients, pesticides and sediment runoff from agriculture and coastal development.

But governments have already spent hundreds of millions trying to improve water quality, with only limited success. Reducing water pollution requires more effective spending, not just more funds.

This is just one example of how money alone cannot fix all the Great Barrier Reef’s problems. Improving water quality requires the right balance between voluntary industry-led approaches and enforcing the rules.

The Queensland government must greatly increase its compliance and enforcement on matters such as fertiliser runoff entering creeks that flow to the reef. While many farmers are doing the right thing, others clearly are not.

And to improve water quality, governments must be prepared to limit clearing and agriculture expansion in reef catchment areas.

Learning From Our Mistakes

For years, the federal government has known the pressures facing the Great Barrier Reef. But it continues to maintain a “business as usual” attitude in the face of the worsening climate crisis. Governments worldwide must dramatically increase their climate ambitions – and for the Great Barrier Reef, this action should start at home.

As the Murray-Darling Basin experience shows, throwing funding at an environmental catastrophe does not fix the problem, especially if the core issue remains unaddressed.

The government must also better allocate funds to achieve effective and timely “adaptive management”. This involves decision-making that can be adjusted as outcomes become better understood.

Such management should include considering both the good and bad outcomes of reef interventions to date – both those controlled by government agencies and those managed by external groups such as the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

This latest government funding boost is welcome, but suspiciously timed. Environmental policy and budget allocations should not be about a government’s reputation and firming up its electoral prospects – especially when so much is at stake.

UNESCO is likely to welcome the additional efforts to address water quality. But it has specifically urged Australia to take “accelerated action at all possible levels” to address the climate threat. It remains to be seen whether UNESCO will continue to pressure the federal government on that front.

Amid all this, a key question remains. As the the Great Barrier Reef continues to decline, will Australians re-elect a federal government that supports industries harming the environment?

One thing is certain: Australians, and their Great Barrier Reef, deserve so much more.

Jon C. Day, PSM, Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University and Scott F. Heron, Associate Professor, James Cook University

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

Parkinson’s disease: men who eat more berries and red wine may live longer – new research

Fruits and vegetables contain many nutrients and minerals that play an important role in helping us maintain good health. Take flavonoids, for example. These are a group of naturally occurring compounds that are found in many foods – including citrus fruits, berries, red wine and even dark chocolate.

Flavonoids act as antioxidants, which help to prevent or slow damage to cells which may lead to diseases – such as cancer. They also reduce inflammation in the body, which is common in many chronic diseases – including neurodegenerative ones, such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.

Research shows that flavonoids are good for our brain health, with studies showing diets high in fruits and veggies may slow cognitive decline and lower dementia risk. And now, a recent study has suggested that people with Parkinson’s disease who consume diets high in flavonoids may live longer than those who don’t.

To conduct their study, a team of researchers analysed data from 121,700 female registered nurses and 51,529 male health professionals. They chose to look at these two groups because many aspects of their lifestyles which might influence their disease risk would be similar – such as activity levels, education and years in work. Information on their diets has been gathered every two to four years, beginning in 1975 for the women and 1986 for the men. The data from these groups has been used in many other high quality nutrition studies.

At the time when this new study was conducted, 599 of the women and 652 of the men had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. From the foods these women and men reported consuming, it was possible to calculate their intake of flavonoids.

It was found that the men with Parkinson’s disease who ate the most flavonoids as part of their diet had a 47% lower risk of dying from any cause compared to men who consumed the least flavonoids in their diet. But for women, the amount of flavonoids they consumed in their diet had no effect on their risk of death from all causes. So the tentative conclusion from this study is that flavonoids may reduce the risk of men with Parkinson’s disease from dying, although not in women. It’s not currently known why the men saw greater benefit.

Cherry Picking?

As with any observational nutrition study of this type – where researchers simply observe outcomes without trying to intervene in the group (such as intervening by having half of the group eat a specific diet) – it’s not possible to prove a causal link. In the case of the present study, a causal link would mean that eating more flavonoids directly reduces the risk of men with Parkinson’s disease from dying.

A main reason for not being able to prove causality is that other dietary and lifestyle factors may also have contributed to extending lifespan. The authors did compensate for this to some extent by making statistical adjustments for other potentially beneficial nutrients – such as beta-carotene and the antioxidant vitamins C and E – and for possibly damaging lifestyle factors such as smoking, being overweight and not exercising enough.

But this still doesn’t take into account many other dietary, lifestyle and genetic factors that could contribute to a person’s risk. One example is exposure to herbicides and pesticides.

One factor that did influence the study’s results was the type of flavonoids they looked at. There are many different types of flavonoids, and two groups – known as anthocyanins and flavan-3-ols – were found in this study to be most strongly linked to prolonging life. Anthocyanins give berries and red wine their red and purple colours, and flavan-3-ols are found at high levels in green tea.

But it’s not known how these flavonoids may benefit the brain. As with other degenerative brain disorders, the progression of Parkinson’s disease is likely to involve oxidative stress (when too many highly reactive molecules, called free radicals, are produced for antioxidant defences to handle) and brain inflammation. Many flavonoids, including anthocyanins and flavan-3-ols, have been shown in experimental studies to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

Other mechanisms may also be involved. Flavonoids can have a positive effect on the gut microbiome, which may decrease the inflammation that contributes to Parkinson’s. Also, as Parkinson’s disease progresses, many neurological pathways such as the dopamine pathway are affected. Dopamine plays a vital role in regulating movement by the body. But the possible role of flavonoids in improving the functioning of these pathways is not known.

Though this study examined risk of death in people who already had Parkinson’s disease, other studies have also shown that diets high in flavonoids lower the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. The benefit was also shown to be greater in men – although again it is not clear why.

While there are many factors that might have influenced the results of this latest study, there’s still a good body of evidence suggesting that diets rich in flavonoids can help protect against many degenerative brain disorders – including Parkinson’s disease. And fortunately for us, flavonoids are found in many fruits and vegetables that we can readily buy from our supermarket.

Richard Hoffman, Associate lecturer, Nutritional Biochemistry, University of Hertfordshire

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

Would you pass this financial literacy quiz? Many won’t – and it’s affecting expensive aged care decisions

Paying for residential aged care accommodation in Australia is complex. Residents can pay a lump sum payment known as a refundable accommodation deposit (RAD), a rental style payment known as a daily combination payment (DAP), or a combination of both.

Deciding between the two is an important, complex financial decision and influenced by a host of factors unique to each person. And the stakes are high; it’s common to sell the family home to pay for aged care accommodation. Making the wrong accommodation payment decision could lead to reduced income and wealth, paying more for care, and having less to leave in bequests when you pass away.

Many residents get help from loved ones to navigate their way into residential aged care because they are experiencing age-related cognitive decline. So how do people make this decision and what role does financial literacy play?

To find out, colleagues and I measured financial literacy among 589 informal carers that substantially helped a resident decide.

Our study found less than half of all respondents were financially literate. Many were underconfident in their financial literacy. Others were overconfident, potentially leading to accommodation payment decision mistakes.

The Role Of Financial Literacy

Our study explored whether financial literacy influenced the decision to consult a financial adviser and whether financial literacy impacted decision confidence, stress, and perceived decision complexity.

We used a validated financial literacy measure known as the “Big Three” questions. You can do the quiz below; we defined someone as financially literate if they got three questions correct.

This measured literacy on inflation, interest rate, and risk diversification. We also asked respondents to rate their financial literacy.

We found:

• nearly one third of respondents were not certain the accommodation payment decision was the best for the resident financially

• around 60% of respondents found deciding on how to pay for accommodation complex, and over half found deciding how to pay for accommodation stressful

• less than half of all respondents were financially literate. Many were overconfident in their financial literacy, which could lead to worse financial outcomes for the resident.

Many respondents may have ignored complex information or used a mental shortcut (what researchers call “simplifying heuristics”) when making an accommodation payment decision. For example, they might sell their home and choose a RAD without considering the capital gain they could have received if they had kept the home.

Getting Advice

Just over one third of respondents used a financial advisor. More financial literacy was unlikely to have increased the use of a financial adviser. Highly financially literate individuals were more likely to use a financial adviser if they perceived their financial literacy as low.

Residential aged care providers also played a role. A respondent was more likely to use a financial adviser if the aged care provider suggested using a financial adviser, or informed them the resident had 28 days to make a payment decision once they entered care. While this condition should be in the final accommodation agreement, it may not be explicitly stated by the provider when discussing accommodation payment options.

We found higher financial literacy may help respondents understand the difference between a RAD and DAP, but was unlikely to increase decision confidence or reduce decision stress.

High financial literacy was associated with greater confidence only if respondents thought they had been enough time to make the decision. This suggests some people could make better decisions if aged care providers gave people more time to make a decision.

Respondents with high financial literacy were also more likely to be confident in their decision if the aged care provider didn’t say whether it preferred the resident to pay a RAD or a DAP.

So What Would Help?

It’s not possible to say whether RAD, DAP, or some combination of both is better; the answer depends on your circumstances. Selling the home when entering care may not be the best option financially.

The Financial Information Service run by Services Australia can help people better understand their financial affairs and how to use financial planning advice, but does not advise on which accommodation payment type is best.

Financial literacy education may help some people, but our study suggests benefits will be limited.

Each resident has unique financial and personal circumstances. To make an informed accommodation payment decision, you need to factor in and predict the future value of financial assets.

The Australian government is still exploring whether it should remove RADs, as suggested by the Royal Commission on Aged Care Quality and Safety. This would simplify the accommodation payment choice but likely take years to implement.

When discussing accommodation payment options, all residential aged care providers should ensure residents know they have 28 days to make a decision once they enter care.

That will help reduce decision complexity and stress and increase decision confidence.

Providers should also not express their preference for receiving a RAD or DAP, as our results show, this can make the decision more complex for people and give them less confidence in their decision.

The Australian government should also explore subsidising access to financial advice or establishing its own financial adviser service.

This would align with other Australian government programs to improve health and wealth outcomes for older Australians, such as prostate and breast cancer screening and Life Checks.

When moving into residential aged care, good financial outcomes are as important.

Henry Cutler, Director, Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University

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

What we know now about COVID immunity after infection – including Omicron and Delta variants

COVID is rampant in Australia and many parts of the world right now. Some people battling or recovering from infection may wonder if catching COVID will give them longer term immunity for when the next wave comes.

Since the early days of the pandemic we’ve known COVID induces a wide range of immune responses and one infection provides partial protection from future infections.

Unfortunately, immunity wanes over time – people lose half their immunity every 3 months. Further, new variants continue to emerge that are partially resistant to key immune responses – antibodies that neutralise earlier strains – this is especially true of Omicron.

We’re starting to get a more detailed understanding of COVID immunity across variants. Here’s what we know so far …

Breakthrough Infection Happens But Vaccines Are Still A Must

Since around 95% of Australians over 16 have had at least two COVID vaccines, most people catching COVID now have previously been vaccinated – this is called “breakthrough infection”.

The vaccines are effective at substantially reducing severe COVID illness. They are less effective, particularly over time, at preventing infections, including with new variants. A third vaccine dose helps maintain immunity, and everyone eligible should get a booster as soon as possible.

Because the Astra-Zeneca vaccine is less effective than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, it’s critically important for vulnerable older Australians immunised with two Astra-Zeneca vaccinations to be boosted with a third vaccine dose as quickly as possible.

The good news is people first vaccinated with Astra-Zeneca and subsequently boosted with Pfizer or Moderna develop high levels of protective immune responses.

Recent work shows a nice boost in antibody immunity after breakthrough infection. This boost in antibody immunity may not be as fast or strong as getting a vaccine, but it has a big advantage in that the immunity is more specific to the infecting strain such as Delta.

The current vaccines are still based on the original strain isolated in Wuhan, China in early 2020. Several vaccine manufacturer’s are racing to update their vaccines for the Omicron variant (much as we do with the yearly flu vaccines), but these variant-specific vaccines are still some months away.

Infection Immunity Builds Where COVID Strikes First

Another potential advantage for immunity derived by infection (acquired in the respiratory tract) compared to vaccination (given into the muscle) is that immunity is better focused to the surfaces of the nose, throat and eyes. This is where COVID is first encountered.

Surface antibodies (termed immunoglobulin A) and specialised tissue “resident” immune cells (B and T-cells) are induced by infection but not intramuscular vaccination.

The level of protection offered by these “local” or “mucosal” responses is not yet clear in people, but some studies in animal models suggest they are helpful.

Delta Infection Offers A Little Protection Against Omicron

The Omicron variant is slowly replacing the Delta variant around the world. It is more transmissible and avoids antibodies more effectively.

Do people who have been infected with the Delta variant have an advantage in terms of protection from the Omicron variant? The two strains share some sequence changes, but Omicron has many more mutations than Delta.

Only a minority of neutralising antibodies that fight Delta can also neutralise the Omicron variant. That said, neutralising antibodies against Delta are better at fighting Omicron than previous strains. This is particularly true for people who have caught Delta and been previously vaccinated.

The reverse is also true – people who have caught Omicron have some improved antibody protection against Delta. This may not be much use as Delta is disappearing from prevalence, but the knowledge could be useful for future variants.

T-Cells Might Be Key To Cross-Variant Protection

There is considerable interest in a type of immunity called T-cells and their potential ability to fight COVID infection.

Theoretically, T-cells could assist in protecting against severe infection with new strains because T-cells usually cross react to all variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.

However, the evidence to date points to the central role of neutralising antibodies obtained from infection or vaccination in protection from both getting an infection and preventing severe disease. A recent unpublished study suggests neutralising antibodies are boosted by breakthrough infections but not T-cells. We know T-cells are very important in protecting from other infectious diseases and many cancers, but perhaps have a lesser role in COVID.

Gaining Immunity Isn’t The End Of The Story

Overall, infections with Delta and Omicron provide a boost in immunity against these strains. Infection will probably help protect individuals from reinfection with the same variant. Infection may offer a small amount of protection from different variants and potentially from future variants.

However, immunity will not be enduring and it is still possible to get severe infections and ongoing symptoms (termed “Long COVID”) from breakthrough infections. They are best avoided! Current booster vaccines along with social measures are our best way to stay healthy while we wait for Omicron-specific vaccines.

Stephen Kent, Professor and Laboratory Head, The University of Melbourne

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

Spotify’s response to Rogan-gate falls short of its ethical and editorial obligations

Audio streaming giant Spotify is getting a crash course in the tension between free speech and the need to protect the public from harmful misinformation.

The Swedish-founded platform, which has 400 million active users, has faced a hail of criticism over misinformation broadcast on its most popular podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience.

Rogan, a former ultimate fighting commentator and television presenter, has argued healthy young people should not get a COVID vaccination. This is contrary to medical advice from governments all over the world, not to mention the World Health Organization.

A recent episode of his podcast, featuring virologist Robert Malone, drew criticism from public health experts over its various conspiracist claims about COVID vaccination programs.

There were widespread calls for Spotify to deplatform Rogan and his interviewees. Rock legend Neil Young issued an ultimatum that Spotify could broadcast Rogan or Young, but not both.

Spotify made its choice: the Joe Rogan Experience is still on the air, while Young’s music is gone, along with Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren, who removed their content in solidarity.

Spotify’s Response

Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek has since promised to tag controversial COVID-related content with links to a “hub” containing trustworthy information. But he stopped short of pledging to remove misinformation outright.

In a statement, Ek said:

We know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator expression while balancing it with the safety of our users. In that role, it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.

Does It Go Far Enough?

Freedom of expression is important, but so is prevention of harm. When what is being advocated is likely to cause harm or loss of life, a line has been crossed. Spotify has a moral obligation to restrict speech that damages the public interest.

In response to the controversy, Spotify also publicly shared its rules of engagement. They are comprehensive and proactive in helping to make content creators aware of the lines that must not be crossed, while allowing for freedom of expression within these constraints.  

Has Spotify fulfilled its duty of care to customers? If it applies the rules as stated, provides listeners with links to trustworthy information, and refuses to let controversial yet profitable content creators off the hook, this is certainly a move in the right direction.

Platform Or Publisher?

At the crux of the problem is the question of whether social media providers are platforms or publishers.

Spotify and other Big Tech players claim they are simply providing a platform for people’s opinions. But regulators are beginning to say no, they are in fact publishers of information, and like any publisher must be accountable for their content.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms have significant power to promote particular views and limit others, thereby influencing millions or even billions of users.

In the United States, these platforms have immunity from civil and criminal liability under a 1996 federal law that shields them from liability as sites that host user-generated content. Being US corporations, their actions are primarily based on US legislation.

It is an ingenious business model that allows Facebook, for example, to turn a steady stream of free user-posted content into US$28 billion in quarterly advertising revenue.

Established newspapers and magazines also sell advertising, but they pay journalists to write content and are legally liable for what they publish. It’s little wonder they are struggling to survive, and little wonder the tech platforms are keen to avoid similar responsibilities.

But the fact is that social media companies do make editorial decisions about what appears on their platforms. So it is not morally defensible to hide behind the legal protections afforded to them as platforms, when they operate as publishers and reap considerable profits by doing so.

How Best To Combat Misinformation?

Misinformation in the form of fake news, intentional disinformation and misinformed opinion has become a crucial issue for democratic systems around the world. How to combat this influence without compromising democratic values and free speech?

One way is to cultivate “news literacy” – an ability to discern misinformation. This can be done by making a practice of sampling news from across the political spectrum, then averaging out the message to the moderate middle. Most of us confine ourselves to the echo chamber of our preferred source, avoiding contrary opinions as we go.

If you are not sampling at least three reputable sources, you’re not getting the full picture. Here are the characteristics of a reputable news source.

Social media, meanwhile, should invest in artificial intelligence (AI) tools to sift the deluge of real-time content and flag potential fake news. Some progress in this area has been made, but there is room for improvement.

The tide is turning for the big social media companies. Governments around the world are formulating laws that will oblige them to be more responsible for the content they publish. They won’t have long to wait.

David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University

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

How snowboarding became a marquee event at the Winter Olympics – but lost some of its cool factor in the process

The mass appeal of creative, youth-oriented events such as snowboarding and freestyle skiing at the Winter Olympics is a virtual case study of how the once radical can go mainstream.

And while audiences have come to love these relatively new sports, the story of snowboarding’s inclusion in the Olympics also reveals the unintended consequences of “success” for the image of the sport itself.

When snowboarding first emerged in the late 1960s and ’70s in North America, most of its early pioneers were young people who rejected competitive, organised sport. Inspired by surfing and skateboarding rather than skiing, they were seeking something that offered fun, self-expression and an alternative identity.

Despite some initial resistance from skiers and resorts, snowboarding’s popularity grew during the 1990s. Television and corporate sponsors identified its huge potential to attract the elusive young male market. Increasingly, transnational media corporations and events likes the X-Games and Gravity Games controlled and defined snowboarding.

While some snowboarders initially resisted “selling out”, many embraced the opportunities to develop the sport and carve out new careers for themselves as “extreme sport” athletes.

Early Resistance

Meanwhile, the Winter Olympics (always a more niche event compared with its summer counterpart) recognised snowboarding’s potential to attract younger viewers and international sponsors.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) first included snowboarding in the 1998 Winter Olympics, but under the governance of the International Ski Federation (FIS) rather than the International Snowboard Federation. The loss of autonomy and control infuriated many snowboarders.

The world’s best halfpipe rider at the time, Norwegian Terje Haakonsen, was particularly vocal, refusing to be turned into a “uniform-wearing, flag-bearing, walking logo”. Many other snowboarders echoed his sentiments.

And while snowboarding’s assimilation continued, the four events that debuted in 1998 – men’s and women’s halfpipe and giant slalom – were largely treated as a sideshow. The athletes were perceived and portrayed as interlopers in the Olympic program. As The Washington Post put it:

Snowboarders are the official curiosity of the Nagano Winter Games. They’re totally new to the Olympics. They look different, they sound different, they are different.

When Canadian Ross Rebagliati tested positive for marijuana after winning the first snowboarding gold medal, the IOC revoked his medal, only to return it a few days later when Rebagliati’s lawyers found a loophole in the IOC/FIS drug policies. The scandal confirmed the view – of snowboarders as well as mainstream commentators – that snowboarding was not ready to become an Olympic sport.

Acceptance And Growth

By the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, however, the packaging of snowboarding had evolved and the sport’s second mainstream outing was deemed a resounding success. Nearly 32% of the US population (92 million people) watched the halfpipe competition in which Americans won gold, silver and bronze in the men’s event and gold in the women’s event.

Official broadcaster NBC reported a 23% ratings increase among 18-to-34-year-olds. For the IOC, the inclusion of snowboarding had become a game-changer, showcasing cool new sports celebrities for Olympic audiences, especially in the lucrative US market.

By the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, snowboarders were front and centre, with Shaun White from the US deemed the most “recognisable athlete”.

When White won his third gold in the halfpipe at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang it attracted a record 22.6 million viewers in the US alone. Having qualified for his fifth Olympics, White will bring his star power to Beijing this year.

Women On Board

Women snowboarders have competed in all Olympic events since 1998, expanding opportunities for women in the sport and industry.

Olympic snowboarders such as Kelly Clark, Hannah Tetter, Torah Bright and Chloe Kim build on the efforts of previous generations of female snowboarders, carving out new space for girls and women in the sport.

In the process of wowing audiences, they’ve also inspired the next generation of stars like New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and Japan’s Ono Mitsuki.

It’s estimated women will make up 45% of the athletes competing in Beijing this year, including in the new mixed team snowboard cross event, added as part of a broader IOC initiative to achieve gender parity.

Victim Of Its Own Success?

While the IOC held the line with certain rules and regulations (no stickers on snowboards, no large corporate logos on clothing or equipment), it has been increasingly willing to accommodate snowboarders’ individuality – allowing more clothing choices and athletes to select their own music for halfpipe runs.

Snowboarding’s success has also helped open up the Winter Olympics to other youth-focused sports, particularly free-skiing disciplines, as well as influencing the Summer Olympics’ embrace of BMX, surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing and breaking.

But there’s an irony to snowboarding’s mainstream success, too. While it has become popular with broader audiences, and companies and athletes have done very well from Olympic exposure, it appears to have lost its appeal among younger people.

Participation has been declining steadily in recent years – to the point where former pro snowboarder and action sports agent Circe Wallace has said the sport’s commodification and institutionalisation have been “the death knell of the unique culture and beauty of snowboarding”.

It’s a familiar story – youth-culture cool incorporated by mainstream businesses and organisations for profit. As the IOC continues to search out the latest youth-oriented sports to help it stay relevant, bring back younger viewers and attract corporate sponsors, we would do well to ask who, ultimately, are the real winners and the losers.

Holly Thorpe, Professor in Sociology of Sport and Physical Culture, University of Waikato and Belinda Wheaton, Professor, Te Huataki Waiora School of Health, University of Waikato

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

Three tips to help you stay motivated to keep exercising all year long

February. The month of shattered dreams and ambitions. The trainers are gathering dust and chocolate bars have replaced protein bars. The gusto with which we attacked our new year resolutions is a vague memory.

If your motivation to stick to your resolution to exercise more this year is waning, you’re not alone. It’s suggested around 80% of people will have given up on their new year resolutions by February.

But the reason your motivation wanes might be because you chose the wrong motives and goals to begin with. And research shows us that choosing the right type of goal is the key to keeping us motivated over the long term.

Lower The Effort

Many of us believe that we need to grimace, contort, sweat and pant our way to a healthier life. So at the beginning of January, we put in a load of effort to help us reach our goals.

Unfortunately, our brain encourages us to avoid physical effort. This is why the excessive effort we use when exercising will work against us in the long run – leading us to feel less motivated to exercise by the end of January. Our brain is constantly monitoring our body for any changes from our resting state, which could mean danger to our health. The more physical effort we use, the more a signal is activated and our brain tells us that the activity just isn’t worth the effort and potential risk.

This is why minimising the effort we need to put into exercise may actually better help us stick to our resolutions in the long term. For example, if you’re dreading even a fifteen-minute jog, do five minutes instead. Or if you hate running but enjoy Zumba, do that instead. The golden rule is that the activity you’re trying to motivate yourself to do needs to be pleasurable. And research shows we’re much more likely to do something if it requires less effort – especially when we’re starting new exercise regimes.

The same principle applies to reducing the psychological effort required to exercise, as our brains also encourage us to avoid it – to such an extent that, when given the choice, we often prefer physical pain instead. It does this because it wants to save psychological effort for times of emergency.

When it comes to starting a new exercise regime in the new year, things like fitting workouts into our schedule or getting out of bed an hour earlier all require psychological effort. To reduce psychological effort, it may help to minimise needless decision-making. When it’s time to exercise, remove decisions like whether to walk or drive to exercise class, or put your trainers in the same place so you don’t have to look for them.

Although these sound like small decisions to make, they can all add up to us feeling less motivated to exercise when we’re required to make them. Research even shows that when we think our goals require little effort to achieve, we’re more likely to achieve them.

Choose Short-Term Goals

Another basic motivational mistake many of us made in January was to set our goals too far in the future. Many people start exercising to lose a few pounds – perhaps to fit into their favourite jeans again. But when the outcome is far in the future, our brains don’t associate the motivation (fitting into our jeans) with exercising – so we’re less inclined to exercise.

By choosing a goal that has a more immediate outcome, our brains will associate the outcome positively with exercise because they occur simultaneously. For example, the mood-boosting benefits of exercise occur more quickly than physical health changes so this may be a better motivator for you to keep exercising well past January. In short, make the reason for exercise an immediate one you can achieve – and the long-term benefits will follow.

Focus On ‘Being’ Instead Of ‘Having’

The final motivational fix is switching the type of goal you have. So-called “have” goals serve little purpose for our motivational brain, which focuses on more important things – such as being effective at what we do and making social bonds. An example of a “have” goal would be exercising so that you can have a better body. This type of goal is viewed as less important by our brain because it does not help us meet essential goals that help us thrive.

On the other hand, the types of goals that are more likely to keep us motivated are “be” goals. An example of a be goal would be exercising to be healthy or to be more athletic. Be goals are superior because humans tend to want to bond with other like-minded people based on our identities. This motivation is thought to have developed in our ancestral past, as forming bonds helped us to survive. So someone may find exercise easier to stick with if they’re doing it as a way to demonstrate their athleticism, for example. As a result, people do a better job of sticking to be goals, compared to other types of goals.

Even if you have fallen off the wagon slightly by the end of January, that doesn’t mean you have to give up on your goals entirely. But making some tweaks to them – and your approach to exercise – may help you better stick to your goals for the rest of the year.

Ian Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Loughborough University

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

‘Virtual influencers’ are here, but should Meta really be setting the ethical ground rules?

Earlier this month, Meta announced it is working on a set of ethical guidelines for “virtual influencers” – animated, typically computer-generated, characters designed to attract attention on social media.

When Facebook renamed itself Meta late last year, it heralded a pivot towards the “metaverse” – where virtual influencers will presumably one day roam in their thousands.

Even Meta admits the metaverse doesn’t really exist yet. The building blocks of a persistent, immersive virtual reality for everything from business to play are yet to be fully assembled. But virtual influencers are already online, and are surprisingly convincing.

But given its recent history, is Meta (née Facebook) really the right company to be setting the ethical standards for virtual influencers and the metaverse more broadly?

Who (Or What) Are Virtual Influencers?

Meta’s announcement notes the “rising phenomenon” of synthetic media – an umbrella term for images, video, voice or text generated by computerised technology, typically using artificial intelligence (AI) or automation.

Many virtual influencers incorporate elements of synthetic media in their design, ranging from completely digitally rendered bodies, to human models that are digitally masked with characters’ facial features.

At both ends of the scale, this process still relies heavily on human labour and input, from art direction for photo shoots to writing captions for social media. Like Meta’s vision of the metaverse, influencers that are entirely generated and powered by AI are a largely futuristic fantasy.

But even in their current form, virtual influencers are of serious value to Meta, both as attractions for their existing platforms and as avatars of the metaverse.

Interest in virtual influencers has rapidly expanded over the past five years, attracting huge audiences on social media and partnerships with major brands, including Audi, Bose, Calvin Klein, Samsung, and Chinese e-commerce platform TMall.

A competitive industry specialising in the production, management and promotion of virtual influencers has already sprung up, although it remains largely unregulated.

So far, India is the only country to address virtual influencers in national advertising standards, requiring brands “disclose to consumers that they are not interacting with a real human being” when posting sponsored content.

Ethical Guidelines

There is an urgent need for ethical guidelines, both to help producers and their brand partners navigate this new terrain, and more importantly to help users understand the content they’re engaging with.

Meta has warned that “synthetic media has the potential for both good and harm”, listing “representation and cultural appropriation” as specific issues of concern.

Indeed, despite their short lifespan, virtual influencers already have a history of overt racialisation and misrepresentation, raising ethical questions for producers who create digital characters with different demographic characteristics from their own.

But it’s far from clear whether Meta’s proposed guidelines will adequately address these questions.

Becky Owen, head of creator innovation and solutions at Meta Creative Shop, said the planned ethical framework “will help our brand partners and VI creators explore what’s possible, likely and desirable, and what’s not”.

This seeming emphasis on technological possibilities and brand partners’ desires leads to an inevitable impression that Meta is once again conflating commercial potential with ethical practice.

By its own count, Meta’s platforms already host more than 200 virtual influencers. But virtual influencers exist elsewhere too: they do viral dance challenges on TikTok, upload vlogs to YouTube, and post life updates on Sina Weibo. They appear “offline” at malls in Beijing and Singapore, on 3D billboards in Tokyo, and star in television commercials.

Gamekeeper, Or Poacher?

This brings us back to the question of whether Meta is the right company to set the ground rules for this emerging space.

The company’s history is tarred by unethical behaviour, from Facebook’s questionable beginnings in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room (as depicted in The Social Network) to large-scale privacy failings demonstrated in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

In February 2021 Facebook showed how far it was willing to go to defend its interests, when it briefly banned all news content on Facebook in Australia to force the federal government to water down the Australian News Media Bargaining Code.

Last year also saw former Facebook executive Frances Haugen very publicly turn whistleblower, sharing a trove of internal documents with journalists and politicians.

These so-called “Facebook Papers” raised numerous concerns about the company’s conduct and ethics, including the revelation that Facebook’s own internal research showed Instagram can harm young people’s mental health, even leading to suicide.

Today, Meta is fighting US antitrust litigation that aims to restrain the company’s monopoly by potentially compelling it to sell key acquisitions including Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meanwhile, Meta is scrambling to integrate its messaging service across all three apps, effectively making them different interfaces for a shared back end that Meta will doubtless argue cannot feasibly be separated, no matter the outcomes of the current litigation.

Given this back story, Meta seems far from the ideal choice as ethical guardian of the metaverse.

The already extensive distribution of virtual influencers across platforms and markets highlights the need for ethical guidelines that go beyond the interests of one company – especially a company that stands to gain so much from the impending spectacle.

Tama Leaver, Professor of Internet Studies, Curtin University and Rachel Berryman, PhD Candidate in Internet Studies, Curtin University

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

Ulysses at 100: why Joyce was so obsessed with the perfect blue cover

On February 2 2022, Ulysses turns 100, James Joyce would have turned 140, and I will turn 30-something.

To celebrate this tripartite birthday I am popping to the chemist to collect some eye drops. Then I’m heading to the Bodleian Library in Oxford to view one of the first editions of Ulysses. I won’t read it. I won’t even venture past its covers. I am interested in seeing the exact shade of blue that Joyce specified for the book’s wrappers. He was so particular about this aesthetic feature that he got his painter friend, Myron Nutting, to mix up the precise tint.

This is where the eye drops come in. I have a chronic condition that can make my eyes sore and my vision blurry. And I want to ensure that I can see Ulysses clearly, to properly assess the blueness of its cover. The irony is that Joyce’s eyesight was far worse than mine. He experienced severe eye pain, underwent multiple ocular surgeries and, at times, could barely see at all. Why, then, was he so obsessed with his book being such a specific hue of blue?

Ulysses Blue

Joyce’s biographer, Richard Ellmann, tells us that the cover of Ulysses was meant to match the blue of the Greek flag, to suggest the myth of ancient Greece and Homer. We know from his letters that Joyce sent a Greek flag to Nutting for him to colour-match. So, he was aiming for “Greek” blue.

We also know that Homer was a huge influence on Joyce. The structure of Ulysses parallels the structure of Homer’s Odyssey. So, it makes sense for Joyce to honour his literary hero through a subtle, yet exceedingly specific, decorative detail. But I think there’s more to it.

I am on a research odyssey to discover the impetus and symbolism behind “Ulysses blue”. I will go to the Bodleian with my eyes wide open, ready to let my visual experience of the famous blue book dictate my avenue of research.

But, given Joyce’s impaired vision, perhaps this isn’t the best approach. To understand Joyce’s perspective, I must shrug off my “ocularcentrism”.

Blindness In Joyce’s Texts

In her thoughtful new book, There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness, writer and educator M. Leona Godin devotes several pages to her interactions with Ulysses. She discusses the “blind stripling” character who taps his way through Dublin, and through Ulysses, using his “slender cane”.

Godin praises Joyce’s ability to capture the musicality of the tapping cane and articulates the complexity of Joyce’s relationship with blindness: “Even if Joyce felt some kinship with the blind stripling, he was still a sight-oriented person who might think […] of the blind as ‘they’.”

Joyce would have loved Godin’s book, as he appears to have had a keen interest in blindness memoirs and advice guides written by blind people, for blind people (and their supporters). Scholars have largely glossed over Joyce’s references to blindness in his composition notebook. But I’m delving deeper to get to grips with Joyce’s thoughts on visual impairment.

It is fascinating to read Joyce’s depiction of the blind stripling in Ulysses, alongside one of the blindness books mentioned in his notes: Les Aveugles par un Aveugle (The Blind as Seen through Blind Eyes) (1899), by Maurice de la Sizeranne.

As I outlined in a public lecture last Bloomsday, there are several similarities, in terms of content and focus, between the two books.

The observations de la Sizeranne makes about his fellow blind man parallel those made by Ulysses’ protagonist Bloom about the blind stripling. Both Bloom and de la Sizeranne discuss the intriguing relationship between colour perception and touch, in blind experience, and suggest an additional blind sense: a “kind of sense of volume” involving the “nerves of the face” or the “forehead”. In reflecting blind experience onto his blind readers, de la Sizeranne - to borrow a phrase used in Ulysses - urges us to “see ourselves as others see us”.

In Joyce’s notes, the name of a hitherto unidentified “Dr Staub” is scrawled next to the title of de la Sizeranne’s book. Staub was believed to be one of Joyce’s eye doctors. However, I have discovered that he is, in fact, Dr Theodor Staub, the blind founder of the Swiss Library for the Blind.

It is unclear why Staub’s name appears next to Les Aveugles par un Aveugle. Whatever the precise connection, in jotting down Staub’s name Joyce, at the very least, demonstrated a desire to engage with the blind community and with books for the blind.

Blind, Blue Bards

In his final book, Finnegans Wake (1939), Joyce alludes to Ulysses. He depicts Shem, a partially sighted writer, reading a “usylessly unreadable Blue Book” in a “glaucous den”.

In ancient Greek, the word “glaucous” refers to blueish-green or blueish-grey. It’s also the root word of “glaucoma”. Joyce suffered from glaucoma, and, in one of his letters, he writes that Homer “went blind from glaucoma according to one of my doctors”.

So, perhaps “Ulysses blue” is a homage to glaucoma (via ancient Greece and Homer). By insisting on Greek-flag blue, was Joyce seeking, through rather associative means, to insert himself into a canon of blind writers?

There is no definite answer to this question. But, by recognising Joyce as a disabled writer with a genuine interest in articulating a wide range of bodily and sensory experiences, we open up new possibilities for accessing Ulysses in its centenary year. We should feel empowered to read Joyce’s blue book through our eyes, ears, and fingers.

Cleo Hanaway-Oakley, Lecturer in Liberal Arts and English, University of Bristol

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

Killer whales taking food from fishing lines reveal something intriguing about human evolution

Who would go off to try and catch a fish if a sushi buffet had been laid on? Not me. Nor killer whales, according to new research that vividly illustrates the allure for these animals of the easy pickings provided by longline fisheries for Patagonian toothfish in the Indian Ocean.

In their study, French fisheries researcher Morgane Amelot and her colleagues examined over 119,000 photographs of individual killer whales taken between 2003 and 2018 around the Crozet Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. They produced an identity parade of whales caught red-handed (or finned) taking fish from baited hooks attached to a long main line.

Killer whales have been known to do this since the mid-1990s, but this analysis showed how the behaviour has spread through the population. The number of whales spotted around the fishing vessels suggest that by the end of the study period, the entire population was taking advantage of the buffet.

Humans, with the inexorable expansion of our fishing fleets, have inadvertently provided the whales with a new source of food, allowing them to expand their niche (the term ecologists use to described a species’ role in an ecosystem). This creates problems for both killer whales and toothfish that require more research to solve, but understanding how this behaviour spreads through populations also leads us into deeper intellectual waters. Might the way killer whales open up new niches mirror early human evolution?

Toothfish To Go

It is estimated that the whales now take around 163 tonnes of toothfish every year. We don’t know if the toothfish were part of the whales’ diet before they discovered the longlines, but the foraging method is undoubtedly new.

It’s not hard to see the attraction. Instead of all that tiresome swimming around, finding and then chasing the fish, the longliners are kind enough to gather and slowly wind them up from the depths and present them one by one for consumption – the open ocean equivalent of the conveyor belt in a sushi bar.

This isn’t confined to the Indian Ocean. In the northern Pacific, both killer and sperm whales have been exploiting longline fisheries for decades. In all these cases there is evidence that cultural transmission is behind the spread. In other words, the whales were learning about the new opportunity from seeing others taking advantage of it. Given that we know killer whales are capable of highly precise imitation of each other’s behaviour, it seems likely that cultural transmission, the foundation of killer-whale culture, underlies the spread of this behaviour in the Indian Ocean too.

What this research shows is an accelerated version of a process that has played out throughout the evolutionary history of the killer whale. In recent decades, we’ve learned more about how wild populations are divided into what are called ecotypes – different forms of killer whale, with distinct appearances, vocal behaviour, and often (but not always) highly specialised prey preferences.

Most famous are the fish-eating killer whales of the north-east Pacific, where for some populations, fully 80% of their diet can be comprised of a single salmon species. New specialisations are still being described – for example, another study published recently documented the cooperative tactics some groups use to take down blue whales.

The Whale Within

The origins of these ecotypes lie in the discovery of new ecological opportunities and the subsequent spread of new hunting tactics through cultural transmission – just like the spread of longline foraging. Sometimes the passing of these specialisations down generations has given rise to lineages of tradition so stable and separate that the distinctive diets have started affecting natural selection – the genomes of whales in separate lineages are diverging.

As a result, killer whales pose a conundrum for biologists, challenging the species concept itself. Are they one species, with sub-types, or should they be considered separate species? The debate rages on unresolved. The interaction between cultural traditions and genetic evolution that has produced this conundrum is called gene-culture co-evolution.

We know this process from our own societies. If you are an adult who is lactose tolerant, your genetic ancestry is intertwined at some point with a dairy farming culture.

The parallels to our own history go deeper, however. The story of human evolution has been a moving target in recent years. In contrast to the standard single-African-population origin story, we now know that what have been classified as multiple Homo species co-existed with modern humans. But were they separate species? Or could they better be described as ecotypes, specialised on diverse niches?

This relates to a provocative new view of human evolution, termed African multi-regionalism. It suggests that modern humans evolved as sets of interlinked groups throughout Africa, with divisions between groups being primarily related to ecology – different niches for different groups.

My colleagues and I have argued that culturally transmitted ecological specialisations may have led to diversification in humans in the same way as in killer whales. So perhaps the spread of killer whales taking fish from longlines can indeed help us understand how we ourselves came to be.

Luke Rendell, MASTS Lecturer in Biology, University of St Andrews

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

What we know now about COVID immunity after infection – including Omicron and Delta variants

COVID is rampant in Australia and many parts of the world right now. Some people battling or recovering from infection may wonder if catching COVID will give them longer term immunity for when the next wave comes.

Since the early days of the pandemic we’ve known COVID induces a wide range of immune responses and one infection provides partial protection from future infections.

Unfortunately, immunity wanes over time – people lose half their immunity every 3 months. Further, new variants continue to emerge that are partially resistant to key immune responses – antibodies that neutralise earlier strains – this is especially true of Omicron.

We’re starting to get a more detailed understanding of COVID immunity across variants. Here’s what we know so far …

Breakthrough Infection Happens But Vaccines Are Still A Must

Since around 95% of Australians over 16 have had at least two COVID vaccines, most people catching COVID now have previously been vaccinated – this is called “breakthrough infection”.

The vaccines are effective at substantially reducing severe COVID illness. They are less effective, particularly over time, at preventing infections, including with new variants. A third vaccine dose helps maintain immunity, and everyone eligible should get a booster as soon as possible.

Because the Astra-Zeneca vaccine is less effective than the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, it’s critically important for vulnerable older Australians immunised with two Astra-Zeneca vaccinations to be boosted with a third vaccine dose as quickly as possible.

The good news is people first vaccinated with Astra-Zeneca and subsequently boosted with Pfizer or Moderna develop high levels of protective immune responses.

Recent work shows a nice boost in antibody immunity after breakthrough infection. This boost in antibody immunity may not be as fast or strong as getting a vaccine, but it has a big advantage in that the immunity is more specific to the infecting strain such as Delta.

The current vaccines are still based on the original strain isolated in Wuhan, China in early 2020. Several vaccine manufacturer’s are racing to update their vaccines for the Omicron variant (much as we do with the yearly flu vaccines), but these variant-specific vaccines are still some months away.

Infection Immunity Builds Where COVID Strikes First

Another potential advantage for immunity derived by infection (acquired in the respiratory tract) compared to vaccination (given into the muscle) is that immunity is better focused to the surfaces of the nose, throat and eyes. This is where COVID is first encountered.

Surface antibodies (termed immunoglobulin A) and specialised tissue “resident” immune cells (B and T-cells) are induced by infection but not intramuscular vaccination.

The level of protection offered by these “local” or “mucosal” responses is not yet clear in people, but some studies in animal models suggest they are helpful.

Delta Infection Offers A Little Protection Against Omicron

The Omicron variant is slowly replacing the Delta variant around the world. It is more transmissible and avoids antibodies more effectively.

Do people who have been infected with the Delta variant have an advantage in terms of protection from the Omicron variant? The two strains share some sequence changes, but Omicron has many more mutations than Delta.

Only a minority of neutralising antibodies that fight Delta can also neutralise the Omicron variant. That said, neutralising antibodies against Delta are better at fighting Omicron than previous strains. This is particularly true for people who have caught Delta and been previously vaccinated.

The reverse is also true – people who have caught Omicron have some improved antibody protection against Delta. This may not be much use as Delta is disappearing from prevalence, but the knowledge could be useful for future variants.

T-Cells Might Be Key To Cross-Variant Protection

There is considerable interest in a type of immunity called T-cells and their potential ability to fight COVID infection.

Theoretically, T-cells could assist in protecting against severe infection with new strains because T-cells usually cross react to all variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.

However, the evidence to date points to the central role of neutralising antibodies obtained from infection or vaccination in protection from both getting an infection and preventing severe disease. A recent unpublished study suggests neutralising antibodies are boosted by breakthrough infections but not T-cells. We know T-cells are very important in protecting from other infectious diseases and many cancers, but perhaps have a lesser role in COVID.

Gaining Immunity Isn’t The End Of The Story

Overall, infections with Delta and Omicron provide a boost in immunity against these strains. Infection will probably help protect individuals from reinfection with the same variant. Infection may offer a small amount of protection from different variants and potentially from future variants.

However, immunity will not be enduring and it is still possible to get severe infections and ongoing symptoms (termed “Long COVID”) from breakthrough infections. They are best avoided! Current booster vaccines along with social measures are our best way to stay healthy while we wait for Omicron-specific vaccines.

Stephen Kent, Professor and Laboratory Head, The University of Melbourne

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

Our hospitals are at greater risk of flooding as the climate changes. We need better evacuation plans.

With hospitals under strain from COVID-19, we need to safeguard them against another threat set to increase as the world warms.

That threat? Flooding. Many Australian hospitals were built on cheap land near rivers. But as climate change loads the dice in favour of larger floods, areas previously safe may no longer be so. We must plan ahead to ensure patients and healthcare workers are not trapped by floodwaters.

Our new research shows future floods in low-lying areas of Western Sydney are likely to disrupt road networks, preventing safe evacuation of patients. Only last year, this region suffered its worst floods in decades, and more are expected as we enter a flooding cycle. This fast-growing region is rated one of Australia’s highest flooding risks, and hosts a number of healthcare facilities built in flood-prone areas.

The solution? We believe new approaches to mathematical modelling can help decision makers optimise plans for safe evacuation in different flooding scenarios. By cutting evacuation time, we hope these approaches can save lives.

Hospitals Were Not Built To Cope With Larger Floods

Around 80% of Australians live within 50 kilometres of the coast. As a result, many hospitals were built on low-lying land adjacent to seas or rivers. Most were designed without climate change risks in mind.

The major floods brought by La Nina last year, and the catastrophic 2010-2011 Queensland floods, have shown us how exposed many of our cities are to floods. Already in 2022, we have seen large floods up and down the east coast.

Climate change is predicted to bring Australia less rain overall, except for the tropical north. The rain that does fall will be more likely to fall in intense bursts. River flash floods from intense rain events or cyclones will pose an increasing threat to health facilities.

Some urban areas are on highly flood-prone areas. For example, the NSW Hawkesbury Nepean flood plan anticipates a flood similar to the infamous 1867 flood would result in around 90,000 people being evacuated.

That’s to say nothing of flooding from the sea. Around Australia, 75 hospitals and health service facilities are within 200 metres of the sea. That puts them at real risk from coastal inundation and erosion by the end of the century, if the seas rise by one metre as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts.

This is not a hypothetical scenario. Hospitals have already been left without power for days due to flooding, while others have been forced to evacuate patients. Only last year, floods up and down the east coast cut roads and forced authorities to find alternatives to hospitals for people unable to get through.

Clearly, this matters. Hospitals play a vital role in creating a disaster-resilient society, and it is critical they can keep operating in disaster situations.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for a better understanding of the threat posed by flooding.

What Can We Do To Prepare?

In our region, very little is known about how we might best evacuate hospitals in the event of a major flood. We simply haven’t done enough research.

What we found in our work is that the issue is extremely complex. Where would patients be evacuated to, for instance? How do you do it safely? Which routes would be safe in a major flood? How would medical staff get to other hospitals?

Evidence from recent floods suggests many hospitals in flooded areas will face major challenges transferring patients and resources to other healthcare facilities.

So what can hospitals do better?

At present, hospital administrators rely heavily on evacuation drills to test and improve emergency evacuation planning. These drills are expensive and disruptive and their effectiveness is difficult to assess.

We have found new approaches to mathematical modelling could greatly assist hospital managers plan for a flood to prevent them becoming disasters.

For example, analysis of Western Sydney’s Hawkesbury-Nepean Valley can visually show how different size flood events would impact on hospitals, healthcare and aged care facilities, as well as roads, bridges and electricity lines.

Imagine the Hawksbury-Nepean Valley area floods again like last year. In a scenario where a hospital floods and patients need evacuation, hospital administrators will face a conundrum. Which roads do they send the patients down?

Sophisticated modelling our team is undertaking will let us predict which routes are best, based on the roads most likely to flood, ambulance and staff availability, health needs of patients and the availability of suitable beds and staff in other hospitals. The models allow us to optimise routes for the most urgent patients.

For hospital administrators, the benefit of these models is the ability to glimpse the likeliest scenarios and plan ahead, before the floods happen.

Climate change can supercharge floods, as we are seeing more and more. Decision makers must plan ahead accordingly. Running flood and evacuation simulations now could help save lives in the future.

Martin Loosemore, Professor of Construction Management, University of Technology Sydney; Maziar Yazdani, Doctoral candidate, UNSW, and Mohammad Mojtahedi, Senior lecturer, School of Built Environment, UNSW

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