In January 2023, a new comet was discovered. Comets are found regularly, but astronomers quickly realised this one, called C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), had the potential to be quite bright.

Some hyperbolic reports have suggested it might be the “comet of the century”, but any astronomer will tell you the brightness of comets is notoriously hard to predict. As I explained last year, we’d have to wait until it arrived to be sure how bright it would become.

Now, the time has come. Comet C/2023 A3 is currently visible with the naked eye in the morning sky in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, with its best yet to come in the next few weeks. And it does look promising. It’s unlikely to be the comet of the decade (never mind the comet of the century), but it will almost certainly become the best comet of the year.

So where, and when, should you look to get your best views of this celestial visitor?

A show in the morning, before sunrise

At the moment, comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is a morning object, rising around an hour and a half before sunrise. It is visible to the naked eye, but not yet spectacular. However, with binoculars you can easily see the comet’s dusty tail pointing away from the Sun.

The comet will remain at about the same altitude in the morning sky until around September 30. It will then get closer to the horizon on each consecutive morning until it’s lost in the glare of the approaching dawn by October 6 or 7.

If you want to spot the comet in the morning sky, look east. The sliders below will help you orient yourself and choose the best time to look, depending on your latitude.

During this period, the comet should slowly brighten. It reaches its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) on September 27, when it will be 58 million kilometres from our star.

As it swings around the Sun, it will continue to approach Earth, and so should continue to brighten. The best show in the morning sky will likely be during the last couple of days of September and the first few days in October, before the comet is lost to view.

A potential daylight comet

Thanks to pure good fortune, comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) will then pass almost directly between Earth and the Sun on October 9 and 10.

This could cause a spectacular brightening of the comet, thanks to “forward scattering” caused by its dust. Imagine looking towards a bright light source through a cloud of dust grains. The grains nearest to the light source will scatter light from the source back towards you.

As the comet swings between Earth and the Sun, it will be perfectly placed for this forward scattering process to occur. If the comet is particularly dusty, this could cause its apparent brightness to increase by up to 100 times.

If it does, there’s a small chance the comet could briefly become visible in the daylight sky on October 9 and 10.

However, it will be very close to the Sun in the sky, and incredibly hard to spot. Only the most experienced observers may be able to detect the comet at this time, and it requires a special technique. Do not try to stare at the Sun to see it.

The best show could be after October 12

After swinging between Earth and the Sun, the comet will appear in the evening sky. It will rapidly climb in the western sky, and should be a bright, naked-eye object for a few days from October 12. The sliders below will give you a sense of where to look.

For the first few days of this period, the comet will still benefit from the forward scattering of sunlight, but this will decrease as it moves away.

What about the tail?

The positioning of the comet, Earth and the Sun in the Solar System means the comet’s tail will be streaming outwards, past our planet. This means it could grow to prodigious lengths in the night sky.

The bulk of that tail will likely be too dim to see easily with the naked eye, but it could be a fantastic spectacle for photographers. Expect to see a wealth of comet images flooding the internet around the middle of October.

As the days pass and the comet climbs higher, it will fade quite rapidly. It will likely become too faint to see with the naked eye, even for seasoned and experienced observers, before the end of October.

At that point, the show will be over. Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) will continue to flee the inner Solar System, moving into the icy depths of space, never to return.

How reliable are the predictions?

At the moment, the comet is already bright enough to consider it the “comet of the year”, outshining comet 12P/Pons-Brooks from earlier this year.

But remember the classic saying – comets are like cats. They have tails and will often surprise us. For now, comet C/2023 A3 is behaving itself. It’s brightening predictably, and putting on a good show.

But comets that approach this closely to the Sun often fragment. This is impossible to predict, and far from guaranteed. If the comet did break up, it could become even more spectacular because of all the dust and gas it would release.

The opposite could still happen, too. The comet could fail to brighten as much as we expect, although that seems unlikely at this stage.

Whatever happens, we’re in for a fascinating few weeks of comet watching. Hopefully, a real spectacle awaits us.

Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland

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

The days are getting longer and in Australia, the switch to daylight saving time is almost upon us (for about 70% of the population, anyway).

But why do we have longer days in summer and shorter days in winter?

It’s all about the tilt

Earth goes around the Sun in an almost circular orbit. But not everything is lined up perfectly. Earth’s axis is tilted by 23.44 degrees relative to its orbit around the Sun.

Imagine Earth’s orbit as a flat frisbee with the Sun in the middle and Earth as a ball on a stick going around the edge.

If Earth’s axis wasn’t tilted (if its tilt was zero degrees) the stick would be exactly perpendicular to the frisbee. If you grab that perpendicular stick and tip it 23.44 degrees sideways, that’s what Earth’s tilt looks like now.

As Earth orbits the Sun, the tilt of the stick does not rotate relative to the Sun. If you were in outer space looking at the Sun and you watched from the exact same position for a whole year, you would see Earth go around the Sun while the stick stayed tilted the same direction.

In other words, if the top of the stick was pointing to the right when you started watching Earth go around the Sun, it would stay pointing to the right the whole way around.

This tilt gives us longer days in summer and shorter days in winter. Let’s set up the scenario so the Northern Hemisphere is the top of the planet and the Southern Hemisphere is the bottom of the planet.

When Earth is on one side of the Sun, the top of the stick is pointed towards the Sun. This is summer in the Northern Hemisphere and winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Six months later, when Earth is on the other side of the Sun, the bottom of the stick is pointed towards the Sun – and the seasons are reversed.

Solstices and equinoxes

Those two points, when the top of the stick is pointing directly towards the Sun or directly away from the Sun, are the solstices. They are the longest and shortest days of the year, depending on your hemisphere.

The shortest day of 2024 in Australia was June 21. Looking forward to sunnier times, the longest day of the year in 2024 will be December 21.

In between the summer and winter solstice, we have the equinoxes – when days and nights are almost exactly the same length. Those are the days when the stick through Earth is “side-on” to the Sun. The equinox is also the day when the Sun passes directly over Earth’s equator. In 2024 this happened on March 20 at 2:06pm AEDT and September 22 at 10:43pm AEST.

That means that since September 22, days have been getting longer than nights in the Southern Hemisphere.

What does daylight saving do?

Earth’s tilt means the Sun both rises earlier and sets later as we head towards summer. When the clocks (in some states) switch to daylight saving time, people in these states all get one hour less of sleep. However, the total length of the day doesn’t change just because we changed our clocks.

For me, daylight saving means I need an extra cup of coffee in the morning for about a week before I adjust to the daylight saving-lag (like jet lag, but without the fun of travel).

What it really gives us is more daylight in the evening, instead of more daylight in the morning. If you’re already a morning person, this isn’t the way to go. But if you prefer to have a long dinner in the summer sun it’s ideal.

Has it always been this way?

Earth’s axis hasn’t always been tilted at 23.44 degrees. It cycles from a minimum 22.1 degree tilt to a maximum 24.5 degree tilt and back again once every approximately 41,000 years.

Earth’s axis also “precesses”, where the stick through it draws a circle once every approximately 26,000 years. You can see this in the animation below.

The length of a day on Earth hasn’t always been the same, either.

At the moment, the length of a day is nearly exactly 24 hours. But it’s shifting all the time by tiny amounts. This is tracked very closely by a system of telescopes and satellites. These systems measure “Earth orientation parameters” that describe Earth’s exact orientation compared to the position of stars in the sky.

These are important to astronomers because the exact location of our telescopes is important for creating accurate maps of the sky. On top of all of this, the gravitational drag from the Moon causes days to become longer by around 2.3 milliseconds every 100 years. A few billion years ago, Earth’s day was a lot shorter – only 19 hours long.

Even though some of us are losing an hour of sleep this weekend, at least we get to enjoy 2.3 milliseconds longer every day than our great – and great-great – grandparents did.

Laura Nicole Driessen, Postdoctoral researcher in radio astronomy, University of Sydney

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

For almost a decade, researchers have been gathering evidence that the social media platform Facebook disproportionately amplifies low-quality content and misinformation.

So it was something of a surprise when in 2023 the journal Science published a study that found Facebook’s algorithms were not major drivers of misinformation during the 2020 United States election.

This study was funded by Facebook’s parent company, Meta. Several Meta employees were also part of the authorship team. It attracted extensive media coverage. It was also celebrated by Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, who said it showed the company’s algorithms have “no detectable impact on polarisation, political attitudes or beliefs”.

But the findings have recently been thrown into doubt by a team of researchers led by Chhandak Bagch from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In an eLetter also published in Science, they argue the results were likely due to Facebook tinkering with the algorithm while the study was being conducted.

In a response eLetter, the authors of the original study acknowledge their results “might have been different” if Facebook had changed its algorithm in a different way. But they insist their results still hold true.

The whole debacle highlights the problems caused by big tech funding and facilitating research into their own products. It also highlights the crucial need for greater independent oversight of social media platforms.

Merchants of doubt

Big tech has started investing heavily in academic research into its products. It has also been investing heavily in universities more generally. For example, Meta and its chief Mark Zuckerberg have collectively donated hundreds of millions of dollars to more than 100 colleges and universities across the United States.

This is similar to what big tobacco once did.

In the mid-1950s, cigarette companies launched a coordinated campaign to manufacture doubt about the growing body of evidence which linked smoking with a number of serious health issues, such as cancer. It was not about falsifying or manipulating research explicitly, but selectively funding studies and bringing to attention inconclusive results.

This helped foster a narrative that there was no definitive proof smoking causes cancer. In turn, this enabled tobacco companies to keep up a public image of responsibility and “goodwill” well into the 1990s.

A positive spin

The Meta-funded study published in Science in 2023 claimed Facebook’s news feed algorithm reduced user exposure to untrustworthy news content. The authors said “Meta did not have the right to prepublication approval”, but acknowledged that The Facebook Open Research and Transparency team “provided substantial support in executing the overall project”.

The study used an experimental design where participants – Facebook users – were randomly allocated into a control group or treatment group.

The control group continued to use Facebook’s algorithmic news feed, while the treatment group was given a news feed with content presented in reverse chronological order. The study sought to compare the effects of these two types of news feeds on users’ exposure to potentially false and misleading information from untrustworthy news sources.

The experiment was robust and well designed. But during the short time it was conducted, Meta changed its news feed algorithm to boost more reliable news content. In doing so, it changed the control condition of the experiment.

The reduction in exposure to misinformation reported in the original study was likely due to the algorithmic changes. But these changes were temporary: a few months later in March 2021, Meta reverted the news feed algorithm back to the original.

In a statement to Science about the controversy, Meta said it made the changes clear to researchers at the time, and that it stands by Clegg’s statements about the findings in the paper.

Unprecedented power

In downplaying the role of algorithmic content curation for issues such as misinformation and political polarisation, the study became a beacon for sowing doubt and uncertainty about the harmful influence of social media algorithms.

To be clear, I am not suggesting the researchers who conducted the original 2023 study misled the public. The real problem is that social media companies not only control researchers’ access to data, but can also manipulate their systems in a way that affects the findings of the studies they fund.

What’s more, social media companies have the power to promote certain studies on the very platform the studies are about. In turn, this helps shape public opinion. It can create a scenario where scepticism and doubt about the impacts of algorithms can become normalised – or where people simply start to tune out.

This kind of power is unprecedented. Even big tobacco could not control the public’s perception of itself so directly.

All of this underscores why platforms should be mandated to provide both large-scale data access and real-time updates about changes to their algorithmic systems.

When platforms control access to the “product”, they also control the science around its impacts. Ultimately, these self-research funding models allow platforms to put profit before people – and divert attention away from the need for more transparency and independent oversight.

Timothy Graham, Associate Professor in Digital Media, Queensland University of Technology

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

Almost one-sixth of Earth’s land surface is covered in otherworldly landscapes with a name that may also be unfamiliar: karst. These landscapes are like natural sculpture parks, with dramatic terrain dotted with caves and towers of bedrock slowly sculpted by water over thousands of years.

Karst landscapes are beautiful and ecologically important. They also represent a record of Earth’s past temperature and moisture levels.

However, it can be quite challenging to figure out exactly when karst landscapes formed. In our new work published today in Science Advances, we show a new way to find the age of these enigmatic landscapes, which will help us understand our planet’s past in more detail.

The challenge

Karst is defined by the removal of material. The rock towers and caves we see today are what is left after water dissolved the rest during wet periods of the past.

This is what makes their age hard to determine. How do you date the disappearance of something?

Traditionally, scientists have loosely bracketed the age of a karst surface by dating the material above and beneath. However, this approach blurs our understanding of ancient climate events and how ecosystems responded.

Geological clocks

In our study, we found a way to measure the age of pebble-sized iron nodules that formed at the same time as a karst landscape.

This method has the technical name of (U/Th)-He geochronology. In it, we measure how much helium is produced by the natural radioactive decay of tiny amounts of the elements uranium and thorium in the iron nodules. By comparing the amounts of uranium, thorium and helium in a sample, we can very accurately calculate the age of the nodules.

We dated microscopic fragments of iron-rich nodules from the iconic Pinnacles Desert in Nambung National Park, Western Australia.

This world-famous site is renowned for its otherworldly karst landscape of acres of limestone pillars towering metres above a sandy desert plain. The Pinnacles form part of the most extensive belt of wind-blown carbonate rock in the world, stretching more than 1,000km along coastal southwestern WA.

We examined multiple microscopic shards of iron nodules that were removed from the surface of limestone pinnacles. These nodules formed in the soil that lay on top of the limestone during the period of intense weathering that created the karst. As a result, they serve as time capsules of the environmental conditions that shaped the area.

The big wet

We consistently found an age of around 100,000 years for the growth of the iron nodules. This date is supported by known ages from the rocks above and beneath the karst surface, proving the reliability of our new approach.

At the same time as chemical reactions caused growth of the iron-rich nodules within the ancient soil, limestone bedrock was rapidly and extensively dissolved to leave only remnant limestone pinnacles seen today.

From examining the entire rock sequence in the area, we think this period of intensive weathering was the wettest time in this part of WA over at least the past half a million years.

We don’t know what drove this increased rainfall. It may have been changes to atmospheric circulation patterns, or the greater influence of the ancient Leeuwin Current that runs along the shore.

Such a humid interval is in dramatic contrast to the recent droughts and increasingly dry climate of the region today.

Implications for our past

Iron-rich nodules are not unique to the Nambung Pinnacles. They have recently been used to track dramatic past environmental change elsewhere in Australia.

Dating these iron nodules will help to better document the dramatic fluctuations in Earth’s climate over the past three million years as ice sheets have grown and shrunk.

Understanding the timing and environmental context of karst formation throughout this time offers profound insights into past climate conditions, environments and the landscapes in which ancient creatures lived.

Climate changes and resulting environmental shifts have been crucial in shaping ecosystems. In particular, they have had a profound influence on our ancient hominin and human ancestors.

By linking karst formation to specific climatic intervals, we can better understand how these environmental changes may have affected early human populations.

Looking forward

The more we know about the conditions that led to the formation of past landscapes and the flora and fauna that inhabited them, the better we can appreciate the evolutionary pressures that shaped the ecosystems we see today. This in turn offers valuable information for preparing for future changes.

As human-driven climate change accelerates, learning about past climate variability and biosphere responses equips us with knowledge to anticipate and mitigate future impacts.

The ability to date karst features with greater precision may seem like a small thing – but it will help us understand how today’s landscapes and ecosystems might respond to ongoing and future climate changes.

Milo Barham, Associate Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University; Andrej Šmuc, Professor of Geology, University of Ljubljana; John Allan Webb, Associate professor, La Trobe University; Kenneth McNamara, Emeritus Fellow, Downing College, University of Cambridge; Martin Danisik, Curtin Research Fellow, Curtin University, and Matej Lipar, Research Associate, Physical Geography, ZRC SAZU

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

You know we’ve reached peak interest in artificial intelligence (AI) when Oprah Winfrey hosts a television special about it. AI is truly everywhere. And we will all have a relationship with it – whether using it, building it, governing it or even befriending it.

But what exactly is AI? While most people won’t need to know exactly how it works under the hood, we will all need to understand what it can do. In our conversations with global leaders across business, government and the arts, one thing stood out – you can’t fake it anymore. AI fluency that is.

AI isn’t just about chatbots. To help understand what it is about, we’ve developed a framework which explains the broad broad range of capabilities it offers. We call this the “capabilities stack”.

We see AI systems as having seven basic kinds of capability, each building on the ones below it in the stack. From least complex to most, these are: recognition, classification, prediction, recommendation, automation, generation and interaction.

Recognition

At its core, the kind of AI we are seeing in consumer products today identifies patterns. Unlike traditional coding, where developers explicitly program how a system works, AI “learns” these patterns from vast datasets, enabling it to perform tasks. This “learning” is essentially just advanced mathematics that turns patterns into complex probabilistic models – encoded in so-called artificial neural networks.

Once learned, patterns can be recognised – such as your face, when you open your phone, or when you clear customs at the airport.

Pattern recognition is all around us – whether it’s license plate recognition when you park your car at the mall, or when the police scan your registration. It’s used in manufacturing for quality control to detect defective parts, in health care to identify cancer in MRI scans, or to identify potholes by using buses equipped with cameras that monitor the roads in Sydney.

Classification

Once an AI system can recognise patterns, we can train it to detect subtle variations and categorise them. This is how your photo app neatly organises albums by family members, or how apps identify and label different kinds of skin lesions. AI classification is also at work behind the scenes when phone companies and banks identify spam and fraud calls.

In New Zealand, non-profit organisation Te Hiku developed an AI language model to classify thousands of hours of recordings to help revitalise Te Reo Māori, the local indigenous language.

Prediction

When AI is trained on past data, it can be used to predict future outcomes. For example, airlines use AI to predict the estimated arrival times of incoming flights and to assign gates on time so you don’t end up waiting on the tarmac.

Similarly, Google Flights uses AI to predict flight delays even before airlines announce them.

In Hong Kong, an AI prediction model saves taxpayer money by predicting when a project needs early intervention to prevent it overrunning its budget and completion date. And when you buy stuff on Amazon, the ecommerce giant uses AI to predict demand and optimise delivery routes, so you get your packages within hours, not just days.

Recommendation

Once we predict, we can make recommendations for what to do next.

If you went to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour concert at Sydney’s Accor stadium, you were kept safe thanks to AI recommendations. A system funded by the New South Wales government used data from multiple sources to analyse the movement and mood of the 80,000 strong crowd, providing real-time recommendations to ensure everyone’s safety.

AI-based recommendations are everywhere. Social media, streaming platforms, delivery services and shopping apps all use past behaviour patterns to present you with their “for you” pages. Even pig farms use pig facial recognition and tracking to alert farmers to any issues and recommend particular interventions.

Automation

It’s a small step from prediction and recommendation to full automation.

In Germany, large wind turbines use AI to keep the lesser spotted eagle safe. An AI algorithm detects approaching birds and automatically slows down the turbines allowing them to pass unharmed.

Closer to home, Melbourne Water uses AI to autonomously regulate its pump control system to reduce energy costs by around 20% per year. In Western Sydney, local buses on key routes are AI-enabled: if a bus is running late, the system predicts its arrival at the next intersection and automatically green-lights its journey.

Generation

Once we can encode complex patterns into neural networks, we can also use these patterns to generate new, similar ones. This works with all kinds of data – images, text, audio and video.

Image generation is now built into many new phones. Don’t like the look on someone’s face? Change into a smile. Want a boat on that lake? Just add it in. And it doesn’t stop there.

Tools such as Runway let you manipulate videos or create new ones with just a text prompt. ElevenLabs allows you to generate synthetic voices or digitise existing ones from short recordings. These can be used to narrate audiobooks, but also carry risks such as deepfake impersonation.

And we haven’t even mentioned large language models such as ChatGPT, which are transforming how we work with text and how we develop computer code. Research by McKinsey found that these models can cut the time required for complex coding tasks by up to 50%.

Interaction

Finally, generative AI also makes it possible to mimic human-like interactions.

Soon, virtual assistants, companions and digital humans will be everywhere. They will attend your Zoom meeting to take notes and schedule follow-up meetings.

Interactive AI assistants, such as IBM’s AskHR bot, will answer your HR questions. And when you get home, your AI friend app will entertain you, while digital humans on social media are ready to sell you anything, any time. And with voice mode activated, even ChatGPT gets in on the inter-action.

Amid the excitement around generative AI, it is important to remember that AI is more than chatbots. It impacts many things beyond the flashy conversational tools – often in ways that quietly improve everyday processes.

Sandra Peter, Director of Sydney Executive Plus, University of Sydney and Kai Riemer, Professor of Information Technology and Organisation, University of Sydney

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

Any runner will tell you there’s nothing better than slipping on a brand new pair of shoes. But how regularly should runners fork out hundreds of dollars on their next pair?

Conventional wisdom tells us the average lifespan of a running shoe is around 500 to 800 kilometres. But where did this advice come from, and is it based on science?

Some evidence comes from impact testing with machines designed to simulate the shoe repeatedly contacting the ground during running. Other evidence comes from monitoring runners who have used shoes in the real world for long periods.

This research is often focused on shoe materials and structure. But we think more compelling markers for the runner are shoe comfort, performance benefit and injury risk.

Rather than seeking a “one-size-fits-all” answer to how many kilometres your shoes should be limited to, it’s also better to consider individual signs based on your shoe type and its purpose.

The three signs to watch for

Runners tend to replace their shoes for three main reasons:

1. they believe their performance is being negatively impacted
2. their shoes are leading to some bodily discomfort which may cause (or has already caused) an injury
3. the shoes are no longer comfortable or “feel” as good as they used to.

So what does the evidence say about these factors?

Performance

Some shoe material properties do contribute to enhanced running efficiency. Degrading these materials by racking up the kilometres may hinder peak performance on race day.

This is most clearly seen in carbon fibre plate shoes used by modern elite runners to achieve rapid road race times. The design features thought to drive this are the combination of highly compliant and resilient midsole foam and a stiff embedded carbon fibre plate, which support energy storage and return.

Runners will typically “save” these shoes for race day and replace them after fewer kilometres, compared to conventional running shoes.

The available research does support the performance benefits of these shoes. However, it’s not known how long the benefits last relative to kilometres of wear.

To our best knowledge, there’s only one study on running performance and shoe wear, but unfortunately it did not involve carbon fibre plate shoes. A University of Connecticut 2020 master’s thesis investigated eight college-level runners over 400 miles (643km) of Nike Pegasus shoe use.

Large reductions in running economy were reported at 240km, and this was statistically significant at 320km. No reduction was observed at 160km.

So, if you’re chasing personal best times, the evidence above suggests that for peak performance, shoes should be replaced somewhere between 160 and 240km (although this is not directly based on carbon fibre plate shoe research).

It appears that minimising training kilometres for your favourite racing shoes – keeping them “fresh” – could contribute to peak performance on race day, compared to racing in a pair of old shoes.

Injury or discomfort

The link between shoe wear and injury is unclear, and based on minimal and often conflicting evidence.

One study did find that runners who alternate their running shoes have a lower risk of injury than runners who run only in the same pair of shoes over a 22-week period. Runners who alternated shoes throughout the study period would have accumulated less wear in each shoe.

This provides some support for the notion that accumulating too many kilometres in your shoes may increase risk of injury. Unfortunately, the exact age of running shoes was not reported in this study.

However, based on the running characteristics reported, the single-shoe pair users completed an average of 320km in their shoes (after adjusting for a small fraction who had to replace shoes during the study).

This was compared to the multi-shoe pair users who used an average of 3.6 pairs of shoes, ran more total kilometres, but accumulated an average of only 200km per shoe pair.

Comfort

Comfort and fit are the two most important factors to runners when selecting running shoes. Evidence linking improved shoe comfort to reduced injury rates or improved running economy is mixed, but reducing harms from poorly fitting and uncomfortable shoes is clearly a priority for runners.

Most runners land on their heel. The repeated compression of the midsole causes the material to harden, possibly after as little as 160km, according to one study from 2017. However, there was virtually no change in the amount of cushioning runners perceived under their heel after 160km. Even after using the shoes for 640km, they felt little difference – about 3%.

While at first this might seem like runners are not very good at judging when shoes lose their cushioning, it also tells us changes in perceived shoe cushioning are very gradual and may not be important for runners until they reach a certain threshold.

This amount will differ from person to person, and from shoe to shoe, but research suggests it’s not until perceived cushioning reaches about a 10% change that runners consider it meaningful.

We must be careful when applying these findings to the latest running shoes which use newer materials.

But you can use it as a rule of thumb – once you notice a drop in comfort, it’s time to get a new pair.

When to choose new shoes

Ultimately, there’s no one simple answer for when you should get new running shoes. You may also not keep close track of how many kilometres your favourite pair has racked up.

Overall, we believe the most practical advice is to keep your racing shoes “fresh” (under 240km), alternate a couple of other pairs during regular training, and replace them when you detect a notable drop in comfort.

John Arnold, Senior lecturer, Sport & Exercise Biomechanics, University of South Australia and Joel Fuller, Senior Lecturer, Department of Health Sciences, Macquarie University

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

P.J. Hogan’s classic Australian film Muriel’s Wedding is 30 and it plays as well today as it did when it had its world premiere. Muriel might have been “terrible” – but the film was a great success.

Australians love to laugh at themselves, and everyone loves an underdog. Muriel’s Wedding took more than A$15 million at the box office in Australia — making it one of the highest-grossing Australian feature films of all time.

As fun as the film is with its kitsch aesthetic, bold colour palette and garish costumes, it has a unique mix of comedy and serious drama. It slips from the absurd to painful realism, with more depth than your average comedy and a twist in the plot that made it an original take on the genre.

While Australians generally have received it as hilarious, audiences elsewhere were more attuned to the tragedy, such as Muriel’s mother Betty’s suicide following relentless bullying, and Rhonda’s illness and disability. But it worked for audiences everywhere who warmed to the representation of friendship, its emotional compassion and critique of the narrow mindedness of small-town communities.

‘We’re all Muriel’

Sometimes it is the stars who can bring in an audience and make a film successful. However, although there were a lot of experienced actors in Muriel’s Wedding, Toni Collette (Muriel) and Rachel Griffiths (Rhonda) – whose performances were exceptional – were both playing lead and supporting roles for the first time in a feature film.

It was also Hogan’s first feature, so it is unlikely star power drew in audiences (although all of them were to become stars, and Hogan later directed My Best Friend’s Wedding with Julia Roberts, one of the top romantic comedies of all time).

It did, however, have a wonderful trailer.

I asked Rachel Griffiths what she thought was the key to the film’s success and she identified its universality: it translated for an array of audiences and enabled broad identification.

She described the film as having one foot in the grotesque and the other in Ridley Scott’s 1991 getaway heist Thelma & Louise – another film about female friendship, independence and individual growth.

Griffiths gave the example of going with the film to New York on its release and discovering it was wildly meaningful to the LGBTQIA+ community. In conversation with a gay man in his late 20s, he described it as a parable for AIDS, which at that time was in full-blown crisis.

According to Griffiths, he said: “We’re all Muriel. We don’t fit in.”

Growing up in small towns where they are “the freak”, with closet musical tastes, he said:

We’re the outcasts in our family. Our fathers belittle us for being feminine. We escape to the big smoke with the promise of becoming ourselves and following our own journey. We replace our families who have rejected us with our chosen family who celebrate us.

And when one of their own is struck suddenly by this terrible affliction, like Rhonda, they are sent home in humiliation, to be looked after, which is their worst fear. The aspiration is to be rescued by the adopted family and taken back to the big city and shown unconditional love.

Griffiths says:

That’s the ending and the survival story of both Rhonda and Muriel, you go back to that kind of pride moment, to be proud of who you are.

For Griffiths, Rhonda and Muriel have “a kind of blood-sister friendship, a bond that can’t be broken”.

We all long for that deep acceptance. It is a parable of inclusion, where Muriel and Rhonda truly see and accept each other and themselves.

A feminist film

I asked Griffiths if Muriel’s Wedding was received as feminist when it was released. She replied it wasn’t at the time it was made, but more recently this has come up.

Her explanation of why this wasn’t considered 30 years ago is informative regarding film criticism. She elaborated that the critics at the time were 90% male and their take on feminism expected powerful female lead characters who pursue their goals and achieve in the face of competition.

In this story, there is a girl escaping patriarchal control. Muriel’s father, Bill Heslop (Bill Hunter), is a bully and narcissist who blames everyone else – especially the women – for his failures.

Griffiths aligns Muriel to the Cinderella myth because in the beginning she sees her value will only be ascribed to her once she marries. The film, Griffiths said, is “a fundamental kind of feminist journey”.

The central focus is Muriel’s personal growth in rejecting ideology that promotes romantic coupling as the pinnacle of happiness for women. Instead Muriel embraces her own worth and her friendship with Rhonda. Marriage is portrayed as a patriarchal structure that ideologically binds women – the marriages are variously fraudulent, starting with Tanya and Chook, then Muriel and, ultimately, her mother.

There are many elements that make Muriel’s Wedding an Australian classic, from the universal themes and relatability to how the story is able to extend beyond national borders. The film leaves us with admiration for resilience in the face of adversity, signalled by Muriel and Rhonda grinning assuredly at each other in the final scene.

It is a unique and very real comedy/drama with a highly engaging aesthetic and a feminist message. It is an opportunity to laugh at ourselves, despite quite a lot of tragedy and adversity — which is a very Australian thing to do!

The author wishes to thank Rachel Griffiths who was interviewed in Melbourne on August 17 2020.

Lisa French, Professor & Dean, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University

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

Social media is full of questionable advice. But one of the latest skincare hacks some users are sharing online is seriously worrying. Some content creators on TikTok are claiming that getting a sunburn or spending time in a tanning bed will help get rid of acne.

While natural sunlight and UV radiation have long been used to treat skin conditions, the evidence shows these techniques aren’t effective when it comes to treating acne. Not to mention that the risks of excess UV exposure far outweigh any benefits you might see in the appearance of your skin.

Phototherapy is a medical treatment that involves exposing the skin to sunlight or UV radiation in a controlled environment. It’s widely used to treat psoriasis and eczema in cases where other treatments haven’t worked or if other treatments aren’t compatible for a patient. Research shows phototherapy can help reduce inflammation and suppress the skin’s immune response – both key factors in the development of these conditions.

It’s important to note, however, that this procedure is done in a clinical setting where the doses of radiation used on the skin are controlled precisely to minimise the harmful effects of UV radiation exposure. Pre-treatment tests are also performed to reduce the risk of burning.

But in the case of acne, there’s little evidence that UV exposure is beneficial.

One 2023 retrospective cohort study of 19,939 participants, which looked at their previous six years of UV exposure prior to enrolment, did find that long-term exposure to relatively low-levels of UVB (a type of invisible radiation that’s emitted by the sun) each day (around one hour) was associated with a decreased risk of moderate to severe acne in young adults.

But there were many limitations to the study. The precise doses of UV the participants were exposed to was not directly measured. Instead, it was based on calculations done using location and weather data to understand how much sunlight participants were exposed to. This study also did not consider the negative implications of exposure.

Studies in human skin cells have also shown some potential benefits from UVB rays – including killing Propionibacterium acnes, the bacterium thought to be responsible for acne. But these benefits have only been shown in cells and have never been replicated in human studies. Most of these studies also concluded that any beneficial effect was probably minimal and not sufficient for therapeutic use – especially considering the negative side-effects of UV radiation.

A 2023 narrative review of all the studies conducted on sun exposure and acne between 1992 and 2022 has found that exposure to UV radiation is unlikely to improve acne symptoms. And, in some cases, it may actually worsen acne. This may be because exposure to UVB radiation can activate immune cells which worsen the inflammation acne causes and increase sebum production – a known risk factor for acne.

Sunburn risks

Not only is there no evidence that the sun can treat acne, there are also many well-studied downsides from sun exposure – such as a significantly increased risk of skin cancer.

Studies show that even just one incidence of a blistering sunburn in childhood or adolescence can double the chances of developing skin cancer later in life. The risk of developing skin cancer increases the more often you get sunburned. This is due to the fact that UV exposure causes significant DNA damage in our skin cells.

UV exposure is also a significant contributor to premature skin ageing. This is because it damages the collagen and elastin in the skin which can then lead to sagging and wrinkles.

When going out into the sun, it’s important to:

1. Use broad-spectrum sunscreen with at least SPF 30 – reapplying every two hours or after swimming or sweating.
2. Seek shade, especially during peak sun hours (typically 10am to 4pm).
3. Wear protective clothing, including wide-brimmed hats and UV-blocking sunglasses.

At the moment, the most effective acne treatments are those which can be purchased at the pharmacy or prescribed by your doctor.

Severe acne can be treated with oral antibiotics that have an anti-inflammatory effect. Isotretinoin may also be prescribed. This is a synthetic derivitive of vitamin A. It reduces oils in the skin (sebum), skin bumps and the amount of acne-causing bacteria in the skin. Isotretinoin is highly effective in clearing acne lesions (by 85% in one study after four months of use). Only around one-quarter of patients who use it require a second course of treatment.

While these treatments are effective, concerns about the drug’s side-effects (namely mood changes) may be why some acne sufferers are seeking out alternative treatments. But a recent study of over 30,000 isotretinoin patients found no association with isotretinoin and mood changes, suggesting this side-effect is extremely rare.

It’s important to note that anyone prescribed acne medication should be careful when going out into the sun. Isotretinoin and tetracyclines (a class of antibiotics) can act as photosensitisers, causing even greater damage when the skin is exposed to the sun. One study reported that between 20-40% of acne patients taking a common type of tetracycline experienced photosensitivity.

This is why it’s important to wear sunscreen when going outside on sunny days. Not only will it protect your skin and lower your risk of skin cancer, some evidence also shows sunscreen use can benefit people with acne by reducing inflammation in the skin’s cells and reducing photosensitivity.

Overall, several effective, safe options to treat acne already exist. If you’re considering using the sun or a tanning bed to treat it because you feel your current treatment isn’t working, it’s important to speak with your doctor instead of putting yourself at risk of complications.

Karl Lawrence, Research fellow, King's College London and Wisam Alwan, Clinical Research Fellow in Dermatology at King's College London/Consultant Dermatologist Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, King's College London

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

We recently asked subscribers to our arts and culture newsletter, Something Good, to name their favourite cover song. We received a range of replies, from Beyoncé’s reimagining of the Dolly Parton classic, Jolene, to Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged recording of The Man Who Sold the World by David Bowie. Here’s how seven of our academic experts responded when we asked them the same question.

1. Heaven, by DJ Sammy (2001)

The late 1990s and early 2000s saw a glut of Euro-dance songs troubling the higher reaches of the UK charts, as artists like Alice Deejay, Fragma and Sash (all aliases for male DJs fronted by female guest vocalists) married heavy trance beats with catchy melodies. But above all others stood 2001’s Heaven, by DJ Sammy. A shining example of the energetic but straightforward approach to music that characterised the era, it had a generation of club-goers running for the dancefloor.

Heaven saw Spanish producer Sammy turn a mawkish 1983 Bryan Adams track into the ultimate dance track for all seasons, complete with a relentless beat, hypnotic synth riff, and earworm-of-all-earworm choruses delivered by Dutch singer Dominique Rijpma van Hulst (stage name Do). It’s fun, unapologetically simple, yet somehow seems to encompass every emotion going. An era-defining track that needs to be played loud and proud.

Glenn Fosbraey

2. Me and the Devil Blues, by Gil Scott-Heron (2014)

A great cover is more than a different version of a song – it re-articulates the track and injects it with new meaning. Some do this by radically changing the genre, others by making the song so intensely personal that it is difficult to imagine anyone else singing it. But Gil Scott-Heron’s cover of Robert Johnson’s Me and the Devil Blues (1938), on Scott-Heron’s final album, accomplishes an even rarer feat.

It layers the pain and anguish of a modern black life lived in the heavy bootprint of the fight for civil rights, de-industrialisation and the “war on drugs”, over the legend of original singer Robert Johnson’s daring and tragic story in the Jim Crow south.

Scott-Heron’s cover is an opaque homage that ruminates on living in the echoes of an American music legend’s ruins. It’s a reminder of the continuing horrors of racism, and the enduring artistry of resistance and resilience.

Justin Patch

3. Helter Skelter, by Siouxsie and the Banshees (1978)

As a young artist from Liverpool who was newly signed to Deltasonic Records in the early 2000s, I was keen to find inspiration from artists other than our beloved Beatles. Little did I expect that much of this inspiration would circle back to Paul, John, George and Ringo when I discovered Siouxsie and the Banshees’ album The Scream (1978).

Their cover of Helter Skelter from The Beatles’ White Album (1968) blew me away. Personally, I think this is the best cover of a Beatles song ever, performed by a woman who wasn’t afraid to take control of it.

Eva Petersen

4. Wild is the Wind, by David Bowie

David Bowie frequently supplemented his original material with thematically connected cover songs. There are covers on Hunky Dory (1971), The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust (1972) and Aladdin Sane (1973). These moments are often the weakest spots on Bowie’s records – with one major exception.

Bowie’s 1976 album Station To Station closes with his take on Wild Is The Wind, reworking Johnny Mathis’s two-minute original from 1957 into a soaring and theatrical six-minute showstopper. Bowie’s band dutifully rises to the occasion, decorating the track with elegant lead guitar work and one of the most exquisite drum performances ever committed to tape.

Never one to underplay, Bowie gives the vocal performance of a lifetime, culminating in a soaring climax guaranteed to leave goosebumps on any listener with a pulse.

Daniel Ash

5. Against All Odds, by The Postal Service (2004)

A good cover version needs to find ways to reinvent the texture and structure of the original. Beyond The Postal Service’s iconic 2003 album Give Up, the indie-tronica outfit have a tiny repertoire. For my money, their cover of Phil Collins’s Against All Odds (1984) was the only bright spot in the horrendous Josh Hartnett movie, Wicker Park (2004).

The familiar texture and soundscape of Give Up is heard in the distant and crackly vocal, reverse delays and keyboard of the opening verse and chorus. This gives way to a middle section which is cleaner and more purposeful than the first, with a brighter tempo. A final outro section repeats the lyrical hook – “take a look at me now” – with gentle guitar bringing the song to a close.

With this cover, The Postal Service manage to remake an emotional love ballad into a more angsty and complex work with their own musical stamp.

Conor Caldwell

6. Shipbuilding, by Suede

I always tell students to look at their hero’s heroes and find the covers they chose to do. It is often the case that we discover a classic song from a cover.

The 1995 charity album HELP featured 20 songs (many of them cover versions) by 20 artists in support of children displaced by the Bosnian War.

Suede’s cover of Shipbuilding (written by Elvis Costello and Clive Langer in 1982) was the first version of the song I heard. Such is the power of the piece, I suspect it was not difficult to convey the message. Written during the Falklands war, it concerned the resurgence of the shipyards caused by the necessity to replace ships lost in the conflict.

This led me to discover the definitive 1982 version sung by Robert Wyatt and featuring Costello, which has superb brushed drums and double bass. A masterpiece.

Howard Monk

7. Such Great Heights, by Iron and Wine

In this cover, Sam Beam of Iron and Wine strips what could be potentially considered the calling card of The Postal Service’s small but perfectly formed oeuvre to its bare bones. Featuring nothing more than a hushed voice, gently plucked acoustic guitar and subtle flourish of mandolin, the yearning romanticism of the lyrics is endearingly exposed.

Curiously, The Postal Service chose to include this wonderfully considered cover version as a b-side to their own single release of the song in 2003. This may have prompted its use in the divisive indie movie Garden State (2004), elevating Iron and Wine to deservedly greater heights in the process.

Steve Ryan

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Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester; Conor Caldwell, Assistant Professor in Irish Traditional Music, University of Limerick; Daniel Ash, Visiting music lecturer, University of Winchester; Eva Petersen, Lecturer in music, Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts; Howard Monk, Senior Teaching Fellow, Music Management, University of Southampton; Justin Patch, Associate Professor and Chair of Music, Vassar College, and Stephen Ryan, Course Director, MA in Songwriting, University of Limerick

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

OpenAI, the company that made ChatGPT, has launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) system called Strawberry. It is designed not just to provide quick responses to questions, like ChatGPT, but to think or “reason”.

This raises several major concerns. If Strawberry really is capable of some form of reasoning, could this AI system cheat and deceive humans?

OpenAI can program the AI in ways that mitigate its ability to manipulate humans. But the company’s own evaluations rate it as a “medium risk” for its ability to assist experts in the “operational planning of reproducing a known biological threat” – in other words, a biological weapon. It was also rated as a medium risk for its ability to persuade humans to change their thinking.

It remains to be seen how such a system might be used by those with bad intentions, such as con artists or hackers. Nevertheless, OpenAI’s evaluation states that medium-risk systems can be released for wider use – a position I believe is misguided.

Strawberry is not one AI “model”, or program, but several – known collectively as o1. These models are intended to answer complex questions and solve intricate maths problems. They are also capable of writing computer code – to help you make your own website or app, for example.

An apparent ability to reason might come as a surprise to some, since this is generally considered a precursor to judgment and decision making – something that has often seemed a distant goal for AI. So, on the surface at least, it would seem to move artificial intelligence a step closer to human-like intelligence.

When things look too good to be true, there’s often a catch. Well, this set of new AI models is designed to maximise their goals. What does this mean in practice? To achieve its desired objective, the path or the strategy chosen by AI may not always necessarily be fair, or align with human values.

True intentions

For example, if you were to play chess against Strawberry, in theory, could its reasoning allow it to hack the scoring system rather than figure out the best strategies for winning the game?

The AI might also be able to lie to humans about its true intentions and capabilities, which would pose a serious safety concern if it were to be deployed widely. For example, if the AI knew it was infected with malware, could it “choose” to conceal this fact in the knowledge that a human operator might opt to disable the whole system if they knew?

These would be classic examples of unethical AI behaviour, where cheating or deceiving is acceptable if it leads to a desired goal. It would also be quicker for the AI, as it wouldn’t have to waste any time figuring out the next best move. It may not necessarily be morally correct, however.

This leads to a rather interesting yet worrying discussion. What level of reasoning is Strawberry capable of and what could its unintended consequences be? A powerful AI system that’s capable of cheating humans could pose serious ethical, legal and financial risks to us.

Such risks become grave in critical situations, such as designing weapons of mass destruction. OpenAI rates its own Strawberry models as “medium risk” for their potential to assist scientists in developing chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons.

OpenAI says: “Our evaluations found that o1-preview and o1-mini can help experts with the operational planning of reproducing a known biological threat.” But it goes on to say that experts already have significant expertise in these areas, so the risk would be limited in practice. It adds: “The models do not enable non-experts to create biological threats, because creating such a threat requires hands-on laboratory skills that the models cannot replace.”

Powers of persuasion

OpenAI’s evaluation of Strawberry also investigated the risk that it could persuade humans to change their beliefs. The new o1 models were found to be more persuasive and more manipulative than ChatGPT.

OpenAI also tested a mitigation system that was able to reduce the manipulative capabilities of the AI system. Overall, Strawberry was labelled a medium risk for “persuasion” in Open AI’s tests.

Strawberry was rated low risk for its ability to operate autonomously and on cybersecurity.

Open AI’s policy states that “medium risk” models can be released for wide use. In my view, this underestimates the threat. The deployment of such models could be catastrophic, especially if bad actors manipulate the technology for their own pursuits.

This calls for strong checks and balances that will only be possible through AI regulation and legal frameworks, such as penalising incorrect risk assessments and the misuse of AI.

The UK government stressed the need for “safety, security and robustness” in their 2023 AI white paper, but that’s not nearly enough. There is an urgent need to prioritise human safety and devise rigid scrutiny protocols for AI models such as Strawberry.

Shweta Singh, Assistant Professor, Information Systems and Management, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

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

Have you noticed certain words and phrases popping up everywhere lately?

Phrases such as “delve into” and “navigate the landscape” seem to feature in everything from social media posts to news articles and academic publications. They may sound fancy, but their overuse can make a text feel monotonous and repetitive.

This trend may be linked to the increasing use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs). These tools are designed to make writing easier by offering suggestions based on patterns in the text they were trained on.

However, these patterns can lead to the overuse of certain stylistic words and phrases, resulting in works that don’t closely resemble genuine human writing.

The rise of stylistic language

Generative AI tools are trained on vast amounts of text from various sources. As such, they tend to favour the most common words and phrases in their outputs.

Since ChatGPT’s release, the use of words such as “delves”, “showcasing”, “underscores”, “pivotal”, “realm” and “meticulous” has surged in academic writing.

And although most of the research has looked specifically at academic writing, the stylistic language trend has appeared in various other forms of writing, including student essays and school applications. As one editor told Forbes, “tapestry” is a particularly common offending term in cases where AI was used to write a draft:

I no longer believe there’s a way to innocently use the word ‘tapestry’ in an essay; if the word ‘tapestry’ appears, it was generated by ChatGPT.

Why it’s a problem

The overuse of certain words and phrases leads to writing losing its personal touch. It becomes harder to distinguish between individual voices and perspectives and everything takes on a robotic undertone.

Also, words such as “revolutionise” or “intriguing” – while they might seem like they’re giving you a more polished product – can actually make writing harder to understand.

Stylish and/or flowery language doesn’t communicate ideas as effectively as clear and straightforward language. Beyond this, one study found simple and precise words not only enhance comprehension, but also make the writer appear more intelligent.

Lastly, the overuse of stylistic words can make writing boring. Writing should be engaging and varied; relying on a few buzzwords will lead to readers tuning out.

There’s currently no research that can give us an exact list of the most common stylistic words used by ChatGPT; this would require an exhaustive analysis of every output ever generated. That said, here’s what ChatGPT itself presented when asked the question.

Possible solutions

So how can we fix this? Here are some ideas:

1. Be aware of repetition

If you’re using a tool such as ChatGPT, pay attention to how often certain words or phrases come up. If you notice the same terms appearing again and again, try switching them out for simpler and/or more original language. Instead of saying “delve into” you could just say “explore”, or “look at it closely”.

2. Ask for clear language

Much of what you get out of ChatGPT will come down to the specific prompt you give it. If you don’t want complex language, try asking it to “write clearly, without using complex words”.

3. Edit your work

ChatGPT can be a helpful starting point for writing many different types of text, but editing its outputs remains important. By reviewing and changing certain words and phrases, you can still add your own voice to the output.

Being creative with synonyms is one way to do this. You could use a thesaurus, or think more carefully about what you’re trying to communicate in your text – and how you might do this in a new way.

4. Customise AI settings

Many AI tools such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Claude allow you to adjust the writing style through settings or tailored prompts. For example, you can prioritise clarity and simplicity, or create an exclusion list to avoid certain words.

By being more mindful of how we use generative AI and making an effort to write with clarity and originality, we can avoid falling into the AI style trap.

In the end, writing should be about expressing your ideas in your own way. While ChatGPT can help, it’s up to each of us to make sure we’re saying what we really want to – and not what an AI tool tells us to.

Ritesh Chugh, Associate Professor - Information and Communications Technology, CQUniversity Australia

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

This article is part of a series on the great internet letdown. Read the rest of the series.

Ever found yourself unable to resist checking out a social media notification? Or sending a random picture just to keep a Snapchat “streak” going? Or simply getting stuck staring at YouTube because it auto-played yet another cute cat video?

If so, you’re far from alone. And if we adults can’t resist such digital temptations, how can we expect children to do any better?

Many digital environments are not designed with the best interest of users in mind – and this is especially true of games, apps and platforms commonly used by kids and teens.

Designers use persuasive design techniques to make users spend more time on apps or platforms, so they can make more money selling ads. Below, we explain some of the most common design tricks used in popular games, social media and apps.

Decision-making made easy 🔀

Social media and streaming platforms strive to provide “seamless” user experiences. This makes it easy to stay engaged without needing to click anything very often, which also minimises any obvious opportunities where we might disengage.

These seamless experiences include things such as auto-play when streaming videos, or “infinite scrolling” on social media. When algorithms present us with a steady flow of content, shaped by what we have liked or engaged with in the past, we must put in extra effort to stop watching. Unsurprisingly, we often decide to stay put.

Rewards and dopamine hits 🧠

Another way to keep children engaged is by using rewards, such as stars, diamonds, stickers, badges or other “points” in children’s apps. “Likes” on social media are no different.

Rewards trigger the release of a chemical in our brains – dopamine – which not only makes us feel good but also leaves us wanting more.

Rewards can be used to promote good behaviour, but not always. In some children’s apps, rewards are doubled if users watch advertisements.

Loot boxes and ‘gambling’ 💰

Variable rewards have been found to be especially effective. When you do not know when you will get a certain reward or desired item, you are more likely to keep going.

In games, variable rewards can often be found (or purchased) in the form of “loot boxes”. Loot boxes might be chests, treasures, or stacks of cards containing a random reward. Because of the unpredictable reward, some researchers have described loot boxes as akin to gambling, even though the games do not always involve real money.

Sometimes in-game currency (fake game money) can be bought with real money and used to “gamble” for rare characters and special items. This is very tempting for young people.

In one of our (as yet unpublished) studies, a 12-year-old student admitted to spending several hundred dollars to obtain a desired character in the popular game Genshin Impact.

The lure of streaks 🔥

Another problematic way of using rewards in design is negative reinforcement. For instance, when you are at risk of a negative outcome (like losing something good), you feel compelled to continue a particular behaviour.

“Streaks” work like this. If you do not do the same task for several days in a row, you will not get the extra rewards promised. Language learning app DuoLingo uses streaks, but so does Snapchat, a popular social media app. Research has shown a correlation between Snapchat streaks and problematic smartphone use among teens.

Streaks can also make money for apps directly. If you miss a day and lose your streak, you can often pay to restore it.

Loss of reputation 👎

Reputation is important on social media. Think of the number of Facebook friends you have, or the number of likes your post receives.

Sometimes designers build on our fear of losing our reputation. For instance, they can do this by adding a leaderboard that ranks users based on their score.

While you may have heard of the use of leaderboards in games, they are also common in popular educational apps such as Kahoot! or Education Perfect. Leaderboards introduce an element of competition that many students enjoy.

However, for some this competition has negative consequences – especially for those languishing low in the ranks.

Similarly, Snapchat has a SnapScore where reputational loss is still at play. You do not want a lower score than your friends! This makes you want to keep using the app.

Exploiting feelings of connection 🥰

Another tool in the designers’ bag of tricks is capitalising on the emotional ties or connections users form with influencers or celebrities on social media, or favourite media characters (such as Elmo or Peppa pig) for younger children.

While these connections can foster a sense of belonging, they can also be exploited for commercial gain, such as when influencers promote commercial products, or characters urge in-app purchases.

What can parents do? 🤷

Persuasive design isn’t inherently bad. Users want apps and games to be engaging, like we do for movies or TV shows. However, some design “tricks” simply serve commercial interests, often at the expense of users’ wellbeing.

It is not all bleak, though. Here are a few steps parents can take to help kids stay on top of the apps:

• have early and ongoing discussions with children about ideas such as the underlying commercial intent of what they are engaging with

• model good digital choices of not giving in to persuasive design, such as by avoiding digital distractions yourself

• use trustworthy resources to help in digital decision-making, such as Common Sense Media and Dark Pattern Games.

For the moment, the responsibility for managing children’s interactions with the digital realm falls largely on individuals and families.

Some governments are beginning to take action, but measures such as blanket age-based bans on social media or other platforms will only shield children temporarily. A better approach for governments and regulators would be to focus on safety by design: the idea that the safety and rights of users should be the starting point of any app, product or service, rather than an afterthought.

Chris Zomer, Associate Research Fellow at the Centre of the Digital Child, Deakin University and Sumudu Mallawaarachchi, Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, University of Wollongong

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

It’s almost two years since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in late 2022. Since then, educators worldwide have been grappling with what generative artificial intelligence might mean for classrooms and learning.

ChatGPT has been met with both anxiety and a sense of optimism. While there has been a lot of discussion about what is happening in universities, there has been less attention given to schools.

We have been looking at trials of AI in schools in South Australia. Here’s what we found.

What has happened so far in Australia?

Most Australian states initially banned ChatGPT and other generative AI tools in government schools (many private schools have been using the technology).

In a different approach, the SA government began a trial of AI in schools in 2023 with its own tool, EdChat.

Other jurisdictions have since reconsidered their stance. For example, at the start of 2024, New South Wales began trialling its own AI tool.

In November 2023, the federal government also published a framework for generative AI in schools, which said AI has “great potential” to help teachers and students, and to reduce administrative workloads.

Last month, a federal parliamentary inquiry recommended generative AI in schools should be a “national priority”, finding the benefits of AI outweigh its significant risks and challenges.

What happened in South Australia?

EdChat is a generative AI tool owned by the SA Department for Education, which was designed with Microsoft. It can be used in classrooms and at home. According to the department, it has “extra safety features” to protect students’ privacy and stop them accessing inappropriate content.

In the first phase of the trial, EdChat was used in eight SA government high schools for eight weeks. In the second phase, a further eight schools were included.

We have been evaluating the trial using survey data from about 90 teachers and 700 students. A journal article on this work is currently under review. In this article, we speak about our results from teachers.

‘It reduces time pressure’

Teachers told us they felt safer using EdChat than other tools such as ChatGPT, because student data is not being used to train generative AI models.

However, teachers still wanted to know more about how the student data is stored and who can access EdChat records.

Teachers also reported significant benefits of the tool. They said it helped save time developing lesson plans and learning materials – allowing for more time with students in the classroom.

One teacher told us how the tool had been adopted by the class.

We nicknamed it Eddy as a class and Eddy is now embedded as part of our class culture.

Teachers also used EdChat to provide personalised learning activities to students and “reduce time pressure and brain power required to create [teaching examples] and plan fun activities”. EdChat also allowed students to get personalised feedback or support when teachers were not around.

‘We need to be careful’

Teachers noted issues with hallucinations (when the AI comes up with nonsense) and incorrect information. This means students need to have the skills to recognise this.

As one teacher told us:

I think we need to be careful since students can treat AI like how they treat anything on the internet, without any critical thinking and taking it at face value.

They also said students need to learn to write better prompts and develop their critical thinking skills for working with AI.

They said content filters could also be challenging. While designed to keep students safe, they sometimes interfered with learning, especially for sensitive topics such as history, reproductive health or politics. For example, one history teacher said the “censorship was difficult to get around”.

Teachers also said it was more difficult to work out whether students’ work was plagiarised or not.

What happens now?

The SA government is looking at ways to expand the use of EdChat in schools.

Our research suggests we need to do more work in several areas.

The first is specific education for students around how to use AI critically and effectively.

We also need more research now about how AI is being used in different schools. There are no large-scale studies yet in Australia but there is growing evidence from other parts of the world, such as Estonia, the United States and United Kingdom, which show AI is significantly changing the way teachers are teaching. This includes spending more time on students’ critical thinking skills and using AI to generate ideas.

We also need to make sure all students can gain access to AI (not just those who can afford the technology) and that the AI itself it not biased against minorities.

Meanwhile, teachers need more support and professional development, and schools need help to plan and make changes. This includes a wider community awareness of the profound effects these new technologies are having and will have on the teaching profession and student learning.

Vitomir Kovanovic, Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning (C3L), Education Futures, University of South Australia; Maarten de Laat, Professor of Augmented and Networked Learning, Director Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning (C3L), Academic Lead AI for LIFE CRC bid development, Education Futures, University of South Australia, and Rebecca Marrone, Lecturer Learning Sciences and Development, The Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning (C3L), Education Futures, University of South Australia

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A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution lifts the veil on what happens when octopuses and fish hunt together. As it turns out, this cross-species relationship is more complex than anyone expected.

Animals of the same species often cooperate – work together to reach some kind of goal. But it’s relatively rare to find cooperation between individuals from different species.

A classic example you’ll be familiar with is the close relationship between dogs and humans, whether in the context of herding sheep or hunting. In these situations, the dog and the human work together to achieve a goal.

That’s mammals. But underwater species also sometimes cooperate. A nice example is the joint hunting behaviour of moray eels and grouper. The grouper approaches the moray and signals that it wishes to hunt. The eel responds in kind, and off they go.

During these hunting forays, the grouper uses signals to indicate where prey may be hidden in the coral matrix. It’s a synergy made in heaven: the eel can scare the prey fish from hiding places among the coral, while the grouper patrols over the top. There is literally no place for prey to hide.

For the eels and grouper, the chances of catching their dinner are greatly improved when hunting together compared to hunting on their own.

Who’s in charge here?

While researchers have described these behaviours before, one question remains unanswered. Who, exactly, is in charge of these cross-species interactions?

Who decides what they are going to do, where and when? Are the different players “democratic”, in that they come to some form of compromise, or does one species take the lead and the other simply follows (that is, they are “despotic”)?

In an international collaboration, biologist Eduardo Sampaio and colleagues have investigated cross-species interactions between the usually solitary day octopus (Octopus cyanea) and several fish species, such as goatfish and groupers.

The fish and the octopus share a common goal – to increase their hunting efficiency. The traditional view of octopus-fish hunting groups assumed that the octopus is the producer, and the fish simply follow along and opportunistically pick up the scraps.

With its long, flexible arms, the octopus explores all the nooks and crannies of the hunting ground, flushing out prey the fish can then take advantage of. In this scenario, the octopus would be solely in charge of decisions and the fish just follow (that is, it’s an exploitative, despotic relationship).

However, when researchers took a closer look, it appeared perhaps this relationship is not as simplistic as previously believed. But without fine-scale analysis providing hard evidence, it is difficult to work out the precise details of how this cooperation works.

What did the new study find?

Using sophisticated behavioural analyses of 3D videos captured from 120 hours of diving, Sampaio and team found that each partner in the interaction plays a specific role. There was, in fact, no true leader – they are democratic.

The fish were responsible for exploring the environment and deciding where to move, while the octopus would decide if and when to move. Interestingly, controlled experiments showed the octopuses were guided by social information provided by the fishes.

When partnered with blue goatfish, the octopus foraging tactics where more focused and efficient. When partnered with blacktip groupers, they were less so. So, the nature of the hunting relationship varied depending on who’s involved.

The researchers concluded that, overall, success rates for capturing prey were higher for the octopus when foraging with fishy partners.

The details revealed by this study suggest this relationship is far more sophisticated than other cross-species hunting associations examined to date.

Despite the huge evolutionary gap between these animals (the equivalent of about 550 million years), both fish and octopus show clear signs of social competence and advanced cognition.

Culum Brown, Professor, Macquarie University

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In the trailer for Ridley Scott’s hotly anticipated sequel to Gladiator (2000), a new gladiator (played by Paul Mescal) goes to battle in “the greatest temple Rome ever built – the Colosseum”.

He comes up against naval warfare, a cutthroat promoter (Denzel Washington) and a stampeding rhino. But how much of this really took place in Roman times? As always with films based in the past, pedantic historians will jump in to assess the degree of cinematic licence and historical misinterpretation. So it is with the forthcoming Gladiator II.

Did gladiators fight rhinos?

One thing that certainly did not happen was a warrior mounted on a rhinoceros (even a non-computer-generated one) charging at a group of gladiators. However, there is a record of a rhino at the inauguration of the Colosseum in 80BC. It didn’t fight men, but a bull, bear, buffalo, bison, lion and two steers. The other rare mentions of rhinos in Rome are of those in menageries, to be admired as exotic creatures.

This Roman interest in foreign, wild animals was the basis of the initial beast spectacles which began in 275BC with an exhibition of captured war elephants. Such non-violent displays of animals continued into the imperial era, but in 186BC the first staged animal hunt (venatio), featuring both lions and leopards, took place and by 169BC beast hunts had become an official part of republican state festivals.

Later, under the emperors, collecting and transporting beasts, especially unusual and foreign ones, to be displayed – but more often killed – demonstrated imperial power, territorial control and the vastness of the empire. Thousands of animals were brought from Africa and elsewhere to Roman arenas to be slaughtered for entertainment and the meat from the dead animals was given away to the spectators (it was easier than trying to dispose of the many carcasses).

Those who fought the beasts were not gladiators but specially trained hunters (venatores) armed with spears. The venatio could also feature fights between animals, as with the Colosseum rhinoceros, but most often the contest consisted of bulls against an elephant or bear. Animal hunts outlasted gladiatorial combats as a source of spectator entertainment, but as both the size of the empire and imperial funds diminished, greater reliance was placed on domestically reared “wild” animals.

Were there sea battles in the Colosseum?

More credence in historical terms can be given to the film’s staged sea battle (naumachia) in the flooded Colosseum. Such spectacles were expensive to stage and were reserved for special occasions.

The first one recorded was for Emperor Augustus in 2BC. Held on an artificial lake, it featured 30 large ships carrying some 3,000 marines plus an unspecified number of rowers. Participants in a naumachia, typically either convicted criminals or prisoners of war, were expected to kill each other or drown, though, the demonstration of fighting ability and courage could gain them a pardon.

The grandest sea battle was provided by Emperor Claudius on Lake Fucinus, a spectacle involving 100 ships and some 19,000 marines and oarsmen. It was at this event that the fighting men reportedly said “hail, emperor, we who are about to die salute you”, mistakenly assigned to gladiators in so many films, including the first Gladiator.

Literary sources (not always to be trusted in antiquity as they were often written well after alleged events) claim that the Colosseum was flooded for a sea battle at its inauguration. After some debate, historians now accept that the engineering mechanisms were in place so that, at least in its early days, the Colosseum could have accommodated a naumachia.

Did a thumbs down really mean death for a gladiator?

Gladiator II also showcases the misconstrued sporting legacy of the thumbs up signal to spare a defeated gladiator who requested mercy or the converse of a thumbs down from those who wished him to die.

The arena was a large, noisy place and hand signals were often used as a means of communication. Indeed, rather than verbally requesting mercy, the defeated warrior himself would raise the index finger of his right hand, or even the hand itself, both of which were recognised pleas for clemency.

When the crowd opted for the death of a fighter they indicated this by means of pollice verso, literally a turned thumb, with no direction specified. When the hand was waved the sign indicated that the gladiator’s throat should be cut by his conqueror. Those who wished to save the vanquished, but courageous, fighter gave the sign pollice compresso, a compressed thumb but one often hidden from sight so as not to cause visual confusion.

Gladiators were valuable assets. Promoters, who had paid a hiring fee (typically 10-20% of their value) for them to fight, were reluctant to incur the full asset value demanded as compensation should they die. Especially when, at the crowd’s insistence, they could have a choice in the matter.

In many instances the event had been promoted to curry favour with the spectators so to go against their wishes would be counterproductive. However, whether the ultimate decision-maker gave a thumbs up or thumbs down is debatable. The idea that this occurred seems to have developed around 1872 with the popularity of a painting by French artist, Jean-Léon Gérôme. In it he depicts vestal virgins giving the dreaded sign. Although titled Pollice Verso, it became conventionally referred to as “the thumbs down painting”.

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Wray Vamplew, Emeritus Professor of Sport, University of Stirling

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In our Guide to the Classics series, experts explain key works of literature.

This month marks the 250th anniversary of the publication of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s celebrated and controversial novel Die Leiden des Jungen Werther. Commonly known in English as The Sorrows of Young Werther, it has endured in the popular imagination.

Goethe wrote the semi-autobiographical novel as a young, idealistic man, spurred by his infatuation with the engaged Charlotte Buff. Later in life, cutting a more sober figure, Goethe would look back uneasily on the frenzied product of his youth and “the pathological condition from which it sprang”.

Werther, he said, haunted him from the imaginary grave like a vengeful ghost.

Storm and stress

In essence, The Sorrows of Young Werther is a maudlin tale of unrequited love. It is an epistolary novel, presented as a collection of letters written by Werther to his friend Wilhelm. The letters reveal Werther’s sensitive and artistic soul, as well as his passionate temperament.

Werther meets and falls in love with Charlotte (or Lotte), a beautiful young woman who has been left in charge of her younger siblings after their parents‘ death. Charlotte is already engaged to a respectable and amiable older man, Albert. Caught in her orbit in the idyllic village of Wahlheim, Werther writes letters that are part romantic rhapsodies on the restorative beauty of nature and the simplicity of rural life, and part jaded tirades on the artificiality of polite society and courtly politics.

As the novel progresses, Werther’s weltschmertz – his world-weariness – takes hold, as does the torture of unfulfilled love. One night, in Albert’s absence, Werther is unable to contain his passion. He confesses his love to Charlotte, only to be rebuked for his wilfully self-destructive delusions.

Werther’s letters come to an end; it is left to the cold, officious voice of the “Editor” to put together the pieces of his last hours. The flash of gunpowder and the sound of gunshot at midnight fails to arouse alarm. Werther is found the next morning on the bloodied floor of his study. The following night he is buried in his favourite spot, with neither Charlotte nor Albert, nor any clergymen, in attendance.

Goethe’s novel is very much a product of its times. It is a key example of the German proto-Romantic movement known as Sturm und Drang – or “storm and stress” – which valourised individualism, inspiration and passion over the rational tenets of classicism and the Enlightenment. It is also a turning point in the history of the cult of “sensibility”, an 18th-century term used to describe a refined capacity to feel.

The Sorrows of Young Werther certainly tugged at the heartstrings of its readers. As a novel of letters, it seemingly offered unfettered access to Werther’s spontaneous effusions of the heart. It also sentimentalised his suicide, an act still frequently condemned in the late 18th century as sinful, criminal and cowardly.

With Werther’s death, sensibility transformed from a laudable virtue to a pathological hypersensitivity to the world, or in Charlotte’s words a “too warm sympathy with everything”. For this reason, Goethe’s man of feeling attracted as much scorn as he did sympathy.

Werthermania!

The Sorrows of Young Werther became a worldwide bestseller. It was translated into French in 1775 and English in 1779 – where it gained especial notoriety. It soon travelled across the Atlantic to America.

The novel attracted an enormous variety of responses. Novelists, playwrights, poets, illustrators and composers were drawn to reimagine Werther’s fate. In English alone, Werther would be invoked as a cultural reference point in many a Romantic novel, including those of Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

William Godwin’s poorly judged memoir of his late wife and Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, led to her being described as a “female Werther” for her suicide attempts.

Even Napoleon was a fan. When the French emperor met Goethe in Erfut in 1808, he confessed he had read the novel seven times.

More immediately, though, Werthermania would gain its hold on the popular imagination through material and visual culture. Young men of fashion would parade in Werther’s trademark yellow waistcoat, blue jacket and high boots – the very outfit worn by Goethe’s friend Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, whose 1772 suicide served as a model for Werther’s. This ensemble became visual shorthand for suicidal sensibilities, whether for sentimental or politically satirical purposes.

Images of Werther and Charlotte were reproduced on fashion accessories, including fans, gloves, jewellery and expensive porcelain and china mementos. Women could wear the perfume “Eau de Werther” (although one is puzzled by what that fragrance might have been).

Cheap sentimental prints depicting various scenes from the novel also circulated widely across Europe. Most popular were illustrations of a young and beautiful Charlotte mourning at Werther’s grave – a pathetic scene that never occurs in the novel.

Such images remind us of how the novel took on a life of its own, beyond the bounds of its fictional narrative. Other images, conversely, went to great lengths to satirically undercut such pathos by exposing the grubby commercialism of this mawkish sentimentalism.

The playful slippage between fiction and reality fuelled the novel’s vibrant popular reception. The same capacity would give rise to concerns over its potentially harmful influence.

Goethe feared the novel’s possible effect on impressionable readers from the outset. In recognition of this, he added a final italicised line to the novel’s second 1775 edition: “Be a man, and do not follow me.” The novel was substantially reworked by Goethe in 1787, as further implicit acknowledgement of its potentially deleterious impact on forlorn lovers.

As Charles Moore lamented in his attack on fictional portrayals of suicide in Full Inquiry in the Subject of Suicide (1790), Werther was often read “not as a fictitious, but a real character”. A true story, he observed, “more engages the attention and increases the mischief”.

Mischief indeed! Popular opinion would have it that Europe was in the grip of Werthermania, with copycats emulating his suicide across Britain and the continent. The truth is likely to be less dramatic, but newspapers from several countries did report people committing suicide wearing Werther’s trademark outfit with a copy of Goethe’s novel nearby.

Some authorities responded decisively: both the novel and Werther’s style of dress were banned in Leipzig – where the novel was first published – as early as 1775. The novel was also banned in Denmark and Italy in an effort to stop the spread of suicidal contagion. This perceived mania caused novelist Madame De Staël to quip, many years later in 1813, that Werther had “caused more suicides than the most beautiful woman in the world”.

The novel’s infamous reputation had been secured.

The Werther effect

By the late 20th century, the novel’s reputation for prompting copycat suicides had solidified into a sociological paradigm.

In 1974 – 200 years after the novel’s publication – US sociologist David P. Phillips coined the term “Werther effect” to describe the negative influence of media portrayal of suicides, having observed increased numbers of suicides in response to reporting in the New York Times.

In subsequent decades, the Werther effect has prompted bodies such as the World Health Organization and Mindframe to craft carefully considered guidelines on how to report and discuss suicide in the press to minimise harmful effects (guidelines by which this piece abides).

Despite these concerns, Goethe’s Werther lives on in the creative and popular imagination. Cinephiles will recognise Werther in Tom Hansen, the romantic lead in Marc Webb’s 500 Days of Summer (2009), whose melancholy is fed by the music of The Smiths rather than the poems of Ossian. More recently, Young Werther – a Canadian romantic comedy written and directed by José Lourenço – premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to promising reviews.

And is it any wonder? For all the ink spilled debating the merits of Werther’s death, his story is equally a meditation on the joyous and painful yearnings that young love brings. In Goethe’s novel, what we have is a delightfully harrowing, timeless rendition of an eternal theme.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Eric Parisot, Lecturer in English, Flinders University

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