Year 12 exams are finishing around Australia and celebrations are beginning. Thousands of students will mark the end of high school in coming weeks with “schoolies”.

This is an important rite of passage for many young Australians. About 20,000 school leavers are expected to party at Surfers Paradise in one of the main schoolies celebrations. Other festivals are planned for Lorne in Victoria, Victor Harbor in South Australia, Byron Bay in New South Wales, Bali and Fiji.

I am an expert in young people’s health and safety at large-scale events. What steps can you take to stay safe at schoolies and make sure you have a great time?

1. Plan ahead

Having a plan can reduce stress and help keep everyone on track.

Know where you’ll be staying and how you’ll get there and back from the main events. Check to see if there are free bus services and how to access them.

The schoolies websites can also help you plan where to get food, water, charge your phones and seek medical help.

2. Plan what you bring

Don’t take too many valuables. When you’re thinking about your outfit, think about where you phone will go so it is safe. A bum bag can be a great way to keep things secure.

Believe it or not the main reasons for using the medical tent is twists and sprains of ankles and cuts and blisters from shoes – so take comfortable footwear that is good for dancing and walking around.

3. Stay in groups

You will have already decided who you are going to hang out before you go. So stick with your friends and look out for each other. Avoid going anywhere alone, especially at night, and always organise a meet up spot if you do get separated or your phone dies.

Before you go, talk with friends about how you will support each other. Is someone designated as a non-drinker for the evening? Do you want to organise an hourly check-in on a group chat?

4. Stay in safe places

Only attend official events and parties. These areas are well lit and there is security and medical assistance available if you or your friends need it.

5. Know your limits

Think about how many drinks you can have beforehand – understand your limits and carry some water and snacks.

If you are feeling like you need a rest, you could try the nearest chill out tent. It’s a great way to make new friends and there are free drinks and snacks

If you are considering taking pills, go and visit the drug checking site. Drug checking is free and confidential and will let you know what you are taking to stay safe.

What if something scary or unexpected happens?

There are peer-support programs at schoolies to help you if you are upset or stressed.

On the Gold Coast, you can look out for Red Frogs or the Schoolies Support Team, who are there to support young people at events where alcohol is consumed.

In South Australia, there is the Green Team, who are young people from Christian backgrounds. The Green Team will stay with you while you are looking for your friends, walk you back to your tent and they know where all the free eating spots are.

In main schoolies areas there will also be police walking around and security guards, depending on the event. All of these people are there to give judgment-free support – so you will not get into trouble if you ask for help for yourself or one of your friends.

If a friend gets too drunk or has taken something and needs support, take them to a quieter spot with good lighting and stay with them. If you can, get someone else to go and find some help from the medical tent. Try and lay your friend on their side so that they can vomit, especially if they are passed out. Don’t try and give them water or more to drink, just make sure they are comfortable while someone is getting help.

If something scary happens – yell out and try and attract attention. Move into a well lit place if you can. Remember to trust your instincts and find a safe place.

Once you feel safe, tell event staff or police what happened – it helps them to look out and make sure it doesn’t happen again. You can also call 000 at any time.

Remember, schoolies is your event. With some simple planning you can make it a week you will always remember for the best reasons.

Alison Hutton, Professor of Nursing, Western Sydney University

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

The federal parliament has passed legislation to ban people under 16 from having an account with some social media platforms.

In doing so, it has ignored advice from a chorus of experts – and from the Australian Human Rights Commission, which said the government rushed the legislation through parliament “without taking the time to get the details right. Or even knowing how the ban will work in practice.”

The ban is, however, backed by 77% of Australians, according to a new poll. It won’t take effect for at least 12 months.

So what will happen before then?

What’s in the final bill?

The legislation amends the current Online Safety Act 2021 and defines an “age-restricted user” as a person under age 16. However, it does not name specific platforms that will be subject to the ban.

Instead, the legislation defines an “age-restricted social media platform” as including services where:

1. the “sole purpose, or a significant purpose” is to enable “online social interaction” between people
2. people can “link to, or interact with” others on the service
3. people can “post material”, or
4. it falls under other conditions as set out in the legislation.

The legislation does note that some services are “excluded”, but does not name specific platforms. For example, while services providing “online social interaction” would be included in the ban, this would not include “online business interaction”.

While it remains unclear exactly which social media platforms will be subject to the ban, those that are will face fines of up to A$50 million if they don’t take “reasonable steps” to stop under 16s from having accounts.

While there are reports YouTube will be exempt, the government has not explicitly confirmed this. What is clear at the moment is that people under 16 will still be able to view the content of many platforms online – just without an account.

The legislation does not mention messaging apps (such as WhatsApp and Messenger) or gaming platforms (such as Minecraft), specifically. However, news reports have quoted the government as saying these would be excluded, along with “services with the primary purpose of supporting the health and education of end-users”. It is unclear what platforms would be excluded in these cases.

In passing the final legislation, the government included additional amendments to its original proposal. For example, tech companies cannot collect government-issued identification such as passports and drivers licenses “as the only means” of confirming someone’s age. They can, however, collect government-issued identification “if other alternative age assurance methods have been provided to users”.

There must also be an “independent review” after two years to consider the “adequacy” of privacy protections and other issues.

What now for the tech companies?

As well as having to verify the age of people wanting to create an account, tech companies will also need to verify the age of existing account holders – regardless of their age. This will be a significant logistical challenge. Will there be a single day when every Australian with a social media account has to sign in and prove their age?

An even bigger concern is how tech companies will be able to verify a user’s age. The legislation provides little clarity about this.

There are a few options social media platforms might pursue.

One option might be for them to check someone’s age using credit cards as a proxy linked to a person’s app store account. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said previously that this strategy would be included in the age verification trials that are currently underway. YouTube, for example, has previously enabled users to gain access to age-restricted content using a credit card.

However, this approach would exclude access for people who meet the age requirement of being over 16, but do not hold credit cards.

Another option is to use facial recognition technology. This technology is among the various strategies being trialled for the government to restrict age for both social media platforms (for ages under 16) and online pornography (for ages under 18). The trial is being run by a consortium led by Age Check Certification Scheme, based in the United Kingdom. The results won’t be known until mid-2025.

However, there is already evidence that facial recognition systems contain significant biases and inaccuracies.

For example, commercially available facial recognition systems have an error rate of 0.8% for light-skinned men, compared to nearly 35% for dark-skinned women. Even some of the best performing systems in use currently, such as Yoti (which Meta currently offers to Australian users ahead of a global rollout) has an average error of almost two years for people aged 13 to 16 years old.

What about the digital duty of care?

Earlier this month the government promised to impose a “digital duty of care” on tech companies.

This would require the companies to regularly conduct thorough risk assessments of the content on their platforms. And, companies would need to respond to consumer complaints, resulting in the removal of potentially harmful content.

This duty of care is backed by experts – including myself – and by the Human Rights Law Centre. A parliamentary inquiry into the social media ban legislation also recommended the government legislate this.

It remains unclear exactly when the government will fulfil its promise to do just that.

But even if the duty of care is legislated, that doesn’t preclude the need for more investment in digital literacy. Parents, teachers and children need support to understand how to navigate social media platforms safely.

In the end, social media platforms should be safe spaces for all users. They provide valuable information and community engagement opportunities to people of all ages. The onus is now on the tech companies to restrict access for youth under 16.

However, the work needed to keep all of us safe, and to hold the tech companies accountable for the content they provide, is only just beginning.

Lisa M. Given, Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University

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

When Jiawei Shen first came to Australia, he bought a copy of that great western ideological text, the Bible. The doctrine that had shaped his life until then had come from the writings of the great Marxist thinkers – Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and of course, Mao Zedong.

It made sense, therefore, to study the source of the ideology that supposedly shaped this strange new world. Right near the beginning, in Genesis chapter 11, he found the intriguing story of the Tower of Babel, a myth on the origin of linguistic and cultural confusion.

It tells of a time when all people spoke the same language, and out of pride, they built a tower to the heavens so it would be seen from wherever they went. God realised if they continued to collaborate, nothing could stop them:

If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.

The tower was abandoned – and the people scattered across the earth, with many different languages.

Many years later, when Shen contemplated the way his life and his wife’s life had been shaped by ideology and circumstance, he remembered the lesson of the Tower of Babel

Settling in Bob Hawke’s Australia

In June 1989, when student demonstrations in Beijing resulted in the Tiananmen Square massacre, Jiawei Shen was in Australia. As all affected Chinese citizens were granted asylum by then Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, he was able to settle in Sydney.

He was soon joined by his wife, fellow artist Lan Wang, and their baby daughter, Xini. While Lan Wang worked as a cleaner, Jiawei Shen started his Australian career by drawing portraits for tourists at Circular Quay. Most art competitions are by invitation only, but in 1993 when he entered the open-entry Archibald Prize with a portrait of Professor John Clarke, his work was hung.

He soon became an Archibald favourite. The smooth, almost photographic finish that characterised his style made him a popular artist for portrait commissions. In 1995, he was awarded the Mary MacKillop Art Award. His interpretation of the future saint pleased the conservative hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1997, Shen and Wang bought a small fisherman’s cottage at Bundeena on the edge of the Royal National Park. After the changing political climate in China saw his art (which had been out of favour) come into fashion once more, Jiawei Shen considered the nature and impact of ideology.

He thought again of the story of Babel – and how it could be seen as a metaphor for what had happened to the original ideals of Communism.

On October 30 2017, exactly 100 years after the Bolshevik Revolution, Shen began to paint his magnum opus, The Tower of Babel. The painting is so large it fills the walls of the three storey house that was built to contain it.

James Bradley’s documentary, Welcome to Babel, records both the painstaking process of making the painting – as well as the contradictions and commonalities of Jiawei Shen and Lan Wang’s lives in both China and Australia.

A vision to build the communist mansion

The painting itself (which remains in Shen’s possession) is divided into four parts, one for each wall: Utopia, Internationale, Gulag and Saturnus.

The images are drawn from both historic documents and copies of works of art made by artists identifying with Communism. Utopia, the first painting, starts with Lenin and the ideals of the Bolshevik revolution, which evolved into the tyranny of Stalin and, in China, Mao.

Portraits of the great men evolve into images based on the propaganda they spread about the new society they were creating. As their ideas spread around the world, they influenced many artists – such as Picasso, Matisse, Léger, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera – who came to admire the idealism of this brave new world.

Shen was a child of Mao’s revolution. Born in Shanghai in 1948, he was the son of loyal party members. In his childhood he knew “we were building the Communist mansion”. He still honours the idealism of the those thinkers who imagined a world where all can flourish.

His childhood within the Party is contrasted with Lan Wang’s experience of childhood as a daughter of a despised “Rightist”. Throughout the film, her sometimes tart observations give essential leavening to her husband’s heroic narrative.

The third wall, “Gulag”, shows the cost of unthinking ideology. He remembers being hungry in Mao’s Great Famine, when overeager Party figures falsified production numbers to please their leader and people starved. Wang remembers seeing the dead.

As with other students, they were both sent to work in the country alongside peasant farmers. But while Shen remembers this as “the happiest time in my life”, Wang was sent to a remote northern province where it was cold and people starved.

‘He didn’t experience the suffering’

Jiawei Shen’s career as an artist came from his time in the country when his painting, Standing Guard for our Great Motherland, attracted the attention of Madam Mao.

His status as a heroic worker artist ended after Mao’s death, and he became an art student. The same event also freed “children of the dogs” like Lan Wang, to be educated, and so she become an artist. Her painting is whimsical and decorative, with a sense of fantasy that is absent from her husband’s work.

Wang’s experiences, as well as Shen’s own time spent out of favour, colour the wall he calls Saturnus – the dark side of the revolution. The great art featured here is Goya’s Saturn devouring his son. Shen argues China’s Cultural Revolution and the French Revolution have a great deal in common, wherein “good intentions bring about the most evil results”.

The success of Welcome to Babel largely comes from the contrast between Jiawei Shen and Lan Wang’s approach to their new life. He is the showman, turning his memories, and those of others, into a giant collage – a painting that will be his legacy “for the people of China”.

Wang grows a small garden behind the imposing new house. “He is able to create this work because he didn’t experience the suffering,” she says.

Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Senior Fellow, School of Culture and Communication. Editor in chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne

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

In 1974, when a local Sydney newspaper wrote on the success of two local artists, they were introduced using their husband’s names. Ruth Faerber, who has died aged 102, was named as “Mrs Hans (Ruth) Faerber of Castle Cove”.

This was later expanded to indicate the “housewife, mother of two is the wife of Hans Faerber, a design engineer”, before describing her prizewinning work and noting she was also the art critic of the Jewish Times.

Ever polite, always elegant, Faerber never vocally contested such categorisations. However, from girlhood until her extreme old age, she was first and foremost an artist.

A young interest in art

Ruth Levy was born in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra, on October 9 1922. After a less than pleasant experience at Sydney Girls High with an art teacher she later described as an “absolute whacko”, she became a boarding student at Ravenswood.

Here, she was inspired by her teacher Gladys Gibbons and introduced to printmaking as an art. When Ruth told her father she wanted to leave school and be an artist, he agreed on the condition that “you’ve got to be able earn your own living”.

She enrolled at Peter Dodd’s Commercial Art School. Dodd’s friends included the radical modernists Frank and Margel Hinder, recently arrived from the United States, giving the students a surprisingly radical art education.

Two years later, as the impact of World War II led to young women being encouraged to take the jobs of departed men, the 17-year-old worked as a junior commercial artist.

At the Market Printery she was introduced to photogravure printing and made her first experimental etching.

Ruth continued her studies at East Sydney Technical College. In 1944 she enrolled in Desiderius Orban’s Rowe Street Studio. The refugee Hungarian artist taught that rules were to be broken, that artists must experiment, and to have faith in her creativity.

These were lessons she never forgot.

Making a life as an artist

In 1946, Ruth married Hans Faerber, a young design engineer who had escaped from Germany in 1938.

Despite postwar cultural pressures prescribing that women should solely devote themselves to their families, Ruth continued to paint, turning the garage into her studio and running children’s art classes from home. She wanted to learn printmaking but in Sydney this was not possible: the only lithography course was limited to printing apprentices, and only men were eligible to apply.

In 1961 Joy Ewart donated her lithography press to create Sydney’s first public access print workshop at the Willoughby Arts Centre. Faerber became one of its most active participants.

In 1963, the year of her first solo exhibition, the family moved to a house on Sydney’s north shore. Her new studio was built into the base of the cliff. To provide safe access without the bother of planning permission, Hans removed the floor of the broom cupboard and placed a ladder down to the studio.

Faerber’s ability to disappear into a cupboard straight after dinner did sometimes disconcert her children and visitors, but it gave her time to make art as she worked through the night.

Continual experiments

By 1968 her prints had been acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of NSW, but she knew she needed to learn more.

She received a scholarship for New York City’s Pratt Center. In New York, she saw Rauschenberg’s Experiments in Art & Technology and remembered Orban’s dictum to constantly experiment. She started to use spray paint as a medium and to incorporate photographic images in her work. One print includes a newspaper photograph of Leonard Cohen, made after she saw him perform.

Her return to Australia saw continual experiments. She also began to write, becoming the art critic for the Australian Jewish News. Her reviews were characterised by a generosity of spirit, especially noticing artists at the beginning of their careers. Women and printmakers were favoured subjects.

One of the most significant costs for printmakers is the cost of imported handmade paper. In 1980, Faerber was invited to attend the first hand paper-making workshop at the Tasmanian School of Art’s Jabberwock Mill.

There she realised the possibilities of paper as a medium rather than as a surface.

She abandoned standard shapes. Her experiments with paper became irregular, then sculptural. Paper began to be made with different materials, including tapioca flour and cold tea. She found if she sprayed a paper sculpture with the kind of aerosol paint designed for cars, she could simulate an impression of aged stone.

While she kept a close eye on the latest technical developments, her best tools of trade were sometimes found in the home. Electric frying pans, food processors and a microwave oven were repurposed to make art. An ironing board with a mesh base was used as a press for making paper. She had a long fascination with archaeological sites, realising how fragile civilisations and human life may be.

As she became physically frail, Faerber changed her practice towards making digital prints, seeing how far she could stretch the new media to her ends.

Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Senior Fellow, School of Culture and Communication. Editor in chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne

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

I enjoyed Disney’s 2016 film Moana. My relatives and I attended the Reo Māori release here in Aotearoa, in a packed theatre of Māori language supporters. Watching the film in our own language was emotional and powerful.

Moana is a seagoing adventure portraying the courage of its Pacific characters. I see many aspects of Māori communities represented in the film: our elders, our voyaging history, our language and culture, our ability to adapt, our sense of spirituality and our hope.

I see the characters in my own whānau (extended family). My nephew is similar to the character of Māui, the demigod voiced by Dwayne Johnson. He’s a likeable “big-boned” fulla with a quick wit – an overly confident rascal who draws others to him with a playfulness that gets him into (and out of) trouble.

At the same time, movies like Moana – in which non-Indigenous creators try to tell Indigenous stories – raise sensitive questions about authenticity, cultural appropriation and veiled forms of continuing colonisation.

Disney’s bottom line is to develop characters and storylines that suit a global market and will ultimately be financially viable. Perhaps this is why it missed so many key characteristics of Māui as he is known to the Polynesian people.

In Moana, there is a mystique around Māui’s demigod status; he sits in the space between the gods and humanity. Like the Māui of Polynesia, he can shapeshift, wields a magic hook and is courageous.

Yet this Hollywood Māui would have no chance against the Māui of Polynesia, who is not a god to be worshipped, but a spirit – a set of characteristics identified through the actions of a person. Māui’s spirit lives today and can be activated by his descendants to do extraordinary things.

A Māori view of Māui

Māui’s biggest muscles were in his head and stomach (where Māori believe the core being of a person is located). However, there is no record of him having an appearance that made him stand out in the community.

When Māui decided to rejoin his birth family as a young man, he lined up with his brothers, and his mother was unable to see a difference between the siblings’ physical builds. This is in contrast with his unusually large build in Moana.

He also wasn’t the playful, reckless larrikin depicted in Moana. He saw the world through clear eyes and calculated his way forward, courageously approaching challenges as opportunities to demonstrate his mastery.

He was innovative, intelligent, confident and resourceful – and most of what he did would benefit the whole community. That said, he could also be devious, cruel and jealous as he pushed to achieve his goals.

One of his names is “Māui-pōtiki”, or “Māui the youngest sibling”, which signals the characteristics of someone who challenged the status quo – a free thinker and a clever trickster.

Supernatural power leads to supernatural deeds

Māui faced a series of challenges. Some were forced on him, such as surviving his infancy. At birth he was presumed dead (or near death) and was abandoned to the sea. His grandfather rescued and raised him, teaching him skills, knowledge and karakia – the spiritual means to bend the laws of the universe in his favour.

He faced many challenges in his world, and his responses conveyed important social and life lessons. For instance, the days were too short and people were unable to complete their work before nightfall. So Māui’s answer was to slow the Sun’s journey across the sky. He convinced his sceptical brothers to help him and they went to the pit where the Sun rose each day.

Armed with plaited ropes, infused with spiritual power to hold the Sun, as well as the sacred jawbone of his ancestor (which he also used as a hook), they stationed themselves around the pit and waited.

As the Sun rose into the morning sky, the brothers pulled their ropes to form a tight net, trapping the Sun. Māui quickly climbed onto the Sun and began to beat him (the Sun is personified and thought to be masculine in Māori belief) with his ancestor’s jawbone.

Dazed and battered, the Sun asked Māui the reason for the attack, who then gave him an ultimatum: “Slow your movement across the sky (or I’ll be back)!” The Sun, from fear and injury, slowed down, providing a useful length of daylight for the people.

While violence may not be a justifiable approach to change, there’s still much to learn from this incident. When you need to get something done, you should have a plan, build a team, make use of the resources available to you, be courageous and go for it.

Stories spread across the seas

Māui is credited with many other exploits. He hauled islands up across the Pacific. He spoke with the gods and creatures of the Earth. He even brought fire to the world from the goddess Mahuika and came close to conquering death.

Each story contains layers of knowledge, explaining important aspects of the world and human behaviour. This information was so significant that these stories have been passed down through generations for hundreds of years – spread with our voyaging ancestors across the Pacific, the largest continent in the world.

As such, Māui pops up in stories all across Polynesia, reaching into Melanesia and Micronesia. While the tales about the character, attitude, aptitude and mana (the spiritual lifeforce) are similar, variations exist across Polynesia.

Moana aims to entertain and speak to us and our children. Perhaps the sequel will now reawaken Māui-based discussions on marae (Māori communal spaces) and other Pacific forums. Or perhaps the spirit of Māui will see this “harmless rascal” persona as a launch pad to galvanise his descendants into addressing the ills that face them today.

Kia ara ake anō te kawa a Māui – let the spirit of Māui arise. And enjoy the movie.

Mike Ross, Head of School, Te Kawa a Māui, School of Māori Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

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

For coral reefs, climate change is an existential threat. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has endured seven mass bleaching events over the past 25 years. Five have occurred in the past eight years.

But amid the story of decline, something curious is happening. Surveys from the air and on water show a few reef groups, such as the Ribbon Reefs in the far north and the Swains and Pompey reefs in the south, are consistently escaping severe bleaching while their neighbouring reefs suffer.

But how? In our new research, we found their survival is due to cold water. That is, most of these reefs are periodically bathed in cooler water even as other parts of the reef bake in marine heatwaves. This stems from the phenomenon called upwelling, where cooler waters from the deep mix with warm surface waters. These reefs are likely to be buffered from the worst of climate change.

While the world’s oceans are heating up steadily, the deeper waters remain cooler than surface waters. Our modelling suggests cold currents could protect these vital refuges at least into the 2080s, even if continued high emissions lead to sea surface temperatures 2-3°C hotter than now. Safeguarding these refuges offers the best chance to preserve some of the reef’s rich array of species and – potentially – to allow corals to adapt to new heat regimes and eventually repopulate degraded reefs.

Where are these refuges from heat?

Coral reefs are very sensitive to heat. When marine heatwaves strike, heat stress can make coral polyps bleach by expelling their symbiotic algae. These colourful “zooxanthellae” algae provide coral energy and nutrition from photosynthesis in exchange for shelter. Bleached coral can recover if given a reprieve. But if the heat stress continues, it can die.

Climate change is loading the dice for more heat, more often. This is why we are now seeing parts of the Great Barrier Reef record the worst coral loss in 39 years.

In our research, we looked at why some reefs are less affected by heat. We found upwellings of cool water are protecting them. The reefs are climate refuges – areas where local conditions allow species to survive while other areas become unlivable.

We define these cooler refuges as areas where average summer sea surface temperatures are at least 1°C cooler than nearby regions. These safer zones lie along the ends of the northern and southern Great Barrier Reef and run over 200 kilometres along the continental shelf, where coral reefs are densely packed.

Off northern Australia in the eastern Torres Strait lie the Ribbon Reefs. These climate refuges are located near a steep continental slope with deep channels.

On the southern reefs, a key refuge is the Swains and Pompeys reef complex, 135 km offshore from Mackay. These reefs lie right on the continental drop off where the East Australian Current raises cold water closer to the surface.

When strong tidal currents flood through narrow reef channels, cooler water from the deep can be drawn up over the continental shelf and mixed with warm surface water, acting like a cold bath for the fringing reefs and giving relief to coral.

These effects can last up to a week or more, if conditions are right, and can occur several times over a summer. Currents can trap these cooler waters behind a long, skinny ribbon reef, giving sustained relief.

Will these refuges vanish?

To detect these refuges, we looked for unusually cool water in satellite temperature maps and ocean models. Then we ran these models forward in time, to see if these life-sustaining cool flows would persist in the 2050s under a high emissions scenario, and again in the 2080s. The good news: currents of cool water will continue at least to 2080.

This is because even as surface waters warm and marine heatwaves arrive more often, the currents carrying cooler water to the surface in these refuge reefs will continue. But if climate change continues unchecked, even deeper waters will warm to a level that coral cannot tolerate.

What about changes in ocean currents? At present, the South Equatorial Current carries warm water westward toward the Barrier Reef but then splits into the north-flowing Gulf of Papua Current and the south-flowing East Australian Current.

Our research found the location of the split is steadily moving southward. This could change where current-dependent larvae of coral and coral-eating crown of thorns starfish end up. But our modelling shows these changes won’t greatly affect upwellings over our time period.

Protecting these refuges is vital

If we keep these refuge reefs as intact as possible, we may be able to preserve more of the reef’s staggering biodiversity. If these corals find ways of adapting to the new heat regimes, it might be possible to use them to replenish harder hit reefs. Scientists in the collaborative Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program are already exploring ways to make coral better able to tolerate heat.

Overfishing, damage from shipping and crown of thorns outbreaks also pose threats to these remote reefs. We should protect them as best we can. That’s not to say we should give up on tackling threats to the reef more broadly – only that these reefs are particularly valuable.

Climate change poses the largest threat to coral. Every living thing has temperature limits and adaptation can only go so far. The corals of the Red Sea evolved to tolerate hotter water. But they had thousands of years to do so, while today’s climate is changing far faster. Other researchers have found coral refuges would break down when warming goes past 3°C.

Could coral on these more protected reefs adapt fast enough to take advantage of cool upwellings? If so, could heat-adapted coral larvae repopulate worse-hit areas? We don’t know yet. If they could, some version of the Great Barrier Reef might survive.

But if global warming continues unchecked, these reefs, too, could feel the heat. Sharply reducing emissions is our best option to control global warming and help the Great Barrier Reef endure into the next century.

Chaojiao Sun, Research Group Leader, physical oceanographer, CSIRO and Craig Steinberg, Physical Oceanographer, Australian Institute of Marine Science

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

Summer is a wonderful time for families to go the beach and for small children to get to know the water and the sand.

But aside from being a place to relax, my new research shows how the beach provides many ways to teach young children about science.

My ‘beach kinder’ research

I research science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning in bush kinders. These are programs where preschool children regularly go into the natural environment with their daycare centre or kinder/preschool, to gain an appreciation for nature.

Educators do not take any toys, balls or games, so children are reliant only on what is available in nature for play.

Bush kinders often happen in parks, forests and gardens but educators and researchers are increasingly looking at the benefits of education around beaches. These “blue spaces” provide children with wide open spaces to learn through play.

But so far there has been little research on educational benefits of beach learning in early childhood settings.

Last year, I observed a “beach kinder”: where childhood educators and four- and five-year-old children went to the beach along Victoria’s Surf Coast. They were spending between three and five hours per week at the beach for a term as part of their regular kinder/preschool program.

What I noticed was how many opportunities the beach provides to teach little kids about science. Here are a three examples families can try on their next visit to the beach.

1. Rockpool life

When the tide is low, the ocean can expose a wide range of plant and animal life. Small fish, crabs, starfish, sea plants and maybe even an octopus can be found in rockpools. You can ask your child:

How many different animals can you see?

You can also search for barnacles that look like small volcanoes or periwinkles – the little snails that live in the splash zone. You can talk about how animals can sometimes be very small or hiding – just because we can’t see them does not mean they are not there.

You can talk to children about how these small animals survive as the tide rises and falls. For example, crabs bury themselves in the sand away from the water or other types of shellfish can shut their shells tightly to keep the water out. If possible, gently lift one for a look and then replace it just as gently.

You can explain life cycles and simple biology as you walk among the rockpools. For example, sea turtles lay their eggs on sandy beaches, then the baby turtles make their way to the sea where they mature into adults.

2. Sticky sand

Sand is an amazing thing to play with and it changes, depending on where you are on the beach.

Far away from the waters’ edge, have your child take a handful of dry sand and watch what happens as it slips through small hands. Walk closer to the water and do the same thing. Ask your child:

Have you ever wondered why dry and wet sand are so different?

You can explain how the water in the sand actually acts like glue, making the sand grains stick together. This lets us talk to young children about chemistry and how different materials interact with each other.

Try making sandcastles with wet sand and dry sand and see the difference.

Is one version harder to work with than the other other? What happens if you mix wet and dry sand together?

3. Watching the waves

The waves can teach us about floating, sinking and the force of water.

Children can have a lot of fun using pieces of seaweed or small sticks as boats, letting them bob up and down on small waves. They can even have “seaweed races” learning about how waves can move materials around.

Sea waves and ocean currents are really important as some marine animals such as dolphins and turtles use waves to move around. In fact, some animals migrate thousands of kilometres to and from breeding grounds.

You can then replace the seaweed pieces with shells and ask your child to observe what happens:

Why does the seaweed stay on top of the water, but the shell goes underneath?

Talk about how the shell is heavier than the water and so will sink. This helps them understand the physics of floating and sinking as well as the patterns associated with wave motion.

This summer when you’re at the beach, think about all the science happening around you. This could include the animals and habitats you encounter, as well as all the many, changes things happening with the sand and surf.

Chris Speldewinde, Research fellow, Research for Educational Impact Institute, Deakin University

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

One of the biggest scientific mysteries is where life on Earth started.

Research has often focused on the role of deep-sea hydrothermal vents – those towering structures on the ocean floor constantly pumping out a melange of organic and inorganic material. Within these plumes are minerals called iron sulfides, which scientists believe could have helped trigger early chemical reactions that created life.

These same minerals are also found in hot springs today, such as the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Hot springs are bodies of groundwater heated by volcanic activity beneath Earth’s surface.

Our new research adds to a small but growing body of evidence that ancient versions of these hot springs could have played a pivotal role in the emergence of life on Earth. This helps bridge the gap between competing hypotheses regarding where life could have emerged.

Geochemistry to biology

Carbon fixation is the process by which living organisms convert carbon dioxide, in the air and dissolved in water, into organic molecules.

Many life forms, including plants, bacteria and microorganisms known as archaea, have different pathways for achieving this. Photosynthesis is one example.

Each of these pathways contains a cascade of enzymes and proteins, some of which contain cores made of iron and sulfur.

We can find proteins with these iron-sulfur clusters in all forms of life. In fact, researchers propose they date back to the Last Universal Common Ancestor – an ancient ancestral cell from which scientists propose life as we know it evolved and diversified.

Iron sulfides are minerals that form when dissolved iron reacts with hydrogen sulfide – the volcanic gas that makes hot springs smell like rotten eggs.

If you look closely at the structure of these iron sulfides, you will find that some of them look incredibly similar to iron-sulfur clusters.

This connection between iron sulfides and carbon fixation has led some researchers to propose that these minerals played a crucial role in the transition from early Earth geochemistry to biology.

Our newly published research expands on this knowledge by investigating the chemical activity of iron sulfides in ancient land-based hot springs which have similar geochemistry to deep-sea vents.

Custom-built chamber

We custom-built a small chamber that would allow us to simulate hot spring environments on early Earth.

Then we spread synthesised iron sulfide samples through the chamber. Some were pure. Others were dosed with other metals commonly found in hot springs. A lamp above these samples simulated sunlight on the early Earth’s surface. Different lamps were used to mimic lighting with different amounts of ultraviolet radiation.

Carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas were constantly pumped through the chamber. These gases have been shown to be important for carbon fixation in deep-sea vent experiments.

We found that all of the iron sulfide samples synthesised were capable of producing methanol, a product of carbon fixation, to varying extents. These results showed that iron sulfides can facilitate carbon fixation not only in deep-sea hydrothermal vents but land-based hot springs too.

Methanol production also increased with visible light irradiation and at higher temperatures.

Experiments with varying temperatures, lighting and water-vapour content demonstrated that iron sulfides likely facilitated carbon fixation in land-based hot springs on early Earth.

An ancient pathway

Additional experiments and theoretical calculations revealed that the production of methanol occurred through a mechanism called a reverse water-gas shift.

We see a similar reaction in the pathway some bacteria and archaea use to turn carbon dioxide into food. This pathway is called the “acetyl-CoA” or “Wood-Ljungdahl” pathway. It is proposed to be the earliest form of carbon fixation that emerged in early life.

This similarity between the two processes is interesting because the former happens on dry land, at the edge of hot springs, while the latter takes place in the wet environment inside cells.

Our study demonstrates methanol production in a wide range of conditions that could have been found in early Earth’s hot springs.

Our findings expand the range of conditions where iron sulfides can facilitate carbon fixation. They show it can happen both in the deep sea and on land – albeit via different mechanisms.

As such, we believe these results support the current scientific consensus suggesting that iron-sulfur clusters and the acetyl-CoA pathway are ancient and likely played an important role in the emergence of life – regardless of whether it happened on land or at the bottom of the sea.

Quoc Phuong Tran, PhD Candidate in Prebiotic Chemistry, UNSW Sydney

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

Earlier this year, a caver was poring over satellite images of the Nullarbor Plain when he came across something unexpected: an enormous, mysterious scar etched into the barren landscape.

The find intrigued scientists, including my colleagues and I. Upon closer investigation, we realised the scar was created by a ferocious tornado that no-one knew had occurred. We outline the findings in new research published today.

Tornadoes are a known threat in the United States and elsewhere. But they also happen in Australia.

Without the power of technology, this remarkable example of nature’s ferocity would have gone unnoticed. It’s important to study the tornado’s aftermath to help us predict and prepare for the next big twister.

Australia’s tornado history

Tornadoes are violent, spinning columns of air that drop from thunderstorms to the ground, bringing wind speeds often exceeding 200 kilometres an hour. They can cause massive destruction – uprooting trees, tearing apart buildings and throwing debris over large distances.

Tornadoes have been reported on every continent except Antarctica. They most commonly occur in the Great Plains region of the United States, and in the north-east region of India–Bangladesh.

The earliest tornado observed by settlers in Australia occurred in 1795 in the suburbs of Sydney. But a tornado was not confirmed here by Western scientists until the late 1800s.

In recent decades, documented instances in Australia include a 2013 tornado that crossed north-east Victoria and travelled up to the New South Wales border. It brought winds between 250–300 kilometres an hour and damaged Murray River townships.

And in 2016, a severe storm produced at least seven tornadoes in central and eastern parts of South Australia.

It’s important for scientists to accurately predict tornadoes, so we can issue warnings to communities. That’s why the Nullarbor tornado scar was useful to study.

A whirlwind mystery

The Nullarbor Plain is a remote, dry, treeless stretch of land in southern Australia. The man who discovered the scar had been using Google Earth satellite imagery to search the Nullabor for caves or other karst features.

Karst is a landscape underlain by limestone featuring distinctive landforms. The discovery of the scar came to the attention of my colleagues and I through the collaborative network of researchers and explorers who study the Nullarbor karst.

The scar stretches from Western Australia over the border to South Australia. It lies 20 kilometres north of the Trans-Australian Railway and 90 kilometres east-north-east of Forrest, a former railway settlement.

We compared satellite imagery of the site over several years to determine that the tornado occurred between November 16 and 18, 2022. Blue circular patterns appeared alongside the scar, indicating pools of water associated with heavy rain.

My colleagues and I then travelled to the site in May this year to examine and photograph the scar and the neighbouring landscape.

Our results have been published today in the Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems Science.

What we found

The scar is 11 kilometres long and between 160 and 250 metres wide. It bears striking patterns called “cycloidal marks”, formed by tornado suction vortexes. This suggests the tornado was no ordinary storm but in the strong F2 or F3 category, spinning with destructive winds of more than 200 kilometres an hour.

The tornado probably lasted between seven and 13 minutes. Features of the scar suggest the whirling wind within the tornado was moving in a clockwise direction. We also think the tornado moved from west to east – which is consistent with the direction of a strong cold front in the region at the time.

Local weather observations also recorded intensive cloud cover and rainfall during that period in November 2022.

Unlike tornadoes that hit populated areas, this one did not damage homes or towns. But it left its mark nonetheless, eroding soil and vegetation and reshaping the Earth’s surface.

Remarkably, the scar was still clearly visible 18 months after the event, both in satellite images and on the ground. This is probably because vegetation grows slowly in this dry landscape, so hadn’t yet covered the erosion.

Predict and prepare

This fascinating discovery on the Nullarbor Plain shows how powerful and unpredictable nature can be – sometimes without us knowing.

Only three tornadoes have previously been documented on the Nullarbor Plain. This is likely because the area is remote with few eye-witnesses, and because the events do not damage properties and infrastructure. Interestingly, those three tornadoes occurred in November, just like this one.

Our research provides valuable insights into the tornadoes in this remote and little-studied region. It helps us understand when, and in what conditions, these types of tornadoes occur.

It also emphasises the importance of satellite imagery in identifying and analysing weather phenomena in remote locations, and in helping us predict and prepare for the next big event.

And finally, the results are a stark reminder that extreme weather can strike anywhere, anytime.

This article has been amended to clarify that a reference to early tornado observations relates only to the period after British colonisation.

Matej Lipar, Adjunct Research Fellow, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University

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