Plants are often seen as passive organisms, rooted in one place and largely unable to react to the world around them.

But a new field of research is challenging these assumptions and showing that plants are as sophisticated as animals in detecting and adjusting to environmental signals.

Plants can perceive light through specialised proteins, detect sound vibrations and respond to touch via mechano-sensitive channels, recognise chemical signals released by neighbouring plants, and even retain memories of past experiences through changes in their DNA.

My own research focuses on how plants detect the passage of time as part of their seasonal cycle, but that is merely one aspect of a major reconsideration of their sensory capacity – and the parallels with animal senses.

Plants can see colours

Anyone who has noticed a flower turning its head to track the sun knows plants can detect light. Like animals, plants sense light signals using specialised receptors, each for a different wavelength (or colour) of light.

Phytochromes detect red and far-red light and cryptochromes and phototropins respond to blue and ultraviolet light. These sensors transform light cues into molecular signals to coordinate a plant’s daily circadian rhythms.

Emerging research suggests trees can even identify the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. This cue may act as a seasonal switch, triggering a transition in key physiological processes such as leaf ageing and bud setting.

My research identified a specific gene, known as Early-Flowering-3, in European beech trees (Fagus sylvatica) which seems to control seasonal responses such as energy storage, changes in plant hormone signals and preparing for winter.

But light detection is only one sense plants use to perceive their world.

Tuning into their environment

Plants can also listen. Studies show they can detect vibrations caused by chewing insects or the buzz of pollinating bees, and they respond to the sound of flowing water by directing roots towards it.

Plants can also generate their own vibrations. When under stress, tobacco and tomato plants emit ultrasonic clicks that provide information about the plants’ condition, including the level of dehydration or injury. These clicks can be heard using a sound recorder.

Scientists also documented what happens when they play sounds to plants. They observed changes in the membranes of their cells and the chemical signalling along ion channels. While plants do not have nerves, these channels function in a similar way, acting as tiny gateways to transmit information in and out of cells.

The exact receptors plants use to perceive sound remain unclear, but we are now investigating whether they sense vibrations through tiny hair-like structures on leaf surfaces.

Don’t touch me

Beyond vibrations, plants also respond directly to physical touch, often in striking ways.

Familiar examples include the touch-me-not plant (Mimosa pudica) or the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), which respond to touch by rapidly closing their leaves.

These examples illustrate plants’ ability to perceive and respond to mechanical stimuli. But beyond these rapid movements, plants also detect rain and damage caused by browsing herbivores. The latter prompts plants to activate defence responses such as the production of toxins or depositing lignin to make themselves less palatable.

Just like animals, plants contain specialised proteins that detect these physical forces. These mechanical sensing proteins convert physical stimuli into biochemical signals, often through calcium signalling.

Plants remember the past to decide the future

Changes in temperature provide a good example of plants remembering that winter has passed. Remembering cold temperatures helps them flower at the right time when spring arrives.

As observed in animals, these memories are stored through epigenetic mechanisms – chemical changes to DNA that don’t affect the genetic code.

Epigenetic changes alter the way genes are packaged and read, creating a molecular record of past conditions.

In New Zealand, for example, trees remember temperatures from previous summers to synchronise their reproduction across entire forests – a phenomenon known as masting.

Masting triggers widespread seed production – and subsequent pest outbreaks that can threaten native wildlife. Researchers revealed that removable markers generate temporary chemical tags that can switch genes off. This allows masting plants to carry information from one year to the next.

Together, these findings show that plants can see, hear, feel and remember in ways parallel to our own sensory systems. Far from being passive or unresponsive, plants respond to environmental clues in sophisticated and complex ways.

Rethinking plant life in this way challenges long-held ideas about intelligence, awareness and communication in the natural world.

Samarth Kulshrestha, Research Fellow in Molecular Biology, University of Canterbury

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

Nighttime. A dim and dingy car park. Woefully inadequate fluorescent lights flicker and buzz overhead. Two men stand in half-shadow. One is barely visible, his face almost entirely swallowed by darkness. His voice is low and gravelly:

The list is longer than anyone can imagine. It involves the entire US intelligence community. FBI, CIA, Justice. It’s incredible. The cover-up had little to do with Watergate. It was mainly to protect the covert operations. It leads everywhere. Get out your notebook. There’s more.

The other man is lost for words. He just stands there, mouth slightly open and eyes wide, trying to make sense of what he’s hearing. The exchange ends with a warning: his life, along with that of his colleague, in is grave and immediate danger.

This is a pivotal moment in Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men, which has just turned 50. The film was based on the 1974 book by journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who investigated the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post.

The man doing the talking in the scene I’ve been describing is Mark Felt (Hal Holbrook), then associate director of the FBI, better known as “Deep Throat”. His interlocutor, temporarily stunned into silence, is Woodward (Robert Redford).

A masterpiece of political cinema, All The President’s Men remains one of the finest films about investigative journalism ever made.

Steeped in a fog of paranoia and distrust – an atmosphere shaped in no small part by cinematographer Gordon Willis’ matchless treatment of light and shade – it is as relevant now as it was on first release.

Uncovering the Watergate scandal

“At its simplest,” journalist Garrett M. Graff writes about the scandal,

Watergate is the story of two separate criminal conspiracies: the Nixon world’s ‘dirty tricks’ that led to the burglary on June 17 1972, and the subsequent wider cover-up. The first conspiracy was deliberate, a sloppy and shambolic but nonetheless developed plan to subvert the 1972 election; the second was reactive, almost instinctive – it seems to have happened simply because no one said no.

What started out as an ostensibly ordinary break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC during the US presidential election cycle soon revealed a broader pattern of political espionage, illegal surveillance, campaign sabotage and the systematic misuse of state power. Much of it targeted perceived political enemies.

As the indefatigable Woodward and Bernstein pursued the story, it became clear the burglary was part of a much larger operation – one that reached all the way into the heart of the White House.

Their probing would ultimately lead to the disgrace and resignation of Richard Nixon, who faced near-certain impeachment.

Figuring out the puzzle

Redford was the driving force behind All the President’s Men.

He became interested in the Watergate story while working on The Candidate, a 1972 satire about the backstage machinations underpinning an idealistic Senate campaign that, in an instance of uncanny timing, overlapped with the unfolding scandal.

Redford followed Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation as it panned out in real time. In 1972, he reached out to Woodward directly, hoping to better understand both the facts of the case and the methods of the reporting.

Convinced that the story demanded a restrained, quasi-documentary approach, Redford initially envisioned a black-and-white film shot in a pared-back style, with an emphasis on process rather than star power.

Warner Bros, with whom he had a production deal, thought otherwise. Having already agreed to finance the film, the studio insisted that Redford take a leading role – and marketed the as yet-unmade project as “the most devastating detective story” of the century.

There were early discussions about casting Al Pacino as Bernstein, fresh from the success of The Godfather (1972), but the part ultimately went to Dustin Hoffman. Pakula then signed on to direct, bringing with him a conceptual and tonal sensibility ideally suited to the material.

A quandary remained: how do you build suspense out of a story who outcome is already common knowledge? Film scholars Robert B. Ray and Christian Keathley suggest the filmmaking team’s response to that challenge is “the key” which unlocks the movie.

At one point, during his first meeting with Deep Throat, Woordward admits:

The story is dry. All we’ve got are pieces. We can’t seem to figure out what the puzzle is supposed to look like.

We share the confusion of the reporters as they struggle to get to the bottom of things. What might, in the wrong hands, have been a disastrous mistake turned out to be a masterstroke.

The result is an endlessly watchable and quotable (“Follow the money”) film that generates narrative and dramatic tension through the sheer difficultly of knowing anything at all.

In age beset by disinformation, brazen political deceit, strategic obfuscation and collapsing trust in public institutions, that lesson feels less historically distant than it does disturbingly prescient.

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

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

In September, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) excluded catalogue music (recordings more than two years old) from the Australian bestseller single and album charts.

From a marketing perspective this decision is logical, as it creates room to expose new recordings to the market. However, it also obscures the reality of the new music economy in Australia.

My latest research – which looks at new music releases in Australia from 2000 to 2024 – shows a significant decline in the sale of new music since the adoption of music streaming.

These findings point to a crisis for new and emerging artists in the Australian market.

The new music market is shrinking

In 2017, music streaming platforms, led by Spotify, became the dominant form of recorded music distribution in Australia. The shift from a purchase-based (CDs, vinyl and downloads) to an access-based (streaming) economy represented a fundamental change in the music business.

Streaming platforms, with close to unlimited repertoire, enable and encourage passive listening via playlists and algorithmic recommendation. The result is that catalogue music has become the mainstay of the recorded music industry.

From 2000 to 2018, new release music made up 99% of the ARIA annual top 100 singles, and 78% of the top 100 albums. But from 2022 to 2024, these figures dropped to 62% and 28%, respectively.

The data indicate that since 2000, new music revenue in Australia has declined by 55% in actual and 71% in inflation-adjusted value.

The rise of streaming has led to us spending more on music overall, but less of this is going to new music. My estimates suggest new music revenues in Australia have grown by just 4% since 2014, in a market that has doubled in value.

A similar trend is evident overseas. In the United States, new music accounted for an estimated 65% of recorded music revenue in the pre-streaming economy, compared to 25–30% post-streaming.

New talent can’t rely on industry

From an Australian perspective, the challenges for new music have created concern about pathways for emerging artists, and the music industry’s commitment to developing them.

Industry insiders I interviewed for the research highlighted how labels were playing a diminishing role in artist development.

The stress on the new music economy – combined with the reduced presence of Australian artists in the ARIA charts – has led to ongoing calls for the government to support the industry via cultural policy initiatives.

The recorded music industry also has a role to play in addressing the environment which it helped to create – particularly in regards to how artists are remunerated.

The current “pro-rata” model used by streaming platforms places equal value on all streams, regardless of whether it is a catalogue track or new release. Under this model, there is no business incentive to prioritise new music.

Adjusting this model, so that new releases are valued higher than catalogue music, could create this incentive.

Major labels will likely resist change, as they reap the rewards of selling back catalogue at pure profit. But the idea of valuing new music over catalogue is not new.

Before the streaming era, new release CDs were sold at full price and catalogue CDs were often sold at mid-price. This model reflected the costs associated with developing new products and provided business incentive by attaching greater profit margins to new releases.

Prioritising long-term industry health

Australia’s new music economy has experienced significant revenue decline and reduced industry commitment to new and emerging artists.

For independent labels, which are largely dependent on new release revenue, the ability to compete in a catalogue market is limited. For artists, the lack of pathways to earning revenue may lead to disconnection with the sector.

The role of Australian major record labels as generators of local talent is also in question.

In addition to policy, a business incentive for record labels to invest in new music could enable the long-term health of the sector.

Tim Kelly, PhD Candidate, Department of Design and Society., University of Technology Sydney

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

Those who venture into Foul Air Cave, below Buchan township in eastern Victoria, quickly realise how it got its ominous name. In its deepest chambers, bacteria consume oxygen and excrete organic gases to produce a toxic stench.

The cave is also a natural pitfall trap. Its water-worn entrance offers no escape to any creature unlucky enough to tumble in. The smell of death clings to your nostrils as you navigate vertiginous drops and calf-deep, sucking mud.

Tens to hundreds of thousands of years ago during the Pleistocene Epoch, Foul Air Cave accumulated remains of diverse, often-giant mammals known collectively as Australia’s megafauna.

One of these mammals was the giant echidna Megalibgwilia owenii, as we report in a new paper published today in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology. We recognised this extinct monotreme, twice the size of Australian echidnas today, from a newly identified fossil collected almost 120 years ago.

And the specimen is enough to verify for the first time that this species once roamed Ice Age Victoria, spanning a 1,000 kilometre gap in its previously known distribution.

Scores of ancient bones

The first scientific expeditions to Foul Air Cave were made in 1906–7 by Frank Palmer Spry who worked for what’s now called Museums Victoria, local caves curator Francis Moon, and geologist Thomas Sergeant Hall.

They were among the first to enter the cave. They encountered scores of fossil bones loosely buried in damp earth, including powerful, clawed mega-marsupial palorchestids and predatory marsupial “lions”.

They deposited their finds in the state collection, now housed at Melbourne Museum.

Over a century later, the fossils of Foul Air Cave have granted us a further insight into deep time.

A robust creature

Previously described fossils of Megalibgwilia owenii derive from a handful of sites in Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales. They’re sparse, too: one well-preserved skeleton, four skulls of varying completeness, and a range of isolated bones.

Together, they illustrate a robust mammal a metre long and weighing in at 15 kilograms – roughly as big as a four-year-old child.

The meaning of its name is straightforward. Mega-libgwil-ia joins the ancient Greek prefix “mega-”, meaning large or mighty, with “libgwil”, the name for the echidna in the language of the Wemba Wemba people of northern Victoria and south-eastern NSW.

We can combine this with the species epithet owenii (acknowledging prolific 19th century anatomist Sir Richard Owen) to coin a common name: “Owen’s giant echidna”.

Using its fossil remains as a guide, Owen’s giant echidna most resembled the long-beaked echidna (Zaglossus), which today occupies the wet tropical cloud forests of New Guinea. Its broad limbs and shoulders bore prominent bony scars indicating it was more heavily muscled than other monotremes. It also had a wide, long and straight untoothed beak, with bony ridges across its palate.

This suite of differences implies Megalibgwilia was adapted to a different lifestyle than its modern relatives. One can imagine it tearing to pieces fallen logs or digging hard soils to seek out moth and beetle larvae, rather than feeding on termites or earthworms.

A fossil awaits its finder

Our new fossil came to light during the systematic documentation and maintenance of thousands of fossil bones, teeth, and skeletons preserved by Museums Victoria.

But even this obscure seven centimetre fragment of skull was sufficient to identify the unique proportions of M. owenii – especially when we examined material in museum collections across Australia.

As well as identifying the fossil, we also researched its connection to Foul Air Cave by drawing on collection notes, hand-drawn maps, diaries and public newspaper archives.

These historical ephemera established Spry as the fossil’s collector. And they inspired a return to the cave in his footsteps.

Ready for re-examination

Spry and Moon wore their everyday outfits of breeches, jacket and waistcoat for their fossicking. They lit their path with candles or kerosene lamps, and entrusted their life to stiff, heavy nautical rope. The trained geologist Hall never ventured into the cave himself. Under those conditions, who would judge him?

By comparison, modern caving is a technical affair. Brilliant headlamps illuminate entire caverns. Heavy-duty nylon oversuits protect from skin-shredding rocky surfaces. And the climbing ropes and devices are strong enough to suspend a small car.

The collaboration between Spry, Moon and Hall combined an informed perspective, fluent local knowledge, and technical know-how to succeed. Despite obvious advances in technology and disciplinary knowledge, our success is rooted in the same foundation as theirs – curiosity and community spirit.

During my own investigations at Buchan, families spanning generations have shared local history and acted as subterranean guides. Parks Victoria rangers have facilitated and overseen work on public reserves. Recreational cavers from the Victorian Speleological Association have been a wellspring of enthusiastic support.

The long residence of this specimen in Victoria’s state collection epitomises how, thanks to past work, palaeontological discoveries arise from “collection-based” fieldwork as often as investigations outdoors.

And if one illuminating specimen can lie unnoticed across a century, why not others?

Sparse fossil bones of large, slender echidnas, seemingly distinct from Megalibgwilia owenii, have been noted from Victoria and South Australia. These warrant re-examination to test if Owen’s giant echidna adapted to different conditions over space or time, or if another unknown species co-occupied the landscape.

The latter option is intriguing in light of the proposition that Zaglossus may even have occupied northern Australia until as late as the 20th century.

If true, then surely one of its ancestors awaits recognition – either among the landscape or preserved carefully among the nation’s public scientific assets.

Tim Ziegler, Collection Manager, Vertebrate Palaeontology, Museums Victoria Research Institute

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

Isn’t it funny
How a Bear likes honey
Buzz buzz
I wonder why he does

Just over a century ago, the satirical writer and playwright A.A. Milne, suffering from the after-effects of fighting in the trenches of World War I, started writing some poems for his only child, Christopher Robin.

They were published in a collection, When We Were Very Young and they caused a literary sensation for a reading public looking for comfort in difficult times.

Two years later, Milne followed up with the stories of the Hundred Acre Wood in his book Winnie-the-Pooh, based on the tangle of scrub and trees at the bottom of his garden and populated by Christopher Robin’s toys.

Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga and Roo, and Owl, each distinctive characters in their own right, chatted and played, going on adventures, solving problems, presided over by Christopher Robin, the wise child who knows what to do.

Not every critic loved it: “Tonstant Reader fwowed up” wrote the acerbic Dorothy Parker in her New Yorker Constant Reader column. She found the stories saccharine and cloying. But for those who enjoyed the simple humour, cameraderie and warmth of the stories, Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends became part of the children’s literary canon. And so they have remained to this day.

Winnie-the-Pooh has been translated into over 50 languages, including Bengali, Swedish, Polish and Latin (with the wonderful Winnie Ille Pu). In Poland, a Warsaw street, Ulica Kubusia Puchatka, was named after Winnie-the-Pooh by the children of the city.

In 1961, Disney acquired the rights to Winnie-the-Pooh, resulting in a popular television cartoon and merchandising. In China, in 2018, a film version of Winnie-the-Pooh was banned after internet memes compared his gentle laziness to the President, Xi Jinping. More than 20 million copies of the books have been sold worldwide.

Winnie-the-Pooh contains a perfect mixture of sweetness and sharp observation, shifting between light and dark, between funny and tragi-comic. The stories of Pooh and his friends, each one flawed but also delightful, demonstrate the ups and downs of life, held in a delicate and optimistic balance.

Take, for instance, the depressive toy donkey, Eeyore, continually miserable yet somehow contented in his misery, bouncy toy tiger, Tigger, causing mayhem with every move, or timid Piglet, Pooh’s best friend. All (along with Pooh) have problems that are solved with one another’s help and particularly with the help of the boy-hero, Christopher Robin. Problems occur, are solved, and life carries on.

A romance of community

The Winnie-the-Pooh stories are what we might think of as a romance of community. The inhabitants of the 100 Acre Wood show resilience and resourcefulness in dealing with difficulties, largely because they deal with them together.

They are also pastoral, set in a comfortable and nonthreatening rural place, offering readers (often weary urbanites) a holiday from their busy lives. And as such, they allow us to gently contemplate what makes life tick, and what makes life worth living.

This philosophical streak runs through all Milne’s work for children: in his follow-up to Winnie-the-Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner (1928), and his second collection of poems, Now We Are Six (1927). In 1929 he adapted another children’s classic, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, for the stage. Also a pastoral, featuring anthropomorphised animals rather than toys, it promoted the English countryside as a space for gentle reflection on the good life and friendship.

The Wind in the Willows has a wild quality. Such wildness does not impinge greatly in the Pooh stories: the characters are toys rather than animals and the god-figure is Christopher Robin.

Asked, for instance, to help resolve a squabble between Eeyore and Tigger, after Tigger’s loud sneeze has frightened Eeyore into falling into the river, Christopher Robin concludes: “Well, … I think – I think we all ought to play Poohsticks”. This is a simple game in which players drop sticks on the upstream side of a bridge over running water and wait to see which one emerges first. (See: How to Play Pooh Sticks)

Living in the moment

Why is Winnie-the-Pooh called Winnie-the-Pooh? The name Winnie comes from a North American black bear at the London Zoo, which was brought to Britain from Winnipeg, Canada. Like many London children, Christopher Robin was taken to the London zoo to see the animals, and he shortened the name Winnipeg to “Winnie”. “Pooh,” on the other hand, came from a swan, encountered on a family holiday. This mixture of inside-joke and idiosyncratic names created by a very young child adds to the book’s whimsy.

In their appeal to the good life and emphasis on friendship and community, these books have struck a chord with readers well beyond the nursery. Best known in this vein is Benjamin Hoff’s book The Tao of Pooh, a philosophical work that connects the behaviour of Pooh and friends with the principles of Daoism, which emphasise the importance of simplicity, naturalness and effortlessness.

In this regard, the innocent everyman Pooh exemplifies the ability to live in the present moment, and to live a life of simple “being”.

As such, he is the valuable sounding-board for the other characters, beset by life difficulties and behavioural dysfunction: the hyperactive Tigger, the depressive Eeyore, anxious Piglet, busy Rabbit and so-on. He offers solutions to their problem, without criticising them, in doing so providing stability for them and for readers.

Certainly, when one visits the 100 Acre Wood, one is aware of entering a place of calm, of smallness, a place attuned to nature where the oddities of human character and behaviour are distilled into small, funny, calming stories. It is a world close to beauty, but also tolerant of imperfection.

According to Daoism, the secret of life lies in accepting things according to their true nature, neither blaming nor praising.

What of Christopher?

It helps, too, that Pooh Corner is visually lovely: the illustrations by E.H. Shephard present Pooh and friends as cute and appealing, while remaining faithful to the toys that inspired them.

Pictures such as one where Pooh and Piglet climb a gate together show the odd-couple balance of their friendship – brave Pooh, fearful Piglet – trusting one another in difficult circumstances.

Christopher Robin Milne had a somewhat difficult time as a child thrust into the spotlight when the books found fame. It is hard enough having one’s childish cuteness paraded around family and friends; harder still when one’s reputation precedes one.

In adult life, Christopher Robin owned a successful bookshop and before he died in 1996, he did reach a measure of acceptance of his father’s work. In 2001, Disney Corporation paid a large sum of money to Milne’s estate and other rights holders of Winnie-the-Pooh. His wife Lesley and daughter Clare decided the money should be used to fund a charity supporting people with disabilities. The Clare Milne Trust has been in operation since 1999.

2026 will be a year of busy celebration for Winnie-the-Pooh. Disney, unsurprisingly, will launch new merchandise. An academic conference on 100 years of the 100 acres will be held at the University of Cambridge.

For the rest of us, it may be time to dig out our childhood copies of Milne’s books, to spend a little time with old friends from these best of old stories, hanging out in the 100 Acre Wood, doing not very much and thinking a little about life.

Elizabeth Hale, Senior Lecturer in English and Writing (children's literature), University of New England

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

Have you ever tasted a word, or seen colours while listening to music?

If you have, you may be among the 1% to 4% of people who have a fascinating trait known as synaesthesia.

Synaesthesia is a neurological phenomenon where the activation of one sense, such as hearing, triggers the activation of another usually unrelated sense, such as sight. This means people with synaesthesia often experience additional sensations compared to the rest of us.

We’ve devoted a lot of time to understanding this rare phenomenon. While there’s much more to unpack, what we do know shows we don’t all perceive the world in the same way.

What is synaesthesia?

People with synaesthesia are known as synaesthetes. Research suggests synaesthesia may be more common among women, although this could reflect sampling biases, and may be influenced by genetics.

There are many different types of synaesthesia. Some people have auditory-visual synaesthesia, meaning they see colours when they hear sounds. Others see colours when they read, hear or think about letters or numbers. This is known as grapheme-colour synaesthesia. Another example is mirror-touch synaesthesia, where a person feels sensations on their own body when they see another person being touched.

All of us naturally combine information from different senses. For instance, when you watch someone speak, your brain blends what you see and hear to understand them better. In synaesthesia these links are a bit different – a sound might, for example, trigger a visual experience – but may still depend on the same mechanisms.

People with synaesthesia don’t have any control over how their senses collide. Instead, these are spontaneous, vivid experiences that usually stay the same over time. For example, today a person with grapheme-colour synaesthesia may perceive the letter “A” as being red. And they’ll most likely see it as being the same shade even years later.

It’s worth noting synaesthesia is not an illness or disorder. And it doesn’t cause harm or impairment, although some people may find their synaesthesia overwhelming at times. For example, if they feel pain every time they see someone else in pain, going to the movies can be quite disturbing. However, on the whole it does not seem to interfere with daily life. In fact, many people don’t realise they have synaesthesia because it’s simply how they perceive the world.

What causes it?

We don’t yet know exactly what causes synaesthesia. But scientists have come up with two main theories.

1. Synaesthetes have more connections in their brain

According to this view, known as the cross-activation theory, people with synaesthesia have more connections between different parts of their brain. This could happen because their brain hasn’t gotten rid of unused connections between brain cells. This process, known as synaptic pruning, helps the brain work more efficiently and is part of normal development.

Under this theory, a person with grapheme-colour synaesthesia for example, would have the region that recognises letters directly linked to the part that processes colour. So when they see a letter, they perceive it with a colour.

2. Synaesthetes have slightly different activity in their brain

The other main theory is that people with synaesthesia have the same neural connections as non-synaesthetes, but certain pathways might be stronger or more active. Synaesthesia does seem to build on mechanisms we all have. For example, when you see a picture of a grey banana, you know bananas are usually yellow. We even see patterns of brain activity that reflect this. Grapheme-colour synaesthetes might also do this with letters so that when they see black letters, their brain activates specific colours.

Simply put, the debate about what causes synaesthesia comes down to whether synaesthetes have a different brain structure or just use their brains in an alternative way.

Does it make you more creative?

You might’ve heard artists such as Kandinsky or musicians such as Lorde describe their synaesthesia-like experiences. And there is some evidence to suggest synaesthesia is more common among people in creative fields.

One large survey of Australian synaesthetes found roughly 24% had creative occupations, such as being an artist, musician, architect or graphic designer. This is compared to the less than 2% of people in the general population who have these jobs. This gap is striking, even though we don’t understand what’s behind it. One reason may be synaesthetes link ideas and sensations in unusual ways, helping them think more creatively. Research suggests people with certain kinds of synaesthesia may form stronger memories or have more vivid imaginations, but only to a limited extent.

Synaesthesia is a powerful window into how our brains make sense of the world. It reminds us perception is not a fixed, one-size-fits-all process. Rather, it’s something the brain actively builds in ways that are often more varied, and far richer, than we might expect.

Sophie Smit, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Cognitive Neuroscience‬, University of Sydney and Anina Rich, Associate Professor and Head of Synaesthesia Research Group, Macquarie University

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

The two of us can often be found in a patch of scrubby bushland, phone in hand, slowly scanning for plants. Or crouched behind a tree trunk with binoculars, pausing mid-breath to find the source of a bird call. It often feels like a treasure hunt. What will turn up today? And how can we share those observations with the world?

Activities such as these are part of citizen science, where volunteers record observations of the natural world and share them with others.

Science lives far beyond the lab, and it’s not just done by scientists.

In this series, we spotlight the world of citizen science – its benefits, discoveries and how you can participate.

We are both professional ecologists, but our most joyful moments with nature often begin with a simple act: stepping outside and paying attention to it. And our research suggests these experiences may do more than support science. They may also benefit our mental health.

Some days it’s a common species we’ve seen a hundred times before. Other days it’s something unexpected that brings a surge of excitement.

Being outside like this can feel freeing. You focus on the present, move your body and think about where to place your feet, without worrying about your email inbox or endless other demands on your attention. You begin noticing small details you might usually rush past.

That sense of curiosity, connection and shared purpose is something many people recognise when they take part in citizen science.

Supporting mental wellbeing

Citizen science projects invite people to collect data about the natural world.

Platforms such as eBird, iNaturalist, FrogID and Redmap allow anyone armed with curiosity and a smartphone to record wildlife observations and contribute to scientific research. Millions of people around the world now take part in these kinds of projects.

In a recent study of citizen science participants, we examined how taking part in wildlife monitoring projects affects people’s mental wellbeing.

Participants consistently described feeling better after taking part. One volunteer told us:

I come home tired, but it’s a good tired. My head feels clearer, like I’ve pressed reset.

Another explained that learning to identify species changed how they experienced everyday walks:

I don’t just see “green” anymore. Now I notice the differences between plants, their ecological value and the pressures they face.

Part of the explanation is simple: spending time in nature is already known to reduce stress, improve mood and support mental wellbeing.

But citizen science goes a step further.

Rather than simply visiting a park, people actively engage with the environment. They observe closely, record what they see and contribute to something larger than themselves. This sense of purpose can deepen the benefits of being outside.

Citizen science is also inherently social. Many projects bring people together to collect data, share observations or learn from others. These interactions can help reduce social isolation, which is a major risk factor for poor mental health.

For some participants, particularly older adults, citizen science can also be empowering. It provides opportunities to use existing skills, learn new ones and feel that their contributions matter.

Taken together, elements of nature exposure, physical activity, learning and social connection create a powerful mix that supports wellbeing.

How you participate matters

Not all citizen science experiences are the same, and this may influence their health benefits.

In a 2025 study we explored this using a concept borrowed from public health called dose-response – how much participation is needed to produce benefits?

Three ingredients appear particularly important: frequency (how often someone takes part), duration (how long activities last) and intensity, which can include the richness of the environment, the diversity of species encountered or the depth of interaction between participants.

Short, one-off activities can still boost mood and encourage movement. But regular participation is more likely to produce longer-lasting benefits. Like exercise, small amounts done often may be better than one big effort followed by long gaps.

Citizen science can also bring physical health benefits. Many projects involve walking, bending, standing or light hiking. These activities support mobility and cardiovascular health.

For communities at risk of social isolation or physical inactivity, these benefits may be profoundly valuable.

How can citizen science do even more?

Despite this potential, most citizen science projects are not designed with health outcomes in mind. That means opportunities are being missed.

A 2025 study suggests even short nature-based citizen science activities can quickly improve mood and reduce stress.

Longer-term mental health conditions are influenced by many factors and usually require sustained support. Citizen science will not replace medical care. But it can help strengthen the foundations of wellbeing: positive emotions, physical activity, social connection and a sense of purpose.

At a population level, these building blocks matter. They build our ability to cope with challenges and recover from stress.

To maximise these benefits, citizen science projects must be inclusive. People who already feel connected to nature are more likely to take part.

But this is also the group that tends to report better mental and physical health, meaning participation can unintentionally reinforce existing health inequalities.

Field-based projects may unintentionally exclude people with mobility challenges, limited time or poor access to green space. Yet many of these individuals could contribute meaningfully if projects were designed with accessibility in mind.

Recognising citizen science not only as a research tool, but also as a way to support public health opens new opportunities.

When designed thoughtfully, citizen science can benefit both biodiversity and people. And for participants, it offers something simple but powerful: a reason to step outside, pay attention, and reconnect with the living world around them.

Richard Fuller, Professor in Biodiversity and Conservation, The University of Queensland and Rachel Oh, Research Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore

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

Scientists can’t be everywhere all at once, as much as they’d like to. Many of the problems citizen science helps solve are concerned with spreading the net wider – or getting more helping hands on the task.

Biosecurity managers can’t make it to every regional town in their state. But if members of the public report suspicious species, such as through the popular iNaturalist app, they can take action.

Astronomers need more eyes to sift through vast databases of stellar explosions. Climate scientists can learn from our history, but deciphering the records takes time.

Below we introduce five citizen science projects where large numbers of people have contributed impactful results, or yielded new knowledge. Some of them even have new project stages you may be able to participate in.

Science lives far beyond the lab, and it’s not just done by scientists.

In this series, we spotlight the world of citizen science – its benefits, discoveries and how you can participate.

Atlas of Living Australia’s Biosecurity Alerts Service

Andrew Turley, Team Leader – Applications and Biosecurity – Atlas of Living Australia, CSIRO

Australia is one of the world’s most biodiverse continents, but we’re constantly at risk from introduced and invasive species. Even with current border controls, some pests, weeds, and diseases inevitably slip through.

The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is the nation’s largest open source biodiversity data source. In partnership with the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, a Biosecurity Alerts Service was set up to connect this trove of data – much of it collected through citizen science – with biosecurity managers across Australia.

The service delivers weekly email notifications to biosecurity managers about new reports of introduced and invasive species of concern in their area. In 2020, this led to the first report of globally invasive Asian shore crab (Hemigrapsus sanguineus). In 2024, an iNaturalist user recorded the first report of the invasive freshwater gold clam (Corbicula fluminea). Early detection allowed biosecurity managers to monitor and mitigate these species’ spread to other areas.

In 2025, an iNaturalist citizen scientist recorded Siam weed north of Brisbane. This record was more than 1,000km from the nearest known infestation, near Townsville. The resulting alert allowed Biosecurity Queensland to eradicate the new infestation. Likewise, reports of the tree cholla cactus, red imported fire ants, honey fungus and many other species have triggered local responses.

This work ultimately helps protect our environment and agricultural systems from the impacts of these introduced and invasive species.

The Biosecurity Alerts Service is ongoing, and every week we send alerts to biosecurity managers across the country. If you use one of the ALA-linked apps – such as iNaturalist, eBird or FrogID, among many others – and choose to share your data publicly, the data you collect will be automatically checked as part of the service.

If you’re lucky, you may even be contacted by a biosecurity officer for more information or to collect a sample to help confirm the species. To get involved, just be curious, visit the outdoors with a biodiversity app, and make sure to record anything that looks odd or out of place.

Climate History Australia

Linden Ashcroft, Senior Lecturer, Climate Science and Science Communication, University of Melbourne

There are millions of valuable weather observations scattered across the world that only exist on paper. It would take thousands of lifetimes for scientists to transcribe these precious records on their own.

But with the help of citizen scientists, we’ve been able to rescue these vital observations from being lost to time. The data they provide have improved the coverage and accuracy of global data models used to understand how our climate is changing.

Climate History Australia was modelled on similar projects from the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Scanned images of historical weather data from the National Archives were split into chunks, allowing people to help us rescue these observations in a manageable way at home.

Across two projects in 2020 and 2021, more than 1,700 citizen scientists transcribed at least 67,400 weather observations recorded in the 19th century. The journals contained meticulous weather data including descriptions of the clouds, type of rainfall, and other activities of the day. The project attracted amazing volunteers, including students, historians, and people who wanted to contribute to climate science.

Thanks to the recovered data, we have now filled gaps in weather observations in Adelaide and Perth, allowing us to build near-continuous records of the weather of these two cities back to 1830 and 1843 respectively. We now know more about extreme weather events in Australia, which is so important because changes in the extremes are what will affect us the most as the world warms.

The rescued data have also fed into global weather and climate datasets, improving our understanding of weather and climate change in the entire Southern Hemisphere. While there are no active Climate History Australia data rescue projects, similar activities are happening in Ireland, Africa and Italy.

Kilonova Seekers

Duncan Galloway, Associate Professor in Astrophysics, Monash University

Since 2023, the Kilonova Seekers citizen astronomy project has been sharing the excitement of transient astronomy, engaging citizen scientists in the discovery of some of the most exciting and energetic events in the universe.

Transient astronomy refers broadly to the study of cosmic objects that vary with time. Many types of normal stars, particularly those that have an orbiting companion, vary in brightness.

But of particular interest are short-lived explosive events that produce gamma-ray bursts, such as the supernova explosions of massive stars, or rare collisions between pairs of neutron stars.

Kilonova Seekers provides observations from the Gravitational-wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) telescope network to members of the public. GOTO collaboration members Lisa Kelsey from the University of Cambridge and Tom Killestein from the University of Warwick built an image comparison platform on the popular Zooniverse website.

To contribute, participants were invited to play “spot the difference” by comparing new images to old and looking for changes. This work helps astronomers to distinguish genuine new objects in the sky from imaging artefacts and other spurious signals.

The project has attracted thousands of volunteer observers and yielded more than 200 discoveries to date. A major discovery was published last year – an extremely bright star explosion, GOTO0650, captured as it took place. Once flagged, astronomers were able to look at it more closely with Earth-based and space observatories. The object was so bright, amateur astronomers could capture high-quality images, too.

Kilonova Seekers has just gone through a hardware and software upgrade and relaunched in February this year – so you too can have a hand in trying to discover new objects in space.

Mozzie Monitors

Craig Williams, Professor and Dean of Programs (STEM), Adelaide University

Mosquitoes are the world’s deadliest animal. It’s crucial for health departments and local governments to keep up mosquito surveillance to protect public health. But it takes a lot of resources to do so, leading to gaps in the system.

Launched by the University of South Australia in 2018, the Mozzie Monitors program comprised two main activities citizen scientists could help with. The first was setting low-tech mosquito traps at home and taking photos of the collections so experts could identify them remotely. The second was submitting mosquito images to the project page on the iNaturalist platform. It has been an amazing collaborative effort nationwide, with thousands of records submitted.

Originally, the program aimed to expand mosquito surveillance in Australia, detect exotic mosquitoes entering the country, and educate the public about mosquitoes and the diseases they carry.

It has since evolved to assisting remote communities in exotic mosquito surveillance, tracking mosquito-borne viruses, and running an education program in South Australian and Northern Territory schools. Hundreds of students aged 5–17 have participated in learning activities and even trapped some mosquitoes.

We designed and built Mozzie Monitors as we went along. It’s led to new mosquito trapping methods citizen scientists can use, has taught the participants a lot about mosquitoes, helped to establish a mosquito database with new species records, and even led to the discovery of mosquitoes not previously known to be in Australia.

The project continues to grow and evolve. In the Northern Territory, the small town of Tennant Creek has experienced repeated invasions of exotic dengue mosquitoes. Currently, readers in the Northern Territory anywhere between Katherine and Alice Springs, can become involved in Mozzie Monitors Tennant Creek. While Tennant Creek is the focus, we would dearly love to have participants across the region.

WomSAT: Wombat Survey and Analysis Tool

Julie Old, Associate Professor in Biology, Zoology and Animal Science, Western Sydney University

Hayley Stannard, Associate Professor in Animal Anatomy and Physiology, Charles Sturt University

Wombats are ecological engineers – they dig burrows to sleep in during the day and protect them from predators, but these burrows also provide shelter for other animals. Turning over the soil when they dig their burrows also helps plants grow, moving nutrients and water through the soil.

Due to their importance to ecosystems, there is a need to understand more about wombats and where they live, so that we can manage threats and aid their conservation. Sadly, wombats are at risk from several threats – these include collisions with vehicles, a devastating disease called sarcoptic mange, and habitat loss.

Started in 2015, WomSAT is a citizen science program that allows the public, researchers and wildlife carers to record evidence of wombats across Australia. It collects real-time data on wombat sightings – dead or alive, the location of their burrows, and whether they appear to be affected by mange. Wildlife carers also use WomSAT to track the treatment of sarcoptic mange.

To date, the impacts have been significant: WomSAT has been pivotal to determining roadkill hotspots and tracking sarcoptic mange, and even the factors that affect mange occurrence. In collaboration with the Wombat Protection Society of Australia, the project also created online training courses for the public who have an interest in wombats and wish to learn more, and for wildlife carers on how to safely treat sarcoptic mange in the field.

WomSAT is an ongoing project. Anyone can become a “wombat warrior” by logging sightings of wombats on WomSAT to help identify roadkill hotspots and track the occurrence of sarcoptic mange. You can also follow #WombatWednesday on social media.

Signe Dean, Science + Technology Editor, The Conversation

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

Ever wondered what it might feel like to spot giant spider crabs while you’re snorkelling? Or check plants for the circular holes that indicate native bees are collecting nest materials?

Citizen science relies on people like you – more than a million of them in Australia, actually – to collect and analyse valuable data about the world around us.

Here, we introduce five citizen science projects you can take part in. For most of them, all you need to get started is an app on your phone.

Science lives far beyond the lab, and it’s not just done by scientists.

In this series, we spotlight the world of citizen science – its benefits, discoveries and how you can participate.

Spider Crab Watch

Elodie Camprasse, Honorary Fellow – School of Life and Environmental Sciences – Deakin University

Every winter in Port Phillip Bay in Naarm/Melbourne, tens of thousands of great spider crabs gather in shallow water to moult – shedding their shells and growing new ones that grow to about 16 centimetres. But scientists know surprisingly little about them. The gatherings can be unpredictable and short-lived, making them difficult for scientists to monitor alone.

Spider Crab Watch helps researchers fill these knowledge gaps. By bringing together observations from the public – including divers, snorkellers and fishers – scientists can better understand when and where gatherings occur, how long they last, and what environmental conditions might trigger them.

Citizen scientists have already logged hundreds of observations, helping researchers identify new gathering sites and better understand when aggregations occur. Participants can log when and where they see spider crabs – whether a single crab or a large group, in Port Phillip Bay or elsewhere. Photos are helpful but not essential. Empty shells washed up on beaches can also be logged.

NOBURN

Sam Van Holsbeeck, Research Fellow – Forest Research Institute – University of the Sunshine Coast

NOBURN (the National Bushfire Resilience Network) is a citizen science project aimed at improving our understanding of the role of vegetation in bushfire risk. Using an app, people around Australia can log their observations – including site photographs – to support research into fuel dynamics, fuel load and bushfire risk.

Guided by the app, participants assess vegetation at a site, noting factors such as shrub density and overall fuel hazard. Observations typically take 10–15 minutes and can be conducted by community members, landholders, students or land managers. To date, we have collected 154 verified site observations and more than 160 registered users.

Observations supplied by citizen scientists help researchers understand the structure, density and dryness of forest fuels. Combined with AI, this data allows for better prediction of the likelihood and severity of fires. While this data is not as detailed as a full expert assessment, they provide useful indicative information, particularly in areas where formal fuel monitoring is limited.

FrogID

Jodi Rowley, Curator – Amphibian & Reptile Conservation Biology – Australian Museum – UNSW Sydney

Australia’s frogs are in trouble. At least four species have been lost and dozens more are on the edge of extinction. Yet we lack the information needed to make informed decisions about how to conserve them. Frogs are very sensitive to environmental change. This makes them great indicators of environmental change (they’re often referred to as the “canary in the coal mine”). By monitoring them, we also gain insight into environmental health.

FrogID taps the keen eyes and ears of people across Australia to gather the data needed to help save Australia’s frogs.

Using our free app, people can record frogs wherever they hear them. The best time is after rain and in the first few hours after dark. Once submitted, Australian Museum frog experts listen to the recordings and identify species.

There are more than 100,000 registered users of FrogID who have together gathered almost 1.5 million records of frogs from across Australia. It’s safe to say this dataset has revolutionised our understanding of frogs in Australia – including finding 13 frog species new to science.

1 Million Turtles

James Van Dyke, Associate Professor in Biomedical Sciences – La Trobe University

Freshwater turtle numbers have fallen 60–90% across most of the rivers and wetlands of Australia, amid engineered flows and increasingly dry conditions. As turtles disappear, they leave a large gap. Turtles are the “vacuum cleaners” of the waterways, eating decaying organisms and vegetation and improving water quality.

The 1 Million Turtles project aims to increase survival rates of freshwater turtles and turtle nests, and increase Australia’s turtle population by at least one million animals.

People of all ages can download and record any turtles or turtle nests they see in Australia. They can also volunteer for other activities, such as nest protection, via our website.

To date, our citizen scientists have logged nearly 34,000 turtle records across the country. They have also saved more than 2,600 turtles from dangerous road crossings, and protected more than 1,940 turtle nests from invasive foxes and pigs.

Assuming each nest held an average of 15 eggs, and half of the turtles saved on roads were adult females of reproductive age, our program has given 400,000 turtles the chance of a future in just the past five years.

Data from this community conservation program has led to the conservation status of turtle species being upgraded to threatened or endangered. It has also prompted the development of state conservation programs for turtles in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

Australian ‘leafcutter’ bees

Kit Prendergast, Research Fellow – School of Science – University of Southern Queensland

Native bee numbers are declining and we have limited information about them. There are more than 2,000 species of native bee, including the Megachile bee. Some species of Megachile bee use plant leaves or even petals to build their nests, giving them the common name of leafcutter bees.

We don’t yet know which plants these bee species rely on. This citizen science project allows the public to use an app to identify which plants the bees are relying on. By noting preferred plants, we’ll have a better idea of how to create habitats for these gorgeous native bees and pollinators.

Most native bees cannot be identified by citizens, due to the specialised skills required, and most diagnostic features being microscopic. But when it comes to plants, these are much better known among the public and can be identified easily by photos.

Members of the public can download the free iNaturalist app and when they see a plant that has distinctive discs cut out, or see a Megachile bee in action, they can take a photo of the leaf “damage”. Once completed, gardeners, land managers and farmers will be able to access an evidence-based list of which nesting plants should accompany food plants.

Miki Perkins, Environment & Energy Editor, The Conversation

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

On the shores of the west coast of Australia lies a window to our past: the stromatolites and microbial mats of Gathaagudu (Shark Bay).

To the untrained eye they look like a collection of rocks and slime – but they are in fact teeming with microbial life. And these stromatolites are living “relics” of ancient ecosystems that thrived on Earth billions of years ago.

If you wade past, it feels like you’re walking back through time. In fact, the first bubbles of oxygen that filled the atmosphere on early Earth likely came from ancient stromatolites. You could say we owe our very existence to these piles of rocks.

So, what other secrets of our past could these ecosystems tell us? Through decades of research, we know how early life has woven its path through these “living rocks”. But most recently our team embarked on the greatest genealogy search of them all: searching for our great microbial ancestors, the Asgard archaea.

And in a new paper, published today in the journal Current Biology, we report how this search led to the discovery of a key clue that could help explain how complex life evolved on Earth.

The cells that comprise complex life

Asgard archaea were originally named after Norse gods. This fascinating group of microbes sits on the cusp of one of the most significant events in the evolution of life: the origin of the complex cells that make up plants and animals, known as eukaryotes.

Evidence suggests Asgard archaea are the closest relatives of eukaryotes. And that on an early Earth it was the “marriage” of an ancient Asgard archaeon and a bacterium that led to the first eukaryotes.

They formed an ancient partnership. They shared resources and physically interacted, leading to the first complex cells. Like a Romeo and Juliet tale of two distant families coming together, Asgard archaea and bacteria decided it was time to break from traditional family values.

But we have never seen a model of how this may have occurred. Until now.

Holding up a mirror to the ancient past

Our team used the mats of Shark Bay as a “seed” to establish cultures of these ancient microbes. We are one of only four groups worldwide to achieve this, through years of research with a dedicated team of graduate students nurturing the Asgards like offspring.

But the Asgards were not alone. We found them together with a sulphate-loving bacterium. Could this be a model of how complex life may have started on a primitive Earth?

We began by sequencing the Asgards’ DNA to decipher exactly how these microbes tick at the genetic level. We also used artificial intelligence to model how proteins could have behaved in a world before eukaryotes. Evidence suggested these two microbes were sharing nutrients. In other words, they were cooperating.

But we wanted to delve deeper. What do our great microbial ancestors look like? Here we turned to electron cryotomography, a high-resolution imaging approach that allowed us to observe cells and structures at a nanometre scale.

And here we showed – for the first time – an Asgard archaeon and a bacterium directly interacting. Tiny nanotubes were connecting the two organisms – perhaps reflecting what their great-ancestors did on an early Earth that ultimately led to the explosion of complex life as we know it.

Weaving western science with Indigenous knowledge

This was a major discovery – one that originated in Gathaagudu, a World Heritage Site with significant environmental and cultural values.

Aboriginal people first inhabited Gathaagudu over 30,000 years ago. We wanted to recognise and celebrate the language of the Malgana people, one of the traditional language groups of Gathaagudu. We also wanted to connect western science with Indigenous Knowledge in a meaningful way.

To this end and working closely with the world’s foremost Malgana language expert, Kymberley Oakley, and Aboriginal elders, a name was granted for our novel Asgard archaeon from the language of the Malgana people: Nerearchaeum marumarumayae. The species name – marumarumayae – is derived from the Aboriginal language of the Malgana people, meaning “ancient home”, a reference to stromatolites being of ancient origin in Earth’s history.

Weaving Aboriginal language into the naming of our new microbe represents a fitting connection between unique Aboriginal culture in Australia and the ancient microbe discovered that calls the mats of Gathaagudu “home”.

Gathaagudu is under threat from global change, from increased heatwaves, cyclonic events and human activity. And among the values to preserve and conserve are the significant Aboriginal connections as well as the trails of life going back through evolutionary time.

With our study we have peered into our past. And maybe like the Montagues and Capulets of Shakespeare, we see distant families of microbes coming together to bridge the divide and ultimately form the early eukaryotes that eventually led to us: a fragile branch on the evolutionary tree of life.

Brendan Paul Burns, Associate Professor, School of Biotech & Biomolecular Science, UNSW Sydney and Kymberley Oakley, Indigenous language expert, Indigenous Knowledge

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

It’s a simple thing we encounter many times every single week – often while in a hurry. You pull up at a parking spot, scan a QR code and pay within seconds. Or you sit down at a cafe, scan a code to view the menu and order your meal.

At the train station, you scan the code on the poster for timetable updates. QR codes are increasingly used in public transport systems worldwide for ticketing, payments and accessing real-time information.

Because QR codes are so widespread, scammers naturally find them appealing too. Here’s what you need to know to stay safe.

What are QR codes?

A QR (quick response) code is a type of barcode that stores information and encoded data in a square pattern of black and white pixels. They were first developed in 1994 by Japanese company Denso Wave for labelling automotive parts.

Today QR codes are widely used because they’re quick to create and easy to scan without needing a specialised scanner – a smartphone camera will do. They’re designed to remove friction: you scan, and something happens instantly.

However, a QR code doesn’t show you where it leads until after it’s scanned. Your device can perform a range of functions after scanning a QR code: open up a web page, check you in to a location, or even connect your device to a wireless network without needing to type anything.

That’s what makes it so useful, but also potentially risky. Malicious QR codes can redirect users to fake websites or prompt them to download harmful content. QR codes are so familiar and widespread, we tend to trust them without question. That’s exactly what scammers rely on.

What to look out for

Phishing – where cyber criminals “fish” for sensitive information – is the most common type of cyber crime, typically sent by email or text. When a QR code is involved, that becomes “quishing” – short for QR phishing.

Scammers now include QR codes in emails or text messages instead of clickable links. When scanned, the code directs users to fake login pages or payment sites. Because there’s no visible link, these messages can seem more trustworthy and can even bypass some email security filters.

Malicious downloads

Some QR codes don’t just take you to a website – they trigger an app or file download, which could contain malware. This can give attackers access to your device, data or accounts. Because the action happens quickly, you may not have time to question whether the download is legitimate.

Fake QR codes in public places

One of the simplest methods to trick people involves placing a sticker with a fake QR code over a legitimate one. For example, scammers have been caught sticking fraudulent QR codes on parking meters. When drivers scan the code, they are taken to a fake payment page and asked to enter their card details. Posters, flyers and other signs in public places may also contain malicious QR codes.

Redirect scams

Even when a QR code looks legitimate, it may redirect you through multiple websites before landing on a fake page. This makes it harder to detect suspicious activity. By the time you see the final page, it may look convincing enough to trust.

How to stay safe

The good news is you don’t need to stop using QR codes. You just need to use them more carefully.

Treat QR codes like unknown links. If you wouldn’t click a random link, don’t scan a random QR code.

Check for signs of tampering. In public places, look closely at the code. Is it a sticker placed over another one? Does anything look out of place?

Look at the web address before proceeding. Many phones now show a preview of the hyperlink retrieved via the QR code before opening it. Don’t just hit “go”, take a moment to check it looks legitimate.

Avoid scanning codes from unsolicited messages. If you receive a QR code via email or text asking you to log in or make a payment, don’t use it. Go directly to the official website instead.

Don’t rush to enter personal details. If a site asks for sensitive information, pause. Double-check you’re on the correct website.

Keep your phone updated. Security updates may sometimes feel like a nuisance, but they do help protect your device against malicious sites and downloads.

QR codes are not dangerous by themselves. They are useful tools that make everyday tasks easier. But they remove a key safety step: the ability to see where you’re going before you get there.

The next time you scan a QR code, take a second to think. In a world where scams are getting smarter, the safest habit is simple – don’t trust the code and verify where it leads.

Meena Jha, Head Technology and Pedagogy Cluster CML-NET, CQUniversity Australia

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

Australian kids’ TV shows are now few and far between. During the pandemic, the Australian government scrapped decades-old quotas for minimum hours of children’s content to try and bail out flailing commercial television networks. They were never reinstated.

In 2023, the Australian Communications and Media Authority reported the local kids TV sector decreased by more than 84% between 2019 and 2022. Certainly, Bluey continues to top global streaming charts. But beyond this phenomenon – which only financially benefits BBC Studios – local children’s TV has been in grave danger.

Last year, new laws were introduced in Australia to force streaming giants to invest in local content, including children’s programming. But these laws don’t include any minimum title numbers, or hours, per genre, so their tangible impact on kids’ TV remains unclear. For instance, Netflix’s 2026 Australian production slate includes no new kids content.

Essentially, it’s up to our national broadcaster the ABC, and advocacy organisations such as the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF), to carry the mantle and deliver this valued content.

The latest collaboration between the ABC and the ACTF is the new live-action family adventure series, Caper Crew. The first children’s series from acclaimed production company Easy Tiger, it demonstrates how good Australian kids TV can be, with a bit of resourcing.

Heists, hijinks and heartwarming fun

In Caper Crew, 12-year-old Amelia and 9-year-old Kai Delaney live in Woodspring, which they consider to be “the most boring town on Earth”.

Its only claim to fame is that 27 years ago the infamous Kangaroo Gang stole the town’s priceless golden meteorite, “The Nug”. Despite a $100,000 reward, its whereabouts remain a mystery. The series draws inspiration from the true story of the Kangaroo Gang, a group of Australian crooks who pulled off daring jewellery heists around Europe in the 1960s.

Just as Amelia embarks on a campaign to become the Year 6 school captain – against her nemesis and heir to the town’s dynasty, Emilia Katinkatonk – her glamourous con-artist grandmother Queenie mysteriously appears.

Queenie starts to teach her grandchildren the art of the grift, imparting a series of mischievous “con-mandments” from her personal playbook. As she shares her wisdom, Amelia and Kai can’t help but wonder: was this grandmother they never knew about once the Kangaroo Gang’s leader? Does she know where The Nug is?

Amelia and Kai, along with their friends Penelope and Ophelbert, form their own gang called the Joeys. They’re hell-bent on finding The Nug and claiming the reward.

The young cast of Caper Crew are very endearing, even when they precociously break the fourth wall. Tina Bursill’s Queenie is magnetic, Annie Maynard’s Mayor Katie Katinkatonk is gloriously grating, and ABC-favourite Michael Theo as drama teacher Jo Jo Encore will captivate the whole family.

For parents and carers watching with kids, Caper Crew combines a nostalgic ode to millennial classics such as Matilda and Harriet the Spy, with a Wes Anderson-esque visual quality. The series will likely charm young viewers into taking up magic or planning their own heist; parents be warned.

Family viewing key for the ABC

Caper Crew is emblematic of the ABC’s recent strategic shift to make shows optimised for co-viewing between parents and kids.

In June 2024, the ABC rebranded its ABC TV Plus channel (a more general family entertainment channel) to ABC Family, which is described as a “destination for big kids and their parents, with comedies, game shows, natural history, and movies”.

According to the ABC’s then-head of programming, acquisitions and streaming, Roberta Allan, this shift sought to capitalise on how most viewers were engaging with the ABC: via smart TVs, rather than on desktop or mobile browsers. As Allan explained:

Creating a brand like ABC Family will mean that we’ll be able to transition children as they get older with their families into that co-viewing safe environment. And expose them to some of the other content we have.

It’s a smart and appealing way to bolster kids programming at the ABC and to encourage a new generation of Australian families to watch together.

Caper Crew is available now on ABC iview and broadcasting on ABC Family.

Alexa Scarlata, Lecturer, Digital Communication, RMIT University

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

Very few Roman emperors died natural deaths. Most were assassinated, some died in battle and one was even struck by lightning. Some emperors sensed the danger and got out of Rome altogether.

But only one laid down his power and retired.

Diocletian, who ruled for 20 years in the late third and early fourth centuries CE, went back to his home town to grow cabbages.

A dangerous job

In a highly militaristic and competitive society, it is perhaps no surprise Rome’s rulers sometimes met violent ends. Eccentricity, military failures and economic problems saw their allies abandon them.

Caligula (37–41 CE), Domitian (81–96 CE) and Caracalla (who was sole emperor from 211–217 CE) were killed in conspiracies hatched by their bodyguards.

Severus Alexander (222–235 CE) and Gallienus (253–268 CE) were killed by senior military officers.

Some emperors met untimely ends at the hands of foreign enemies. Gordian III (238–244 CE) died in battle against the Persians. Decius (249–251 CE) and Valens (364–378 CE) died fighting the Goths (a Germanic people that conducted frequent raids on Roman territories).

Some unusual examples include Carus (282–283 CE) who was reportedly struck by lightning, Claudius II (268–270 CE) who died of plague, and Nero (54–68 CE) who took his own life.

The emperor Tiberius (14–37 CE) decided to quit Rome in 26 CE because he feared assassination. He ruled the empire from the island of Capri near Naples until his death 11 years later. The remains of Villa Jovis, where he lived, can still be seen.

Some emperors died in office of age-related illnesses, including Constantine in 337 CE and Marcus Aurelius in 180 CE. Both were around 60, which might not seem so old today but it was an advanced age in antiquity.

So when Diocletian declared he would abdicate and retire in May 305 CE, it was a highly unusual development.

Rise of the tetrarchy

Diocletian hailed from the province of Dalmatia in modern Croatia.

He came from a humble background and rose through the ranks of the Roman army. A number of third-century emperors came from similar backgrounds.

The many crises Rome faced during this period saw seasoned military men become emperor.

Diocletian held a range of senior military positions before becoming emperor in November 284 CE. He commanded the army in the important border province of Moesia (modern Serbia and Bulgaria). He was commander of the short-reigning emperor Numerian’s bodyguard when the latter was killed; Diocletian became emperor in his place soon after.

Diocletian is traditionally seen as a reformer, making significant administrative, economic and military changes. These reforms tried to address the many problems emperors of the third century faced before him.

As emperor, Diocletian introduced a system known as the tetrarchy, which divided the rule of the empire between four emperors. Two were senior (Augusti) and two were junior (Caesars). This limited the possibility of internal revolts and made fighting foreign enemies easier.

Scholars now think Diocletian wasn’t quite so innovative; he may have drawn more on reforms developed by his predecessors than was previously thought.

But he had clearly been busy over the 20 years he was in power.

So, in 305 CE he decided, at around age 60, to hand in his notice and retire.

Illness – or divine retribution?

As with most ancient stories, it probably wasn’t as simple as that.

The ideology of the tetrarchy was also about renewal. The other senior Augustus, Maximian, abdicated at the same time as Diocletian. The two junior rulers, Galerius and Constantius I, became the senior rulers and two new junior rulers were recruited. This became known as the Second Tetrarchy.

Diocletian had also suffered a prolonged illness before his abdication. He had taken ill early in 304 CE and wasn’t seen in public for months. As one of the emperors responsible for horrific persecution of the Christians in 303–4 CE, this was seen by some as divine retribution.

Diocletian retired to an impressive palace at Spalatum (modern-day Split in Croatia) near his home town of Salona in Dalmatia. Its extensive remains can still be visited today.

It was here that he famously grew cabbages.

Choosing cabbages over chaos

A later historical account claimed Diocletian was asked to come out of retirement to deal with a political stalemate. The second tetrarchy had quickly descended into chaos.

But Diocletian wanted nothing of it, reportedly replying:

If you could see at Salona the cabbages raised by our hands, you surely would never judge that a temptation.

Diocletian had grown to love the quiet life after years of reforms and the ever-present possibility of assassination. Retiring to grow cabbages was far more appealing.

And cabbages were seen as a miracle food in ancient Rome. Their health benefits were known to many, and ancient recipes using them are still available today.

Diocletian was unique in Roman imperial history for choosing retirement. He would die in 313 CE approaching the age of 70, his last years ones of contentment.

Knowing when time is up remains a key challenge for leaders to this day. For many, the trappings of power remain too tempting compared with life’s simple joys.

Peter Edwell, Associate Professor in Ancient History, Macquarie University

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

As Britain’s longest‑reigning monarch, and one rarely out of the public eye since childhood, Queen Elizabeth II left behind a wardrobe so extensive and meticulously archived that the curators at Historic Royal Palaces have had an embarrassment of riches to draw upon for a new exhibition at the King’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace.

Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style bills itself as the largest exhibition of the late monarch’s wardrobe ever mounted, and the scale alone is arresting. More than 300 items, many on public display for the first time, attempt a sartorial biography spanning every decade of a life that lasted almost a century.

The result is a masterclass in what the Royal Palaces do best: celebrations of the British monarchy – their pomp, pageantry and performativity – delivered through the medium of clothes. It also underscores why Her Life in Style, rather than in fashion, is such an apt title.

Queen Elizabeth II valued constancy, a deliberate contrast to the restless churn of high fashion. As a figure who embodied Britishness while standing on a global stage, her appearance had to resonate widely, and what read as high style in Britain could easily have seemed out of place in parts of the Commonwealth. In such a negotiation subtlety trumped bravura.

The Queen’s wardrobe reads like a roll call of British heritage makers: Molyneaux, Burberry, Hawes and Curtis, Kinloch Anderson, Bernard Weatherill Ltd, Philip Somerville, and Gieves Ltd. Norman Hartnell and Hardy Amies appear with predictable regularity, which will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Queen’s sartorial loyalties. But the exhibition also highlights the quieter and long-enduring relationships with tailors, dressmakers and milliners who helped craft her public image.

For example, her dresser Angela Kelly created a style for the Queen which she favoured in her later years. As an assistant dresser, then dresser and finally called designer, Kelly was intimately familiar with the Queen as a woman long before her sartorial interventions. But the exhibition seems to reveal more about the designers, who saw the dress as the main event, than about someone like Kelly, for whom the Queen herself was always the focus.

What emerges most strongly is the centrality of collaboration in the crafting of her style. The Queen was not a mannequin at the mercy of designers, but a woman who presided over her wardrobe with clear autonomy and a keen understanding of the symbolism her clothes carried.

Public service, personal style

The exhibition opens with a brisk chronological sweep from infancy to early adulthood. The transition from baby clothes to the military ensembles worn during her late teenage years make plain how abruptly she was thrust into public service.

Here, however, as is the case throughout, the curators favour the makers over the meaning. The garments are beautifully displayed, but the interpretive text often stops short of probing the “why” behind stylistic shifts and choices. For instance, the Queen’s later‑life preference for a straighter silhouette is asserted but not explored, a missed opportunity given the exhibition’s ambition to chart a life through her style.

The exhibition curation borrows liberally from recent V&A fashion blockbusters to great success. Most notably the double‑decker display technique used to kaleidoscopic effect in Gabrielle Chanel: Fashion Manifesto and the circular and tiered arrangements of Dior: Designer of Dreams. In Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style a double-stacked rainbow wall of colour‑blocked coats and suits is visually striking but also underscores the sameness that defined the Queen’s wardrobe.

That said, individual garments indicate occasional moments when she embraced stylistic choices that felt markedly more daring, such as a First Nations jacket that she wore with an evening dress in 1970. The exhibition makes clear, however, that once her style was set in the 1950s, evolution was subtle and nuanced rather than flamboyant or bold.

Her sartorial consistency seems to have become a kind of representation of national reassurance: a stability of taste, of choice of makers, and silhouette across a near century of life defined by political and social change.

The contributions by Erdem Moralıoğlu, Richard Quinn and Christopher Kane, who have produced contemporary reimaginings of the Queen’s style, are well executed but ultimately redundant. Her fashionable legacy speaks loudly enough without reinterpretation.

Meanwhile navigation through the exhibition can be challenging. The King’s Gallery becomes a rabbit warren of narrow corridors and bottlenecks, exacerbated by the otherwise informative audio guide that slows foot traffic to a crawl. Still, the text panels are excellent – clear, concise, and often illuminating – and the overall display is both attractive and thoughtfully arranged.

The final room is a crescendo of encrusted and bejewelled gowns, which almost, but not quite, overwhelm the coronation dress. It is a fittingly theatrical conclusion, a reminder of the Queen’s ceremonial presence and the role fashion played in projecting it.

Even in death, she seems to transcend mortality here. Despite the diminutive stature of the mannequins proxying the royal body, her physical and ceremonial presence evoked through her luxurious couture gowns feels mighty.

The exhibition has arrived at a moment when an evocation of her popularity and a celebration of the British royals is needed for their brand now more than ever. Public appetite to celebrate the woman who represented an untarnished royalty – which now seems more remote than ever – is clearly voracious judging by the queue outside the exhibition. In this setting, even as the nation moves on, her reputation has settled into a rich and celebratory one.

Ultimately, the exhibition succeeds not simply because it dazzles, but because it reveals Queen Elizabeth’s harnessing of the soft power of clothing in shaping a public life. Through tweeds and tiaras, coats and coronation gowns, the exhibition charts a life defined by duty, diplomacy, and an unwavering sense of self, expressed always through fashion.

Hannah Rumball-Croft, Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Fashion Design, School of Arts, University of Westminster

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