Colin Wong, a blind Ph.D. student, can’t forget having to pay US$100 for an Uber when he needed to take a standardized test. There was no testing center in San Francisco, where he lived, that could accommodate his disability.
That kind of expensive hassle isn’t unusual. It costs nearly $7,000 more per year to live in the U.S. with his disability, according to research I, a social work scholar, conducted with four experts at the American Foundation for the Blind – a nonprofit dedicated to promoting equality and inclusion for people with blindness or low vision.
For our research, we looked at survey data from a representative sample of Americans, focusing on how people with visual impairments answered. We considered anyone who said they live with a vision disability – or said that they have a lot of trouble seeing or can’t see at all, even with glasses – as a person with low vision or blindness.
We calculated that people with blindness or low vision spend, on average, 27% of their household income on expenses related to their disability – about $7,000 per year.
Low-income Americans with disabilities are shouldering an even bigger burden. The people who took this survey and were earning less than $25,000 per year said they spent about 40% of their income on costs related to their disability, on average, compared with 16% for those with higher incomes.
That leaves them with less money for other essentials such as food and housing. About 1 in 4 of the people we surveyed said they spent less on food to cover their expenses associated with their disability.
And about 2 in 3 of the people we surveyed said they frequently go without goods and services they need, including medical care, assistive technologies and transportation to get to school or go to work.
One reason for the higher costs of living is that people with disabilities tend to incur many other extra expenses, such as spending more on transportation, prepared foods and grocery delivery services. Others struggle to afford the prescription and over-the-counter drugs and supplements they need.
Politicians and policymakers appear to be paying more attention to this problem, which my research team calls the “disability squeeze.” Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, announced in October 2024 a proposal to expand Medicare to cover the long-term care needs for older adults and people with disabilities.
Denise Chamberlin and her guide dog, Ridley, emerge from a Toronto subway station. AP Photo/Business Wire
What still isn’t known
Our survey included 288 people with blindness or low vision. Studies with larger numbers of participants could greatly expand upon what’s known about this problem and what can be done about it.
Expanding accessible public transit, making assistive technologies more affordable and increasing disability benefits might be enough for some people with disabilities to have an opportunity to thrive, but not for others.
Future research could shed a brighter light on the cracks in the U.S. health and social welfare systems. For example, researchers could look into why people with health insurance from Medicaid or Medicare told us they had more unmet needs rather than fewer than those with coverage through private insurers. Other studies could examine how the disability squeeze affects the health and employment of people with disabilities over the long term.
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
Zachary Morris’ research presented here is funded from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The contents of this survey do not necessarily represent the policy of the federal government or any government agency.
Many offices make a point to celebrate diversity, but what does that look like when it comes to faith?FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images
Since we spend so much of our lives at our jobs, it’s only natural that conversations with colleagues go beyond the work in front of us. People share interests and hobbies, family struggles, health concerns, and hopes or goals, from the silly to the serious.
The topic of religion, however, can provoke anxiety. Many people might second what the Muslim CEO of a technology company told us: “If you want to express faith, do it! Just do it on your own time.” Uncertainty surrounding religion’s role in the workplace tends to lead to silence. Even among researchers who study workplaces, religion is often ignored.
Yet for many people, faith is a core component of their identity – part of the “whole self” that employees are increasingly encouraged to bring to work. It’s an important piece of diversity but one that managers often tiptoe around. And for many Americans, faith is part of why they show up at their job each day: 1 in 5 consider their work a spiritual calling.
We are social scientists who spent the past five years conducting research on the role of faith at work. Our findings – from more than 15,000 surveys with a nationally representative population, and nearly 300 in-depth interviews with some of those workers – confirm that there are many challenges when religion comes into the workplace. However, the costs of ignoring or suppressing workers’ faith often exceed those risks and challenges.
Conflict and discrimination
The most common concern we heard about bringing up religion in the workplace is that it will lead to conflict – including conflict from people trying to change each other’s beliefs. A Catholic woman who works in eldercare told us, “I think we shouldn’t talk about religion at work because that’s when the problems arise. I’m going to defend what I think, and they will defend what they think, their way of being, their religion.”
Several other people we interviewed also expressed concerns that some forms of religious expression could make people uncomfortable, or even turn into harassment. A nonreligious security guard noted that during Christmas and Easter some of his Christian co-workers will say, “‘God bless,’ ‘Let’s pray,’ and stuff like that. It becomes very uneasy for me, uncomfortable.”
Asking workers to bottle up their faith when they start the workday may seem like the easiest way to avoid these problems. Some workers we interviewed agreed with this sentiment. As one Muslim federal employee told us, “If I wear my religion as a badge on my shoulder, it will rub somebody the wrong way. So, why do that?”
What’s more, silence around religion may seem like a neutral request. If no one expresses their faith, after all, then no one can be discriminated against, no one can be offended, and no one is seen as getting special treatment for their religious beliefs.
Not so neutral
There are a few problems with this logic, however.
What’s more, vague expectations about not acknowledging faith at work aren’t necessarily so neutral and often tend to disproportionately harm minority groups.
In our survey, we asked individuals whether they “conceal their religious beliefs at work for fear of others’ perceptions.” Nineteen percent of Jewish workers, 51% of Hindus, 29% of Muslims and 28% of Buddhists said they did. By contrast, only 9% of evangelical Protestants, 15% of nonevangelical Protestants and 13% of Catholics reported that they conceal their faith at work.
A Jewish project manager at an engineering firm told us how she has tried to conceal her faith from others: “The times that I did have to pray, I actually walked outside into a closed corner in the hallway to do it.”
In the same survey, we asked individuals if they “have been treated unfairly” at work due to their “religion or non-religion.” Overall, 31% of U.S. adults agreed, and such experiences are most common among Muslim and Jewish workers.
One Muslim woman we interviewed described how her colleagues made life extremely difficult for her, calling her names that were derisive, and said she’s received little support from her employer. Indeed, during one meeting her boss “got up and talked a lot about me being Muslim, and it was all negative.”
One of our surveys, for example, asked workers whether they “turn to faith for support through stressful times in their work life.” Nearly half agreed.
For many Americans, faith is also part of why they do their work in the first place. According to another one of our surveys, 20% of U.S. adults “see their work as a spiritual calling.” This percentage is higher among certain groups, such as evangelical Protestants and Muslims: 33% and 30%, respectively. Viewing work in spiritual terms is also more likely among women, at 24%, and Black workers, at 31%.
And it is not just workers in explicitly religious jobs who view their work this way. One marine biologist explained to us, “I think that all truth is from God and, as a scientist, I try to understand and reveal the truth of how the world works.”
Social science research has found that people’s well-being, social interactionsand performance are harmed when they feel the need to suppress an important part of themselves within a group or organization. In other words, everyone suffers when individuals are not allowed to bring their whole selves to work.
Welcome at work
Despite such evidence, our research finds that many organizations are not taking even basic steps to accommodate individuals’ religious lives.
In one survey, we asked workers whether their “workplace provides accommodations that allow people to practice their religion.” Almost one-fifth of workers disagreed. This percentage was highest among Muslim workers: 54%.
Workers appreciate when their employers take active steps to let employees know that religious accommodations are available and that religious expression in general is not forbidden. Having upfront conversations about what is or is not appropriate – not only legally but socially – can go a long way toward setting boundaries.
A Muslim optometry technician we interviewed, for example, recounted how appreciative she was when her boss told her, “If you ever do prayers or anything, feel free to go to that room – it can be your space, you can leave your mat in there.”
Ideally, however, organizations would take active steps to establish and communicate policies to all employees, rather than reacting to situations as they arise.
While we recognize the challenges when it comes to addressing individuals’ faith in the workplace, proactively engaging in conversations about the appropriate role of religion at work is better for workers and workplaces.
Christopher P. Scheitle receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation.
Denise Daniels receives funding from the Lilly Endowment.
Elaine Howard Ecklund receives funding from the Templeton Religion Trust and the Lilly Endowment.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris present dueling platforms for U.S. education. Getty Images
When it comes to education policy, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris not only have mostly distinct visions but also distinct track records.
At the same time, there are some commonalities, including the growing importance of career and technical education. What follows is a review of what the two candidates have done in the world of education while in office.
On higher education
The candidates share a concern about the high cost of higher education. But they have different visions for how to address those costs. As California’s attorney general, Harris secured a US$1.1 billion judgment against Corinthian Colleges for false advertising. The judgment provides refunds for students who were misled by claims about job placement rates, program offerings and military affiliations.
The administration has faced challenges to the constitutionality of the loan forgiveness initiative on the grounds that the president does not have the authority under present law to unilaterally cancel debt. Opponents have also said any debt forgiveness would have to be authorized by Congress. Critics say further that loan forgiveness does not address the root causes of rising costs of higher education. Loan forgiveness could cause further price increases if institutions thought that students would care less about the cost of college in anticipation of having their debt forgiven.
Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, Trump expanded college savings 529 plans to allow parents to save up to $10,000 per year tax-free for K-12 private school tuition.
As a candidate for the presidential nomination in 2019, Vice President Harris also called for federal funding to provide teachers with an average of a $13,500 raise, though she has not made a similar call in this campaign.
As California attorney general, Harris made reducing chronic absenteeism a signature issue when she led the In School and On Track anti-truancy initiative. This initiative included additional funding to districts and schools to use data to better understand and monitor absenteeism and to communicate with parents about the importance of school attendance.
Neither Trump nor Harris has a significant record of tangible actions when it comes to early childhood education. Project 2025, which Trump has disavowed but was written by close allies of the former president, calls for eliminating Head Start, a federally funded, locally run, early childhood learning program to support low-income families.
Although Trump made several similar proposals to cut funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant by about 5%, they were not passed into law by Congress.
More recent studies of some universal pre-K programs have raised questions about how long the academic gains from early childhood programs persist. On net, however, the evidence from the highest-quality studies for high-quality early childhood programs in general, and the Head Start program in particular, suggests that they improve cognitive skills among children.
Robert Shand does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Published and released in October 2024 by University of Michigan Press, the album and digital archive features two volumes of hip-hop music, an annotated timeline, several videos and a digital book. The album – originally submitted to Clemson University in South Carolina as Carson’s doctoral dissertation – has been mastered. In the following interview with The Conversation U.S., Carson explains the significance of the project and what it means for hip-hop in the world of academe.
‘Owning My Masters’ seems like a deep play on words. Is it?
Yes. The Latin word “magister” was used to describe a master or teacher in ancient Rome. I earned a master’s degree before enrolling in my doctoral program, so I own that. People probably know that the final step in the process of composing an album is called mastering. In that process, a master version of the recording is created. This is what gets duplicated and released on streaming services, vinyl or whatever way you receive music.
It’s not always guaranteed that an artist owns the rights to those recordings, but I own all of my music.
Also, the album was written in South Carolina at Clemson University, which is located on a former plantation owned by the slaveholding U.S. politician John C. Calhoun. Buildings there are named for people who had owned, enslaved and trafficked people; fought in the Civil War to preserve the right to traffic people; and lynched Black people. Earning a terminal degree from a place with that kind of reprehensible history seemed like a way to figuratively own those so-called slave masters and so-called masters and teachers.
Who is your audience for this album?
I’m always thinking about multiple audiences. For lovers of hip-hop, the album demonstrates the power and promise I feel listening to albums that have influenced me. For academics, I believe it is the future of research. Academic credentials have been used by folks to perpetuate the idea that expertise looks and sounds a certain way, and this project infiltrates that system to disprove that idea.
If you’re interested in learning about hip-hop, academia and how arguments are made, the album can be instructive, challenging, entertaining and educational.
The album had to pass through a doctoral dissertation defense committee and then academic peer review. But before then, I posted drafts on SoundCloud to get feedback from regular folks who use that site to listen to new music.
What kind of themes does the album address?
My Ph.D. is in rhetorics, communication and information designs, so it’s also about rap rhetorics – including emphasis on the local and how hip-hop can preserve information like histories and counter-histories.
Since I had moved to Clemson, and was feeling anxiety about leaving home in Illinois, I wrote “Dissertation (Part 1: The Introduction)” early on in the process. And because I lived in that South Carolina college town, “See the Stripes” is a song about Clemson’s history and its present. The song and its video moved through Clemson’s communities, but then, as protests were happening on campuses across the world, it found national and global audiences with whom the subject matter resonates. When students were finally able to get Calhoun’s name removed from the honors college in 2020, they acknowledged their work was continuing efforts since “See the Stripes.”
The album is presented in chronological order from the time I arrived on campus in 2013 until I finished my coursework and submitted the 34-song project to my dissertation committee.
I would say earning a Ph.D., earning tenure and having the album count as my academic work qualify as success. Those are things that sound kind of selfish, but I think are incredibly significant for hip-hop and for the ways we think about expertise and success in the culture.
To me, success is being able to make a living creating challenging and thought-provoking music that doesn’t have to abide by traditional notions of success like sales charts or commercial music awards. I also measure success by the inquiries and applications of students who want to do similar kinds of critical thinking and making. When those people are able to launch and sustain careers, that’s a measure of success in my eyes as well.
Why haven’t we seen more albums in academia?
Change in academia comes at a glacial pace, it seems.
Audiences associate expertise, especially regarding subjects that are considered academic, with how people have demonstrated their understanding of the matters in writing, like traditional theses, dissertations, books and essays. I believe this is connected to the histories in the U.S. that link credibility with formal education and literacy. This is difficult to separate from the history of Black folks being legally prohibited from learning to read.
While music has long been one of the ways information is recorded and passed from one generation to the next, in my experience, music itself is still not taken as seriously as a form of scholarship as writing books or essays about music.
These previously excluded forms of scholarship can change the ways people regard academia. In my mind, music sits alongside other scholarly forms that emphasize academic prose. I believe universities should make space and resources available for students to explore it the same way. More generally, I think citing more albums as scholarship – the same way journal articles and academic monographs are cited – would also be transformative.
A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Evangelist Lance Wallnau addresses people at the ‘Courage Tour’ rally. Michael E. Heyes, CC BY
As a scholar of religion, I attended the “Courage Tour,” a series of religious-political rallies, when it made a stop in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, from Sept. 27-28, 2024.
From what I observed, the various speakers on the tour used conservative talking points – such as the threat of communism and LGBTQ+ “ideologies” taking over education – and gave them a demonic twist. They told people that diabolical forces had overtaken America, and they needed to expel them by ensuring Donald Trump was elected.
The tour is not only focused on defeating Democrats but also on defeating demons. The idea that demons exert a hold over the material world is a key feature of the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, worldview. The NAR is a loose group of like-minded charismatic Christian churches and religious leaders – sometimes termed “prophets” – who want to see Christians dominate all walks of life.
As someone who recently finished a book on the intersection of demons and politics, “Demons in the USA: From the Anti-Spiritualists to QAnon,” I was eager to see this combination for myself. I believe it would be a mistake to think that the New Apostolic Reformation is a fringe group with no real influence.
The influence and reach
The group has an associated nonprofit organization known as Ziklag – named for a town in the Hebrew Bible that is an important site associated with David’s kingship – with deep pockets for the movement’s goals. A ProPublica investigation found that the group had already spent US$12 million “to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the New Apostolic Reformation “the greatest threat to U.S. democracy that you have never heard of.”
The diffuse nature of NAR membership and its rapid growth make it difficult to gauge followers: Estimates have placed the number of NAR adherents between 3 million and 33 million, but individuals who may not label themselves as part of the NAR might nevertheless agree with the group’s theology.
Moreover, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s presence at the meeting I attended is also a tacit and significant endorsement for this group.
The ‘Seven Mountain Mandate’
According to NAR’s theology, there are “seven mountains” that govern areas of worldly influence, and Christians are destined to occupy all of them. These mountains are religion, government, family, education, media, entertainment and business.
Known as the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” this “prophecy” first rose to prominence in 2013 with the publication of “Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate,” written by Bill Johnson, lead pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California, and member of the NAR, and Lance Wallnau, NAR prophet and one of the founders of the Courage Tour. In the book, the Seven Mountain Mandate is trumpeted as a message received directly from God.
The NAR perceives the majority of these mountains as currently occupied by diabolical spiritual forces. To counter these forces, the NAR engages in “spiritual warfare,” which are acts of Christian prayer that are used to defeat or drive out demons.
Alternatively, it is not uncommon for pastors to incorporate spiritual warfare into church services. For example, in a much-reported sermon, Paula White-Cain, the former spiritual adviser to Trump, commanded all “satanic pregnancies to miscarry.” In the sermon’s context, satanic pregnancies were not literal pregnancies. Instead, White-Cain was praying for the failure of satanic plots “conceived” by the devil.
The ground level occurs in a case of individual exorcism or deliverance, a kind of “one-on-one” battle with demons. The second level is the occult level, in which believers seek to counter what they believe to be demonic movements such as shamanism and New Age thought. Finally, there is the strategic level in which the movement does battle with powerful spirits whom they believe control geographic areas at the behest of Satan.
Friday night on the Courage Tour.
The Courage Tour
The Courage Tour is part of a strategic-level act of spiritual warfare: Stumping for Trump is really about exerting Christian influence over the “government mountain” that followers of the NAR believe to be occupied by the devil.
According to the speakers on the tour, America is in trouble: It is currently being run by “the Left,” or Democrats, a group that is slowly pushing the U.S. toward communism, a system of government in which private property ceases to exist and the means of production are communally owned.
It claims that the Left wants to see this shift occur because it is populated by “cultural Marxists.” This is part of a far-right conspiracy theory that suggests all progressive political movements are indebted to the ideas of Karl Marx, whose Communist Manifesto is most closely associated with communism.
In more extreme forms of communism, nation-states disappear – an idea reflected in speakers’ frequent criticism of “globalism,” which was generally defined as a single, worldwide governmental structure. The group rejects globalism on the grounds that God instituted nation-states as a divinely ordained form of government.
This negative view of nontraditional gender and sexual orientations is a long-lived feature of the group. John Weaver, a scholar of religion, notes in his book “The New Apostolic Reformation” that the group’s ideas are indebted to conservative theologian Rousas John Rushdoony, who supported the death penalty for homosexuals.
Likewise, religion scholar Damon T. Berrywrites that members of the movement believe that “demonic spirits” are “acting to subvert the will of God through aspects of culture like the toleration of homosexuality, abortion, addiction, poverty and political correctness.”
Wallnau encouraged the audience on the Courage Tour to “fight for your families because I don’t want to leave behind a demonic train wreck for my children.”
As hard as it is to believe, one of the most important questions of the election might well be – how many Americans believe in demons?
Michael E. Heyes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
If you are still undecided and mulling your pick for president, there are clear differences between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris that are important to understand.
The Conversation has published stories from more than a dozen scholars looking at the records of the two candidates.
We had an anthropologist provide our readers with a window into why both Trump and Harris supporters favor their presidential pick.
It’s no surprise that Harris and Trump have contrasting records on policy issues like LGBTQ+ rights and gun violence. The differences don’t stop there.
While Harris has consistently supported protecting and expanding abortion rights, Trump took actions while president that made it harder for people to get an abortion, explains legal scholar Rachel Rebouché.
In other cases, their differences are not as clear-cut. Both candidates have supported restricting immigration to the U.S., writes immigration scholar William McCorkle. And both of them tried to lower drug prices, writes pharmacy practice scholar C. Michael White.
Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance appear at a 9/11 memorial event in New York City on Sept. 11, 2024. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Why people like Trump and Harris
Alex Hinton, an anthropologist who researches both the far right and political polarization in the U.S., helped answer why, after all of the controversies and alleged wrongdoing, people still support Trump.
“Many people have thoughtful reasons for voting for Trump, even if their reasoning – as is also true for those on the left – is often inflamed by populist polarizers and media platforms,” Hinton writes.
There are a few central factors that keep Trump’s supporters loyal. These include the fact that some people recall – whether accurately or not – having more money when Trump was president, and that the economy seemed better. They are upset about immigration. And some supporters like his outlandish persona.
And then there’s the other side to understand: Why people are voting for Harris. Hinton explained that many people deeply dislike and distrust Trump, as well as the extreme direction they think he can take the country.
“In contrast, they contend that Harris combines steady leadership with a message of change, calm, honesty and hope for a better future,” he writes.
Harris’ support of abortion rights and health care, as well as her commitment to international alliances and bipartisan governing, are other reasons people want her as their president.
“Some voters also support Harris because they see her as a candidate of change,” Hinton writes. After Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, “voters across a range of demographics were immediately galvanized by her relative youth, biracial identity, articulateness and positive message of change and possibility, as opposed to fear.”
It’s possible that none of this information resonates with undecided voters and that they are considering backing a third-party candidate instead, or not voting at all.
But the logic that an individual vote won’t matter anyway is not accurate, according to behavioral economics scholar Daniel F. Stone.
Every single vote matters, especially in an election like this one that is incredibly close in all of the important swing states, Stone says. This matters if the difference between Harris and Trump is just 5,000 votes in a state like Pennsylvania, for example.
“So, if the 10,000 unhappy voters do vote for one of the two major-party candidates, they can swing the election,” Stone writes.
Even if someone boycotts an election and doesn’t support either of the two viable candidates, “One of them is going to win whether you like it or not,” Stone writes.
Digital technologies can make mining more sustainable. Sunshine Seeds/Shutterstock/For editorial use only
If you visit a commercial mining operation anywhere in the world today, some sights and sounds – workers descending in elevators to underground shafts, the roar of truck engines – will be much the same as they have been for decades.
But, like many other industries, mining is changing. Digital mining involves the use of digital technologies to make mining operations more efficient, safer, and sustainable. This industry emerged about a decade ago and has developed quickly over the past few years. This uptick is the result of recent advances in sensor technology, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning.
Is it time to make mining obsolete? This is not a realistic solution, at least not in the near future. Many modern technologies, like smartphones, electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines, depend on minerals extracted through mining. The global move towards renewable energy and low-carbon technologies means demand for minerals like lithium and cobalt is rising.
So, while mining has environmental costs, it’s also critical in the shift to a greener economy. And mining is economically important in many parts of the world. In African countries it supports millions of jobs and contributes significantly to GDP.
This is why sustainable mining is crucial. I am a professor of information systems. I investigate the complex interactions between technology, people and organisations in achieving sustainability goals. In a recent paper with a co-author, I examined how digital technologies could help mining operations to balance economic objectives with environmental and social sustainability.
The findings make it clear that digital technologies can transform mining practices and achieve sustainability goals at the same time.
Economic outcomes
Our paper took the form of a case study. We interviewed professionals from a leading digital mining solutions company. It has operations in South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Chile and the United States. The interviewees were engineers, senior managers and executives. They offered a glimpse into how their large-scale mining clients were using digital technologies like automated haul trucks and collision avoidance systems.
We wanted to know how their clients saw the role of digital technology in balancing business and other goals. They outlined some successful cases and others where companies were struggling to align all their aims.
It was clear that the company and its clients recognised the importance of safety and environmental issues in their work. But they saw these issues through the lens of business sustainability. For instance, while some mining companies pursued safety improvements, they did it primarily to boost productivity and bring down costs.
One interviewee gave the example of collision avoidance systems. Companies valued these because they reduced downtime and improved productivity. They focused on immediate business needs.
A balancing act
It’s time for mining companies that are serious about sustainability to shift their focus. Rather than simply looking to make immediate profits, they need to consider environmental and social impacts – and the role digital technology can play.
As a simple example, AI can predict when machinery is likely to fail. This allows companies to carry out timely maintenance. Equipment lifespan is extended. Downtime and repair costs are reduced. And worker safety is improved because there are fewer unexpected breakdowns. This is the kind of sustainable approach, underpinned by digital technology, that can help mining companies tick all the right boxes.
Mining leaders must not exclude employees and stakeholders when considering these issues. Environmental advocates have a role to play, too: companies must work with these groups and with local communities. A shared understanding of how digital technologies can meet both financial and sustainability targets is key.
Mining companies are more likely to change if there are clear financial benefits or penalties tied to sustainability. Governments can help by introducing stricter environmental regulations and offering incentives to adopt sustainable digital technologies. In South Africa, for instance, there are tax incentives and subsidies to encourage the use of renewable energy in mining. These measures, expanded recently in response to the country’s energy crisis, have sparked significant investment in solar power.
When paired with digital monitoring systems, renewable energy solutions can enhance efficiency by optimising energy consumption and reducing carbon emissions. Technologies like AI-driven energy management systems can help mines integrate renewable sources with less energy wastage. Thus, tax breaks or subsidies for digital solutions that support green energy adoption could motivate companies to embrace greener and more tech-driven mining practices.
Consumers and investors, meanwhile, should invest in those mining companies that demonstrate responsible practices. Ethical investment funds need to support companies with strong environmental, social, and governance credentials.
Rennie Naidoo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Students pictured in 1955 in a reading room at what is today the University of Ibadan. Flagship universities have long histories.Evans/Three Lions/Getty Images
Universities play a number of crucial roles in society. They educate students, research solutions to problems and serve as spaces for national debate. This is especially true for large public institutions, often referred to as flagship universities. A number were launched with great fanfare around the time of a country’s independence from colonial rule. They were tasked with driving national development by training skilled graduates to fill workforce gaps and conducting applied research to address societal challenges. Many have done well in their historic national missions. But how are they performing today when it comes to serving their local communities?
Higher education researcher James Ransom set out to answer this question in his new book, Revisiting Africa’s Flagship Universities: Local, National and International Dynamics. He analysed local engagement at ten African flagship universities: Ethiopia’s University of Addis Ababa; Makerere University in Uganda; the universities of Ghana, Namibia, Rwanda, Mauritius, Zambia and Zimbabwe; the University of Cape Town in South Africa and Nigeria’s University of Ibadan. He tells The Conversation Africa what he learned.
What is a flagship university?
They are pillars of the nation: their campuses are intertwined with history as sites of protest and revolution; their researchers lead the way in publications and research; their students are tomorrow’s leaders.
Sometimes there is one flagship in a country. Sometimes a country will be home to several. In Nigeria, the University of Ibadan is joined by the University of Nigeria at Nsukka.
Small, specialist institutions and private universities all play important roles in national higher education systems. But flagships are the trendsetters. They often mentor new universities by seconding senior staff to lead them, and helping design the curricula. Their staff sit on government committees. They have international partnerships and projects.
The term “flagship” has been used elsewhere in the world, not just in post-colonial countries. In the book I focused on Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa, including countries that were not traditional colonial states, such as Ethiopia.
In the UK, where I live, we have seen a shift in the expectations placed upon universities.
The “redbrick” universities, such as Birmingham and Liverpool, are a good example. They were founded in the 19th century to meet local needs. Then they developed strong global ambitions over the next hundred years, excelling in world-leading research and innovation.
During the past couple of decades, the local question returned: what are you doing to serve your local community? The redbricks (and many others) have responded – nudged along by national policies and frameworks – with serious programmes of civic engagement. These include projects designed with communities, seconding staff into local planning organisations, and opening up their campuses to communities – from 5-a-side football pitches to photography exhibitions.
The shift I witnessed in the UK, and mirrored in my work across Europe and Canada, made me wonder: has a similar shift, from a historic national mission to a local one, taken place for African universities?
The question is timely. Societal challenges may be national or global in scale. But they need local knowledge and local partnerships to solve at the local level. This means universities working with local government, which is a key focus of my work. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has calculated that 100 of the 169 UN Sustainable Development Goal targets can only be achieved if local governments are involved. Universities can play an important supporting role.
What did you find?
It is clear that flagship universities’ local work is growing and will continue to grow. For instance, Addis Ababa University established a railway engineering centre to train engineers to maintain the city’s light rail transit system, with students employed by the Ethiopian Railway Corporation. The University of Ghana runs satellite campuses in all ten regional capitals. This allows it to reach remote areas and to establish a local presence in different regions.
Successful projects often emerge from deep links with local communities. Ibadan has worked closely with a few communities over many decades. These “field laboratories” include a community health programme in the village of Ibarapa, which began in the early 1960s with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and technical support from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The programme has trained hundreds of medical students in community medicine through practical work in rural areas, while also improving health services and conducting research on health issues in the Ibarapa community. An example is studying and addressing neglected tropical diseases such as onchocerciasis (river blindness) and guinea worm.
In 2020 the University of Ibadan signed a memorandum of understanding with the local government on the Ibarapa programme. Over half a century after it began, local partnerships continue to sustain the programme.
However, a national focus continues to dominate at all ten institutions I studied. This is perhaps best illustrated by the University of Rwanda. Local engagement activity is secondary to the nation’s development strategy spearheaded by its Vision 2050, an ambitious effort to become an upper-middle income country in the next 25 years.
There is some local activity, of course. Students provide health services to the community, staff run community workshops on informal housing, and there are plans to open model farms to showcase irrigation and agricultural mechanisation. But all of this ultimately serves the national vision.
Rwanda is a small country, but this finding – of national priorities dominating at the expense of local programmes – was consistent across all the flagships I studied, in large countries like Nigeria as well as in other small countries like Mauritius and Namibia.
What can other universities on the continent learn from your findings?
Flagships are complex institutions, with rich histories and often complicated relationships with government. They are survivors, skilled at balancing multiple roles. There is much that other universities can learn from flagships, and that flagships can learn from each other – and more of these partnerships are needed.
But one senior staff member at a flagship university told me that many African university heads
feel rather oppressed by the narratives from higher education leaders in other parts of the world
They were talking about international benchmarking, unequal research partnerships, and models of “best practice”. These constrain the local role of flagships, creating identikit institutions. The result is a race to local irrelevance. Relevance can only emerge from an approach that reflects the local and national context.
Universities that capture the work they do locally, effectively communicate this, and can demonstrate how it is relevant to society, will be in a good place to chart their own path as a pillar of the nation.
James Ransom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Poetry isn’t a medium typically associated with towering beasts. Lyric poems tend to be short, tender and concerned with minor everyday incidents. That, or abstract concepts like love and death. Poems also tend to be thought of, wrongly or not, as true accounts – the inverse of creature feature films with preposterous special effects.
But poets, like everyone else, live in a world of disastrous events bigger than themselves. And the monster – particularly the giant monster – is an archetype that goes right back to ancient myth.
Talos, the bronze guardian of Crete, and Humbaba, the ogre of the Epic of Gilgamesh, are just two dangerous titans of literary history. It’s tempting to think that today we know enough about our surroundings to no longer be awed by the possibility of giants. But the truth is that there is still much that makes us feel small and vulnerable. Writing about huge monsters is one way of confronting that.
Two different anthologies of monster poetry are published this month in the UK. Ten Poets Defend Their Cities from Giant, Strange Beasts is edited by myself and Kirsten Irving and published by Sidekick Books. In it, poets envisage the outcomes of giant monster attacks on London, Cambridge, Glasgow and Liverpool, among other cities. These confrontations are frequently surreal, or representations of other kinds of epic battle.
Alex Adams and Aaron Kent’s Devastation Songs, meanwhile, is a compilation of writing about kaiju, the Japanese term for gargantuan fantasy creatures. In the foreword, Adams writes about how the monster movie is often used as a vehicle for “powerfully resonant social and political ideas”, pointing to recent Oscar winner Godzilla Minus One (2024) as an example.
Here are six more poems that deal in different ways with giant monsters:
This poem is from Baudelaire’s collection Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1840-1867), which was dubbed “an insult to public decency” on publication.
The Giantess reflects some of the book’s controversial themes, revelling in erotic fascination. Far from opposing the giantess, the poem’s narrator wants to see her “grow without restraint”, imagining an expedition across her vast body. Here, Baudelaire proposes monstrosity as a realm of wonder and temptation.
The Jabberwock, as illustrated by John Tenniel, (1871). Wiki Commons
3. Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll
One of Carroll’s (1832-1989) most famous poems, Jabberwocky is teeming with nonsense words (manxome, whiffling, burbled). This strange language keeps the titular Jabberwock obscured even as its fiery approach and defeat is recounted.
It makes for a faithful representation of monstrosity as a quality: we can perceive it, dream up words for it, even kill it, but we can never fully understand it.
4. The Man-Moth by Elizabeth Bishop
The epigraph to The Man-Moth explains that it was inspired by a misspelling of the word “mammoth”. Bishop’s man-moth isn’t necessarily a giant, but several lines allude to his having a giant’s perspective (“The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat”, “He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky”).
He is a sad, lonely creature who sheds a tear at the end of the poem. Bishop often wrote about the darkness in the human psyche, and her take on the subway-dwelling city beast is an allegory for urban alienation.
5. The Loch Ness Monster’s Song by Edwin Morgan
Scottish poet Edwin Morgan (1920-2010) specialised in linguistic play. The Loch Ness Monster’s Song is almost unintelligible – a brief burst of transcribed watery noises. But it could easily be a poem written in another language.
It challenges us to recognise that what we call “monstrous” might just be unfamiliar – not a threat, but an opportunity for connection.
This contrast is used to illustrate how monsters and creatures of myth loom large in our minds primarily as the result of our imaginations. In other words, we invent them to fill the gaps in reality. We need them, because without them there are too many clues pointing nowhere.
The poem isn’t available to read online, but you can read my own pastiche of it (framed as a “DVD extra”).
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Ali Smith’s Gliff is set “once upon a time, not very far from now”. It is a kind of fairytale of the future in which two children, Briar and Rose, navigate a world which seems increasingly baffling and hostile.
Gliff is the first of a planned pair of novels – the second to be called Glyph. Although the two words sound identical, their meanings are quite different. The Scottish word “gliff” means a shock, fright or sudden glimpse. A “glyph”, meanwhile, is a written character or symbol. There’s similarly insistent wordplay in Gliff. It reflects its preoccupation with how meaning is created – and destroyed.
Smith’s latest novel shares many of the same concerns as her recent Seasonal Quartet (2016-2020): the effects of climate change, the plight of refugees, the growth of intolerance and authoritarianism. But Gliff is set in a dystopian Britain where all these problems have intensified in frightening ways. Smith therefore follows in the footsteps of a growing number of literary novelists who have turned to science fiction in recent years, as boundaries between genres become less rigid.
Some of the predictions – extreme surveillance, blistering summers, widespread penal servitude – are familiar science fiction themes. But other elements of Gliff are more surreal and fantastical. A particularly strange plot element is the use of a device called the “supera bounder”, a clunky machine which “looked like an invention made by an amateur for a joke”. This is used to spray red paint around houses, people, vehicles and animals which are targeted for removal or destruction.
When Briar and Rose find a red paint circle around first their house, then their campervan, they are forced into hiding. They lurk on the margins of society, hoping they can escape being packed off to a “reeducation centre”.
Exploring marginalisation
The sinister red paint circles are an effective symbol for the more subtle ways in which societies exclude or marginalise “undesirables” of various types. The device fits in with a long tradition of science fiction writers offering the reader a distorted reflection of the ways in which inequality and prejudice operate in society. The invisible barriers which separate rich from poor, for example, are often reimagined as literal walls or fences.
Smith gives a horrifying vision of a future world of work in which unprotected or unwanted children are forced to scavenge metal from waste in dangerous conditions and adult workers are ruthlessly surveilled, punished, fined and controlled.
One reason this is so shocking is because the novel is set solely in Britain. Under globalisation, we are already dependent on goods produced under similar conditions – but in countries which are safely remote from us. Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy can be read as a similar parable of globalisation.
Gliff can be compared with other recent works of speculative fiction which combine dystopian themes with more surreal or fantastical elements. Rumaan Alam’s acclaimed Leave the World Behind (2020), for example, uses a mysterious, undefined national emergency as the springboard for reflections on racism, over-reliance on technology, and climate change. But it also draws on fairytale motifs.
Separated from their parents, Briar and Rose resemble a science fictional Hansel and Gretel. Towards the end of the novel – through both its themes and landscapes – there are also echoes of Alan Garner’s powerful children’s fantasies. And Gliff the horse is invested with an almost mythical charge, harking back to Smith’s earlier use of magical tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in her novel Girl Meets Boy (2007).
Gliff demonstrates Ali Smith’s characteristic strengths as a novelist. The narrative is accessible and engaging, yet at the same time complex and subtle. Many puzzles are set for the reader – only some are resolved.
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Sarah Annes Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Gardens in New York City on Sunday, October 27 was called a “carnival of grievances, misogyny and racism” by the New York Times. The event, which came just over a week before the election, was a hostile and partisan affair. Trump doubled down on his assertion that one of America’s gravest threats is from “the enemy within”.
Trump’s rhetoric is a manifestation of the increasingly polarised nature of US politics, whereby hostility from one group towards their perceived enemies is amplified across social media platforms. Yet Trump’s comment about an insidious “threat” hints at a darker undercurrent of division, with the threat of violence.
A June 2024 poll by the University of Chicago suggested that there was more support for violence against Trump than in his favour – 10% of respondents agreed that “the use of force is justified to prevent Trump becoming president”, compared to 6.9% who believed violence was justified “to restore Trump to the presidency”. Two months earlier, a Marist poll revealed that 47% of Americans believed that another civil war was likely in their lifetime.
As a report from Chatham House recently observed, the US is more divided “along ideological and political lines than at any time since the 1850s”. And according to another report from UK-based think tank, the Foreign Policy Centre, Americans have “increasingly grown to hate supporters of the other party, viewing their capture of political power as not merely unfortunate but illegitimate”.
Americans have regularly articulated a preference for living among people who share their political outlook. And they have expressed a stronger aversion to dating, living, working or socialising with supporters of another party. These views point to a state suffering the ills of sectarianism.
Those who have observed sectarianism around the world know all too well the chaos that such divisions can wreak. In the Middle East, for example, politically charged religious difference has had a devastating impact on political, economic and social life. Hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions displaced from their homes across Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Libya because of violence along sect-based lines.
The US may be a long way from these scenarios, but there are some early warning signs. Competing forms of what American social theorist Irving Howe calls “epistemological authoritarianism” – or a sense of certainty that is zero-sum and rejects those of the other – can be easily seen across America’s political landscape.
Protests and counter-protests have played out both on the streets and online over abortion, gun laws and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as on university campuses over the war in Gaza. Elite entrepreneurs with political capital have also positioned themselves on opposite sides of sensitive issues to cultivate support.
Take, for example, Donald Trump’s false allegations that Democratic states executed babies after birth, or that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, have been eating pets. Such comments quickly spread across social media, regardless of their veracity. For Trump’s followers, truth matters less than the ability to justify their position on a particular issue. The stance taken by political communities is increasingly polemic and predictable.
Such dynamics are, of course, also shaped by local contexts. But the growing politicisation of social identities in recent years, and the increasing political importance of social issues, has created a landscape where difference is broadly antagonistic.
In this situation, grievance becomes a means of reinforcing in-group cohesion and disdain for the other. In such a landscape, society becomes divided into mutually distrustful camps set apart by a form of emotional polarisation that takes on political meaning.
It is the emotional dimension that is key here, as this is the foundation upon which political and social enmity is built. Supreme Court decisions, for example, relating to emotionally charged issues such as abortion, have strong mobilising potential on both left and right.
Entrenched differences
Elections often exacerbate uncertainty and division, as the 2020 US presidential election and its fallout demonstrate. According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled), a research group that analyses occurrences of political violence around the world, demonstrations and far-right activity peaked around the 2020 election. This reached a crescendo with the events of January 6 2021 when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol building.
Far-right activity has dropped during Biden’s administration. But a number of far-right groups have recently become active in the run-up to the election. Meanwhile, divisions over abortion, LGBTQ+ mobilisation, and the war in Gaza have contributed to a precarious environment.
Indeed, a vast majority do not think that next week’s election will solve the issues that America faces. In a recent poll, 70% of respondents believe that things in the US are going “in the wrong direction” – a view shared more by Republican respondents (94%) than Democrat respondents (41%). And 19% of Republicans think that if Trump loses the election, he should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office.
Pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC on January 6 2021. lev radin / Shutterstock
The schisms across the US are real and the pieces are not easily put back together. Narratives of division will continue to spread as election fever increases, further deepening the rifts in American society. And sectarianism will become the broad frame through which political and social life is viewed.
This need not necessarily become violent. But it can easily become entrenched. The increasingly hostile exclusion of “the other” in all its forms, along with a growing willingness to breach established norms and rules, requires a step back from the brink before it is too late.
Simon Mabon receives funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lisa Shitomi-Jones, Research Assistant & PhD Candidate at the Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, Cardiff University
Women going through perimenopause – the transition period surrounding the menopause – are more than twice as likely to develop bipolar disorder for the first time according to our research. Our study is the first to investigate the link between perimenopause and the onset of severe psychiatric conditions.
Many people think of menopause as a single event that happens around a woman’s early 50s, the average age for her last period. But it’s a gradual process that typically occurs between the ages of 45 and 55.
Perimenopause is the phase leading up to and following menopause, during which hormonal changes affect the menstrual cycle. This stage differs from person to person and can last several years. Symptoms may include hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings and irregular periods.
While physical symptoms are common, the potential effect of perimenopause on mental health – including mood changes and severe psychiatric disorders – is less understood and has been under-researched.
We were inspired to conduct our research by the patients at Professor Di Florio’s mental health clinic. It offers a free clinical service providing second opinions for people experiencing severe psychiatric disorders associated with reproductive events.
Many of the women in the clinic had never experienced severe mental health problems before menopause. But something seemed to shift during perimenopause. Suddenly many found themselves grappling with these conditions. However, upon reviewing the research, it appeared that the experiences of these women were not documented or explored in scientific literature.
To address this research gap and find answers, we conducted research using a large database called UK Biobank. This is a resource which gives approved researchers secure access to anonymous medical and genetic data from half a million volunteers. It aims to improve our understanding of how to prevent, diagnose and treat many serious conditions.
Using the data, we investigated how many participants had new onsets of psychiatric conditions during the perimenopause. We then compared this to the number of new onsets during the late reproductive stage, which are the years before the perimenopause.
The data we examined came from 128,294 women in the UK. We wanted to explore how the years around the final menstrual period may trigger serious mental health issues, including bipolar and major depressive disorders. We discovered a 112% increase in new cases of bipolar disorder. We also found a 30% rise in major depressive conditions during this time, compared to earlier stages of the late reproductive period.
Our study was the first of its kind to investigate first onsets of bipolar disorder during the perimenopause. It validates the experiences of women who were previously essentially invisible in the world of research.
Although some hypotheses exist as to why perimenopause and hormones may play a role in psychiatric disorders, much more research is required to better understand why this affects some people but not others. Researchers also need to uncover the best treatment options for these women.
We hope that our research paves the way for more research on women’s mental health at perimenopause, as well as further investigations into the underlying biological mechanisms.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
L-R: Miriam Frankel, Priya Atwal, Alice Hunt.CC BY
The Conversation UK, Curtis Brown and Faber are pleased to announce our three judges for The Conversation Prize for writers: Miriam Frankel, senior science editor at The Conversation UK, Priya Atwal, historian, broadcaster and community history fellow at the University of Oxford, and Alice Hunt, professor of early modern literature and history at the University of Southampton.
Our competition is looking for the best longform article and nonfiction book idea aimed at a general audience from our community of academics. For your chance to win £1,000, publication on The Conversation Insights and mentorship from a literary agent and book publisher then enter your 2,000-word story and book idea.
About our judges
Miriam Frankel.
Miriam Frankel is senior science editor at The Conversation UK. She is co-author of Are You Thinking Clearly? 29 Reasons You Aren’t and What To Do About It, a book investigating the many factors that influence and manipulate the way we think, from genetics, biology, bias and personality to time perception, culture, language, advertising and technology. Miriam also writes on a freelance basis for a number of publications including New Scientist, The Observer, BBC Future and BBC Science Focus magazine.
Priya Atwal is a historian of monarchy, empire and cultural politics in Britain and South Asia. Her first book, Royals and Rebels: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire, was published in 2020 and was one of BBC History Magazine’s Best Books of the Year. Priya is an active champion for public history and community empowerment in historical research. She is currently building a new Community History Hub at the University of Oxford, and regularly consults on a wide range of creative historical projects, from working on Netflix’s Bridgerton, to supporting the development of inclusive history curricula for UK state schools.
Alice Hunt.
Alice Hunt is professor of early modern literature and history at the University of Southampton. She was awarded a Leverhulme Trust fellowship to research her first trade book, Republic: Britain’s Revolutionary Decade, 1649-1660, which was published by Faber in 2024. Alice is also the author of The Drama of Coronation and has previously written about the Tudors and James I.
How to Enter
Submissions are open to academics employed or affiliated to a university or approved research institution (IRO) in the UK, Europe or Commonwealth, including PhD candidates under supervision by an academic. Submissions should be in the following areas: History, Arts + Culture, Business + Economy, Education, Environment, Health, Politics + Society, Science + Technology or World.
To enter, please email your 2,000-word article, plus the following information, to uk-prize@theconversation.com:
Name
Institution
Country
Email
Telephone no.
Your book idea [max 350 words]
Please provide a brief summary of a trade nonfiction book idea based on your article. Tell us why this topic deserves a deeper dive and why it would appeal to an audience of non-academic readers.
About you [max 100 words]
Tell us a little about you – your current academic role or affiliation, your area of expertise and any relevant research to your book idea. Why would you be the right author for this book?
Please disclose any conflicts of interest that should be mentioned in relation to your article or book idea.
Oxygen, the molecule that supports intelligent life as we know it, is largely made by plants. Whether underwater or on land, they do this by photosynthesising carbon dioxide. However, a recent study demonstrates that oxygen may be produced without the need for life at depths where light cannot reach.
The authors of a recent publication in Nature Geoscience were collecting samples from deep ocean sediments to determine the rate of oxygen consumption at the seafloor through things like organisms or sediments that can react with oxygen. But in several of their experiments, they actually found oxygen was increasing as opposed to decreasing as they would have expected. This left them questioning how this oxygen was being produced.
They found that this “dark” oxygen production at the seafloor seems to only happen in the presence of mineral concentrates called polymetallic nodules and deposits of metals called metalliferous sediments. The authors think the nodules have the right mixture of metals and are densely packed enough for an electrical current to pass through for electrolysis, creating enough energy to separate the hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) from water (H₂O).
The authors also suggested that the amount of oxygen created may fluctuate depending on the number and mixture of nodules on the ocean floor.
This research team was trying to understand the implications of mining metals from the deep-sea floor such as lithium, cobalt or copper, funded by an extractions company in an effort to ensure deep sea mining leads to a net benefit to humanity and the Earth system. Lithium and cobalt are used, for example, to make rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops and electric vehicles. Copper is vital for electrical wiring in devices like TVs and radios and for roofing and plumbing.
The investigation was focused on the Clarion-Clipperton zone of the Pacific Ocean, a vast plain between Hawaii and Mexico where millions of tons of these metals have been found. However, scientists believe mining on this scale is potentially unpredictable and can destroy habitats vital to ocean ecosystems. Deep-sea mining can also introduce harmful sediment plumes to fragile ecosystems leading to a growing number of countries calling for a moratorium.
Dark oxygen for life
The implications for this finding may also play a role in life elsewhere.
Oxygen is essential to complex life as we know it. Complex life has evolved and expanded alongside photosynthesisers, which actually produce oxygen as a waste product. Yet this oxygen allows organisms’ metabolisms to be much more efficient than without it.
Without photosynthetic bacteria, the reliance that Earth’s life has on oxygen may well have never happened, in addition to the evolutionary pathway to biodiversity as we know it. But this study shows that rich-nodules on the seafloor may have provided an additional source of oxygen to the biosphere – the zone of life on Earth encompassing all living organisms.
We can’t understand how these nodules may have affected evolution until we understand more about how they formed deeper in time. At the moment, all we really know it that we these nodules would have needed oxygen themselves to form.
Studies like this show how much the origin of life on Earth is still a mystery.
Lewis Alcott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Australia’s new digital ID system promises to transform the way we live. All of our key documents, such as driver’s licences and Medicare cards, will be in a single digital wallet, making it easier for us to access a range of services.
The federal government is still developing the system, with a pilot expected to run next year. Known as the “Trust Exchange”, it is part of the Trusted Digital Identity Framework, which is designed to securely verify people’s identities using digital tokens.
Earlier this year, in a speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, Federal Minister for Government Services Bill Shorten, called the new digital ID system “world leading”. However, it has several privacy issues, especially when compared to international standards like those in the European Union.
So how can it be fixed?
What is Trust Exchange?
Trust Exchange – or TEx – is designed to simplify how we prove who we are online. It will work alongside the myID (formerly myGovID) platform, where Australians can store and manage their digital ID documents.
The platform is intended to be both secure and convenient. Users would be able to access services ranging from banking to applying for government services without juggling paperwork.
Think of the system as a way to prove your identity and share personal information such as your age, visa status or licence number — without handing over any physical documents or revealing too much personal information.
For example, instead of showing your full driver’s licence to enter a licensed premises, you can use a digital token that confirms, “Yes, this person is over 18”.
But what will happen to all that sensitive data behind the scenes?
Falling short of global standards
The World Wide Web Consortium sets global standards around digital identity management. These standards ensure people only share the minimum required information and retain control over their digital identities without relying on centralised bodies.
The European Union’s digital identity system regulation builds on these standards. It creates a secure, privacy-centric digital identity framework across its member states. It is decentralised, giving users full control over their credentials.
In its proposed form, however, Australia’s digital ID system falls short of these global standards in several key ways.
First, it is a centralised system. Everything will be monitored, managed and stored by a single government agency. This will make it more vulnerable to breaches and diminishes users’ control over their digital identities.
Second, the system does not align with the World Wide Web Consortium’s verifiable credentials standards. These standards are meant to give users full control to selectively disclose personal attributes, such as proof of age, revealing only the minimum personal information needed to access a service.
As a result, the system increases the likelihood of over-disclosure of personal information.
Third, global standards emphasise preventing what’s known as “linkability”. This means users’ interactions with different services remain distinct, and their data isn’t aggregated across multiple platforms.
But the token-based system behind Australia’s digital ID system creates the risk that different service providers could track users across services and potentially profile their behaviours. By comparison, the EU’s system has explicit safeguards to prevent this kind of tracking – unless explicitly authorised by the user.
Finally, Australia’s framework lacks the stringent rules found in the EU which require explicit consent for collecting and processing biometric data, including facial recognition and fingerprint data.
Filling the gaps
It is crucial the federal government addresses these issues to ensure its digital ID system is successful. Our award-winning research offers a path forward.
The digital ID system should simplify the verification process by automating the selection of an optimal, varied set of credentials for each verification.
This will reduce the risk of user profiling, by preventing a single credential from being overly associated with a particular service. It will also reduce the risk of a person being “singled out” if they are using an obscure credential, such as an overseas drivers licence.
The system should also be decentralised, similar to the EU’s, giving users control over their digital identities. This reduces the risk of centralised data breaches. It also ensures users are not reliant on a single government agency to manage their credentials.
Australia’s digital ID system is a step in the right direction, offering greater convenience and security for everyday transactions. However, the government must address the gaps in its current framework to ensure this system also balances Australians’ privacy and security.
The work has been supported by the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Limited, whose activities are partially funded by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme.
The work has been supported by the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Limited whose activities are partially funded by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme.
The work has been supported by the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre Limited, whose activities are partially funded by the Australian government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme.
The Little Ice Age is a period from around 1300 to 1850, when global temperatures dropped significantly. While the exact cause of this phenonemon is unknown, theories range from volcanic eruptions to European colonization of the Americas.
Our research into England’s Little Ice Age during the 16th and 17th centuries has unearthed more than 1,800 unique pieces of weather observations, hidden in documents like diaries and letters. Local and national chronicles embedded reports of extreme weather among accounts of war and monarchs. Extreme weather pamphlets publicized tragic effects of earthquakes, floods and storms, much like our media today.
Our team has created an open access database called the Weather Extremes in England’s Little Ice Age 1500-1700. This database visually maps both extreme and temperate weather in the age of Shakespeare and can help to advance modern climate science.
More fundamentally, these experiential accounts provide a fascinating window into a world not too different from our own. While the causes of the climate change of today are well known, and likely different from that of the Little Ice Age, the experiences of living through both events are at times eerily similar. Understanding these past experiences can help us to better understand our present day and to develop more robust policies in the here and now.
Frost fairs on the River Thames have become a familiar cultural reference point for England’s Little Ice Age. Our data shows that the river froze over a mere four times in the 16th century — in 1516, 1537, 1564 and 1590 — and there were only intermittent observations of unusual cold or snow.
The 17th century was markedly different. Reports of cold came thick and fast, with the exception of a few years between 1620 and 1643.
Title page from The Great Frost: ‘Cold doings in London, except it be at the lotterie. With newes out of the country. A familiar talk betwene a country-man and a citizen touching this terrible frost and the great lotterie, and the effects of them.’ Printed at London: For Henry Gosson, 1608. Attributed to Thomas Dekker. (Houghton Library, Harvard University)
This was the century of frost fairs on the Thames. With the first 17th century fair in 1608, these events were celebrated by English playwright Thomas Dekker in his pamphlet The Great Frost.
Drinking, barbering and games were on display as London’s citizens marvelled at the novelty of entertainment on the ice. The freezes were frequent enough to become an institution.
By the winter of 1683-1684, the frost fair had become a city within a city, expanding across the ice with avenues of booths, bear and bull-baiting rings and boats-turned-chariots pulled by enterprising watermen across the now solid river.
But these iconic events were just one aspect of Little Ice Age weather in England.
Storms and floods
In the 16th century, severe rain storms were far more common than cold snaps.
On Oct. 5, 1570, “a terrible tempest of wind and raine” caused flooding from Lincolnshire to London as rivers overflowed their banks, drowning towns, fields, crops and cattle. Storm surges inundated the coastline.
Four years later, towns from Newport to St. Ives suffered “raging floods,” and a “giant sea fish” (whale) washed up in the Thames from a massive surge up river. In May 1594, “soddane showres of haile [and] raine” destroyed houses, iron mills, crops and cattle in Sussex and Surrey. September of that year saw another deluge, with bridges taken down in Cambridge and Ware.
This all changed in the 17th century, following the Great Flood that struck Bristol and surrounding areas in 1607. Extreme cold spells then became more frequent, and major storm events were less common. The winter of 1612-1613 saw a number of violent storms recorded in the pamphlet Wonders of this Windie Winter, with livestock lost from Newcastle to Dover and bodies from shipwrecks washing aground in the Thames.
In the next 40 years, though, only the years of 1626 and 1637 contain reports of significant storm events causing loss of life or livestock. Instead of extreme storms, this century was marked more by regular but moderate rainfall, consistent with colder, wetter conditions normally associated with the Little Ice Age.
Fire and heat
If colder, wetter weather was a new normal for 17th century Britons, the hot, dry spring of 1666 caught Londoners unprepared. The Great Fire of London was one of the worst disasters of the age, and diarist John Evelyn recounts that “the heate … had even ignited the aire,” a comment reminiscent of descriptions of wildfire spread today.
Yet periods of extreme heat were surprisingly frequent during the previous century, especially in the England that Shakespeare knew. More than a dozen droughts were recorded across England in the 16th century, usually broken by extreme storms or floods. It never rained, it seems, but it poured. The Thames dried up completely in 1592.
As Thomas Short wrote in his Chronological History of English Weather, “an excessive drought, great death of cattle from want of water; springs and brooks were dried up; horsemen could ride the Thames.” Locals went into the mud to retrieve items long lost to the river.
Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon was nearly destroyed by fire twice, in 1594 and 1595, due to severe drought and heat. The warning signs were there for Londoners to beware of hot spells in the next century, but frost fairs and wet weather may have bred complacency.
Lessons for today
The Weather Extremes in England’s Little Ice Age 1500-1700 database is revealing a picture of the world of Shakespeare and early modern England that upends a simplified picture of the Little Ice Age. More than just a world of frosts and freezes, the English Little Ice Age could be known as well as an age of fire and rain.
The documents in our database are the reports of people who lived in a climatically changing world and saw its shifts firsthand. It shows how important weather crowd-sourcing can be, even centuries later. Contemporary projects like the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, or the Northern Tornadoes Project, continue in the spirit of this work.
But our data could also provide insight into today’s extreme weather. Historical flooding patterns might provide reference points to better manage and understand the unstable weather experienced in the British Isles today.
Madeline Bassnett has received funding from SSHRC for the Weather Extremes in England’s Little Ice Age 1500-1700 project.
Laurie Johnson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
From showing us how to cook the perfect turkey to mastering the art of folding a fitted sheet, Martha Stewart’s name has long been a byword for doing things well at home – “how very ‘Martha Stewart’ of you”.
New Netflix documentary, Martha, promises insights into her extraordinary life – from a teenage model to the original influencer and America’s first self-made female billionaire, with a prison stay and friendship with Snoop Dogg along the way.
Behind the expertly folded linens and immaculately set tables lies something more.
Martha Stewart created a brand empire that redefined the domestic lifestyle, monetised it and paved the way for others.
Beginnings and barriers
Stewart’s connection to the domestic arts began early.
Raised in New Jersey, she learned essential homemaking skills like cooking and sewing from her mother, while her father introduced her to gardening.
She studied art and architectural history yet Stewart started her career as a stockbroker. But her passion for the domestic realm led her to entrepreneurship.
As she once reflected, “the life of the homemaker was more interesting to me than the life of Wall Street”.
In 1972, she launched a catering business from the suburbs of Connecticut. It soon gained recognition for its elegant food presentations. A publisher client led to her 1982 book, Entertaining. It included notes for how to prepare a clambake for 30, a cocktail party for 200 and ranked presentation as highly as the food itself.
Book success sealed a partnership with Kmart in 1987 and eventually took her homewares brand into millions of American homes.
By 1999, she took her company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (which encompassed her television show, magazines, websites and merchandising product lines) public, becoming America’s first self-made female billionaire – albeit momentarily.
A few years later, Stewart was embroiled in scandal. She received a five-month prison sentence for insider trading and obstruction of justice. Many expected this to mark the end of her career – but Stewart defied the odds.
Breaking new ground
After her release from prison, she didn’t shy away from her past. Instead, she continued sharing skills including those she honed during her time at prison camp – whether it was crocheting or experimenting with new recipes. As always, Stewart seized every opportunity to expand her brand.
Her genius lies in her ability to “sense a void in the culture” and turn a personal touch into commercial success.
Since selling her namesake brand, Stewart has stayed in the spotlight, sometimes sharing it with rapper Snoop Dogg. The unlikely duo struck up a seemingly genuine friendship that produced a television potluck series, appearances and prison jokes.
She continues to connect with millions of followers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where her long-term influence is perhaps most evident.
The OG influencer
Stewart’s living legacy is unmistakable in today’s digital world. Scrolling through social media, you’ll find traces of her in meticulously arranged tablescapes or perfectly organised cabinets.
Popular “cleanfluencers” like Mrs Hinch and Australia’s Mama Mila have built massive followings by turning domestic tasks into visually captivating content.
Minimalist tidy maven Marie Kondo took the world by storm, with her philosophy of keeping only what “sparks joy”. Her global brand follows Stewart’s signature collection model. Stewart’s clean and white aesthetic and multichannel branding can be seen in Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop too.
When housework is repackaged as life-changing and transformative, it transcends private duty to become a public, respected and potentially profitable business.
But is this feminism?
Yet, the rise of domestic lifestyle influencers also raises critical questions in feminist circles.
As far back as Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, published in 1949, housework has been seen as part of the trap of domestic femininity.
Figures like Stewart may represent success stories in economic terms. But their ventures risk reinforcing the stereotype that homemaking is inherently women’s work, often packaged alongside an ever-growing array of consumer products designed to perfect it.
Stewart’s vision of domestic success – immaculate homes, flawless dinners, and perfect organisation – sets a standard that is unattainable for most. Scholars argue her media empire presents an upper-class fantasy, where the appearance of a wealthy lifestyle is emphasised over the reality of it.
Focusing on domesticity is not inherently regressive, but what happens when the standards of success are too high to reach?
The “solution” is often hidden in the consumerism trap, with women endlessly buying goods to chase an idealised lifestyle.
Stewart’s embrace of perfectionism fuelled her success. In her words, “being a perfectionist can be profitable”. Yet for women and consumers, the pursuit of “Martha Stewartness” often feels out of reach.
Martha is streaming on Netflix from today.
Di Yang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra
Lower petrol prices and an electricity rebate have contributed to a further fall in the quarterly measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index.
The rate in the September quarter dropped to 2.8%, putting it for the first time within the Reserve Bank’s target range of two-point-something since the March quarter of 2020.
The fall was broadly in keeping with market expectations, and keeps low the likelihood of an interest rate cut this year. The next Reserve Bank meeting is scheduled for Tuesday.
The bank pays more attention to the long-running quarterly measure of the CPI than the more volatile monthly version which already dropped into its target range in August.
The quarterly CPI is also more important because it is included in all sorts of workplace and other contracts and indexation formulas.
The main reason for the fall in inflation was the electricity rebates announced in the federal budget and by some states.
Also helping were the falls in petrol prices, mainly reflecting declines in global oil prices. Cheaper or free public transport in Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart and Darwin also contributed.
Preventing a larger fall were the continuing strong growth in insurance costs and rent. The rise in insurance costs reflects a series of extreme weather events such as bushfires and floods. It is a way in which climate change is exacerbating inflation.
Contrary to what many people think, the increase in rents is not due to landlords passing on higher interest rates. Landlords may want to do this but they are only able if vacancy rates are low, otherwise tenants just move elsewhere.
History shows it is low vacancy rates that drive up rent regardless of the level of interest rates. The inability of landlords to pass on interest rate increases has been confirmed by a study just published by the Reserve Bank using tax return data.
It showed that only three cents of every dollar in extra interest costs is passed on.
The dramatically lower inflation rate puts Australia in a comparable position to the United States, whose inflation rate is 2.4%, the United Kingdom, whose inflation rate is 1.7% and New Zealand where it is 2.2%.
The US, UK and New Zealand all have inflation targets (or midpoints) of 2%, so inflation is now only slightly above the target in the US and New Zealand. It is actually below it in the UK. In response all three have cut their key policy interest rates.
Yet it is unlikely that the Reserve Bank will follow their lead until next year, despite growing pressure.
One reason is that, even after their cuts, interest rates in our three peers are still higher than in Australia, at around 4.75% to 5%.
But more importantly, the Bank has stressed recently that it pays more attention to the “underlying” rate of inflation, which looks through temporary measures such as the electricity subsidies. The Bank will only cut interest rates when they are “confident that inflation was moving sustainably towards the target range”.
The bank’s preferred measure of underlying inflation, the so-called trimmed mean, has also fallen.
But at 3.5%, it is still above the target. A positive aspect is that it has reached 3.5% ahead of the Bank’s most recent forecast which had 3.5% only being reached by the end of 2024.
As the then future governor Glenn Stevens remarked back in 1999,
“the long lags associated with the full impact of monetary policy changes mean that policy changes today must be made with a view not just to what is happening now, but what is likely to be happening in a year’s time and even beyond then”.
In other words we want to drive by looking ahead rather than just at the rear view mirror. The Bank is like a footballer who needs to head to where the ball will be rather than where it is now.
There is therefore a risk that if the Reserve Bank keeps interest rates high until inflation reaches the middle of the target, it will be too late to prevent the economy slowing too much and inflation will undershoot the target. This would likely be associated with unnecessarily high unemployment.
That is why the Reserve Bank board faces a difficult balancing act in taking its decisions.
John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist and forecaster in the Reserve Bank and the Australian Treasury.
Domestic and family violence (DFV) has received increasing attention in recent years. It is most commonly associated with intimate partner violence between current and former partners, followed by abuse perpetrated against children by their parents and carers.
But what about sibling violence?
International estimates suggest that sibling violence (also known as sibling-to-sibling violence) is one of the most common forms of DFV globally. Yet in Australia and internationally, there is very little conversation or research about it. This means our understanding of when, why and how it occurs remains underdeveloped, and this in turn affects the development of effective policy and practice.
To improve understandings of sibling violence in Australia, we analysed data collected as part of a national study of 16–20-year-olds’ use and experiences of DFV in the home. Of the 5,021 young people we surveyed, 4,340 said they had siblings.
What is sibling violence?
One of the biggest barriers to better understanding sibling violence is differentiating between sibling rivalry and conflict, and abuse. Research suggests abuse is often minimised by family members and clinicians, even when the behaviours are described as “extreme” and persistent.
For our study, guided by the literature, we defined sibling violence as involving serious and high-harm behaviours. This includes:
threats to kill
threats to hurt someone close to the young person
non-fatal strangulation or sexual abuse
persistent and frequent forms of other abusive behaviour (for example, verbal, emotional physical, property damage and threats to harm/hurt a sibling).
Overall, 303 young people in the sample self-reported they had been subjected to or used sibling violence by the time they were 18. Within this, 58% said they had used sibling violence, 60% said they had been subjected to it, while 18% said they experienced both victimisation and perpetration.
Sibling violence is multifaceted
The most common form of sibling violence reported by young people was verbal abuse. Of our respondents, 72% reported experiencing verbal abuse from a sibling, while 74% reported using verbal abuse against a sibling. Physical violence was the next most common form of sibling violence reported, with 64% reporting experiencing physical abuse from a sibling, and 73% reporting using physical abuse against a sibling.
Although less common, a significant proportion of young people also reported experiences of:
threats to kill (victimisation: 26%; perpetration: 9%)
sexual abuse (victimisation: 13%; perpetration: 2%).
Almost all young people who had experienced sibling violence reported experiencing multiple and overlapping forms of abuse. Indeed, our study finds that sibling violence is rarely experienced as an isolated act of abuse. Rather, it is often experienced as part of a broader patterns of behaviours encompassing physical, sexual and non-physical abuse.
More than half young people who had experienced sibling violence also experienced violence from another family member. Shutterstock
Sibling violence is gendered
The findings from our study highlight that like other forms of DFV, sibling violence is gendered.
A significantly larger proportion of cis female (47%) and trans/non-binary young people (50%) reported they had been subjected to sibling violence, compared to cis males (25%).
Meanwhile, a larger proportion of cis males (59%) said they had used sibling violence compared to cis female (35%) and trans/non-binary young people (32%).
Sibling violence often co-occurs with other forms of DFV within families
Over 90% of young people in our study reported they had experienced DFV between other family members, such as intimate partner violence between their parents.
Also, over half of the young people who had been subjected to sibling violence reported they had experienced other forms of maltreatment by another family member, most frequently by their mothers and fathers.
Sibling violence has significant impacts on young people
Young people in our study reported that sibling violence and other forms of DFV had significant impacts on them. It affected their social, emotional and physical wellbeing, and education achievements.
Relationships between siblings have important developmental implications for young people’s understandings of familial relationships. The strength of sibling relationships has been linked to longer-term health and social wellbeing outcomes. While our siblings can sometimes feel like our greatest enemies, they can also be our strongest supports in life.
An emerging body of research has also found that young people who use sibling violence are at higher risk of perpetrating abusive behaviours against their intimate partner(s) and family members later in life.
Sibling violence can have significant impacts, including trauma, anxiety and poor mental health, eating disorders, and the misuse of alcohol and drugs on those who experience it.
What is needed?
Our study builds new understandings of sibling violence in Australia. It highlights the importance of early interventions for young people who experience DFV during childhood. This includes ensuring effective responses for young people who use violence against their siblings.
Without effective early intervention, we are missing opportunities to address the negative consequences of such experiences, including an increased risk of future perpetration of intimate partner violence.
To facilitate improved identification and early intervention, frontline screening for DFV among individuals and families must include sibling violence.
Given the substantial overlap of intimate partner violence, other forms of child maltreatment, child-to-parent abuse and sibling violence, we need holistic interventions that address the support needs of all family members.
These responses must extend to supporting children and families’ recovery from DFV and seek to break the cycle of inter-generational violence in the home.
Hayley Boxall currently receives research funding from the Queensland Law Reform Commission, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety and the ACT Justice and Community Safety Directorate.
Kate has received funding for family violence-related research from the Australian Research Council, Australian Institute of Criminology, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, the Victorian, Queensland and ACT governments, the Commonwealth Department of Social Services and the Victorian Women’s Trust. This piece is written by Kate Fitz-Gibbon in her role at Monash University and is wholly independent of Kate Fitz-Gibbon’s role as Chair of Respect Victoria.
Silke Meyer currently receives research funding from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, the Queensland Mental Health Commission, and the Department of Child Safety, Seniors and Disability Services (Qld).
The inspector of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) has released her long-awaited report on the failure of the commission to investigate the Robodebt scandal.
The report finds the commissioner of the NACC committed “officer misconduct”. He failed to fully remove himself from the decision not to investigate the scandal.
In response, the NACC has agreed to appoint an “independent eminent person” to reconsider its decision not to investigate the Robodebt scandal.
It’s an embarrassing moment for the Commonwealth’s newly created anti-corruption watchdog.
But it’s also an opportunity for the NACC to do what the public expects of it: act decisively to protect public trust in government.
How did we get here?
The NACC was created in 2022 after a federal election campaign that often focused on transparency and integrity in government.
Earlier this year, the commission announced it would not be looking into the Robodebt scandal.
This was despite the Royal Commission into Robodebt referring six people to the commission for further investigation.
The commission is monitored by an inspector, independent of the commission and the government. After receiving hundreds of complaints, Inspector Gail Furness launched an investigation into why the NACC didn’t look into Robodebt.
The issue was the first big test for the oversight body.
The inspector is legally limited as to what it can look at, but its finding of “officer misconduct” offers a broader opportunity for NACC to change course.
Robodebt was a clear breach of the public trust, with thousands of Australians feeling betrayed by the way the Morrison government acted. NACC now has a second chance to look into the scandal.
Unique anti-corruption tradition
NACC’s decision not to investigate was a departure from a long history of anti-corruption oversight in Australia.
It has its roots in corruption scandals in the late 1980s in Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales.
These scandals involved the vast misuse of public power and resources by powerful executive branch officials. The response was far-reaching.
In Queensland, explosive allegations of police and government involvement in gambling and corruption led to the creation of an inquiry led by Tony Fitzgerald.
This inquiry made a number of wide-ranging recommendations, including the creation of a commission. It would eventually would become today’s Crime and Corruption Commission.
In NSW, high-ranking ministers and police were caught embezzling funds and misusing public influence.
Public outrage led to the creation of Australia’s first anti-corruption commission, the powerful Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).
In parliament, the NSW premier explained that ICAC was established “independent of the Executive Government and responsible only to Parliament”.
He went on to argue that its role was not to prosecute crime, but instead to enforce the public trust and dispel a “cloud of suspicion” that hung over the NSW government.
In WA in the 1980s, allegations emerged that executive branch officials were using their control of public resources to enrich themselves and preserve their own power.
In response, a royal commission in the early 1990s made a number of recommendations, including the creation of an anti-corruption commission. The commission would be an “independent parliamentary agency” responsible to parliament in carrying out its oversight duties.
Since then, all ten Australian jurisdictions have adopted anti-corruption commissions. Many of these commissions are described as officers of parliament intended to investigate breaches of the public trust.
In all states and territories, excluding Victoria and (recently) South Australia, “breaches of the public trust” or “dishonest or improper” conduct can be investigated by these agencies. Anti-corruption agencies have therefore emerged as important guardians of public trust in government.
Anti-corruption amnesia
However, we seem to have forgotten this tradition in recent years.
In South Australia, a 2021 law strippedthe state’s intergrity body of the power to investigate “maladministration” and “misconduct” in public administration and confined its scope to criminal activity.
In Victoria, then-Premier Daniel Andrews downplayed the significant breaches of public trust found by Victoria’s anti-corruption agency as being merely “educational”.
Most recently, the NACC’s refusal to review the Robodebt scandal also suggests it is unaware of the traditional purpose of Australian anti-corruption oversight.
The Robodebt scandal rivals the scandals of the 1980s in its threat to public trust.
One submission to the Royal Commission report put it clearly:
I feel utterly betrayed by the government for this […] myself, and everyone else who turned up to every meeting they had to, jumped through every hoop and tried to do the right thing, were treated like criminals and cheats, when all the while it was the department’s scheme that was illegal.
The NACC now has the opportunity to change course and broadly inquire into the Robodebt scandal.
This includes more than just an inquiry into the referrals from the Robodebt Royal Commission. It can also look into the way that a scandal of this magnitude happened and how we can prevent it in the future.
Failing to ask these questions endangers what the WA Royal Commission 30 years ago described as the “trust principle”. It said:
institutions of government and the officials and agencies of government exist for the public, to serve the interests of the public.
The NACC has been given a second chance to serve the public through properly investigating Robodebt.
If it chooses to take it, it will signal that the commission understands it plays a key role in preserving one of the most valuable commodities in Australian democracy: trust in government.
William Partlett is the Stephen Charles Fellow at The Centre for Public Integrity.
When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended his independent presidential run in August 2024 and endorsed Republican Donald Trump, it might have seemed a surprising turn of events.
Kennedy began his presidential run as a Democrat and is the scion of a Democratic dynasty. Nephew to former President John F. Kennedy and the son of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Kennedy spent most of his career as a lawyer representing environmental groups that sued polluting corporations and municipalities.
Based on my research, I find that Kennedy uses a populist style of speech that matches the rhetoric of today’s online alternative media, also known as the “alternative influence network.”
If populism cuts across the ideological spectrum, so does the alternative media.
This network of politically diverse independent podcasters, YouTube hosts and other creators connects with young, politically disaffected audiences by mixing politics with comedy and pop culture, and presenting themselves as embattled defenders of free thinking – in opposition to mainstream media and mainstream parties.
These shows hosted Kennedy frequently throughout his presidential run in 2023 and 2024.
Kennedy finds his audience
I analyzed a set of Kennedy’s appearances for this story. Both Kennedy and alternative media hosts claim to care about “the real issues” facing Americans such as war, corporate and political malfeasance and economic troubles. They condemn the “mainstream” for promoting frivolous “culture war” topics related to race and identity politics.
Kennedy and the alternative media hosts also combine left and right arguments in a typically populist way. They claim that corporations control the government and that liberals and corporations censor free speech.
For example, on a May 2024, episode of “Stay Free with Russell Brand,” Brand asserted that corrupt institutions are backed by the “deep state.” He asked Kennedy how he would fight these powerful interests.
“The major agencies of government have all been captured by the industries they’re supposed to regulate and act as sock puppets serving the mercantile interests of these big corporations,” responded Kennedy. “I have a particular ability to unravel that because I’ve litigated against so many of these agencies.”
My research found that Kennedy often bonded with his alternative media hosts over his perception that liberal media sources – allegedly controlled by the Democratic National Committee or the CIA – were censoring his campaign.
In a June 2023 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Rogan explained that he no longer identifies as a liberal because of the “orthodoxy it preaches” around issues like vaccines. He then cited YouTube’s removal of some of Kennedy’s vaccine-related videos for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policy.
Kennedy had just spent 90 minutes outlining his journey toward vaccine skepticism, which started with meeting a mother who believed vaccines caused her son’s autism.
“If a woman tells you something about her child, you should listen,” he said.
Kennedy also described being convinced by a set of studies that public health officials had ignored.
“Trust the experts is not a function of science, it’s a function of religion,” he said. “I’ve been litigating 40 years; there’s experts on both sides.”
Afterward, he thanked Rogan for maintaining “this little island of free speech in a desert of suppression and of critical thinking.”
“The DNC-allied mainstream media networks maintained a near-perfect embargo on interviews with me,” Kennedy said.
Speaking directly to the reporters in the room, he added, “Your institutions and media made themselves government mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power.”
Alternative media hosts tap into this desire, helping to push some disaffected listeners down the same left-to-right pipeline that landed Kennedy in Trump’s orbit.
Until recently, Democrats have largely embraced traditional media. During the first months of her 2024 presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” ABC’s “The View” and MSNBC’s “Stephanie Ruhle.”
“Step outside the culture war!” he tweeted in July 2024. “Step outside the politics of hating the other side!”
Rachel Meade does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Garret Martin, Senior Professorial Lecturer, Co-Director Transatlantic Policy Center, American University School of International Service
But the upcoming presidential election may be somewhat of an outlier. In a September 2024 poll, foreign policy actually ranks quite high in voters’ concerns – with more Democrats and Republicans combined saying it was “very important” to their vote than, say, immigration and abortion.
As such, understanding where Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic rival Kamala Harris stand on the significant international issues of the day is important. And we can do so by looking at the records of their respective administrations in the three regions they prioritized: the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East.
Donald Trump: Disrupter-in-chief
In his 2017 inaugural address, Trump painted a dark picture of the U.S. In his telling, his country was being taken advantage of by other nations, especially in trade and security, while neglecting domestic challenges.
To disrupt this, Trump promised an “America First” approach to guide his administration.
And in practice, his foreign policy certainly proved disruptive. He showed a clear willingness to buck traditions and undid some of former President Barack Obama’s signature policies, such as the Iran nuclear deal, which exchanged sanctions relief for restrictions on Tehran’s domestic nuclear program, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
In so doing, he ruffled the feathers of allies and foes alike.
While NATO did make inroads in bolstering its Eastern flank in that period, the alliance was primarily defined by internal turmoil and limited cohesion during Trump’s time in office. U.S. relations with the European Union hardly fared better. In 2018, the U.S. imposed steel and aluminum tariffs on the European Union, citing national security concerns.
Trump also broke with previous U.S. presidents in his administration’s Asia policy. One of his first moves in 2017 was to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal negotiated by Obama. Trump’s late 2017 national security strategy also announced a major shift toward China, labeling it as a “strategic competitor” – implying a greater emphasis on containing China as opposed to cooperating with it.
This hawkish turn played out especially in the field of trade. Trump’s administration imposed four rounds of tariffs in 2018-19, affecting US$360 billion of Chinese goods. Beijing, of course, responded with tariffs of its own. The two countries did sign a so-called phase-one deal in January 2020 that sought to lower the stakes of this trade war. But the COVID-19 pandemic nullified any chance of success, and relations soured further with each Trump utterance of the pandemic being a “Chinese virus.”
Although not taking a driving role in foreign policy, Harris has been part of an administration that has committed the U.S. to repairing alliances and engaging with the world.
Moreover, it cultivated different diplomatic platforms in the Indo-Pacific to act as a counterweight to China. This included the cultivation of the Quad dialogue with Australia, India and Japan, and the AUKUS deal with Australia and the U.K., both of which attempted to further the Biden administration’s strategy of containing China’s influence by enlisting regional allies. Finally, the Biden administration did maintain some channels of communication with China at the highest level as well, with Biden meeting Xi Jinping twice during his presidency.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy walks alongside Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House compound on Sept. 26, 2024. Tom Brenner/Getty Images
People who are convicted of felonies might think they can’t vote.
Even in California, where they do have the right to vote, people convicted of felonies cite cases in Florida and Texas where people with felonies who have completed their sentences have been arrested and sentenced to prison for trying to vote illegally.
It’s almost an article of faith that a person loses their right to vote once they have been convicted.
The reforms reflect the growing recognition by some politicians that felony disenfranchisement laws often excluded people from voting long after they served their sentences. Rooted in historical racism that restricted access to the ballot box, these laws are at odds with the idea that punishment should end after someone completes their sentence.
But with these reforms comes a new challenge – ensuring that people who have the right to vote are aware that they can.
Different states, different laws
A popular assumption among the general public, and even among those convicted of felonies, is that they can’t vote for life.
During our research, we conducted interviews and focus groups with 137 people, as well as text message conversations with over 1,800 people across five states (California, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas). Delia, a 40-year-old Hispanic woman in Texas, explained: “It’s very confusing on purpose. The majority of people that I know, who get booked in and are going to jail, one of the biggest things is, you can’t ever vote again. Right. And so, that’s what I believed.”
Laws on felony disenfranchisement vary by state]. In some instances, people with convictions can still vote while they are serving time in Maine, Vermont and Washington, D.C.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Oct. 18, 2022, that the state’s new Office of Election Crimes and Security was in the process of arresting 20 individuals for voter fraud. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, those convicted of felonies have their rights automatically restored in 23 states when released from prison. But in 10 other states, those convicted of certain felonies can lose rights indefinitely or require a governor’s pardon for voting rights to be restored.
Making matters even more confusing is that state laws make different distinctions on who can and cannot vote. In some cases, the distinctions are based on whether the conviction was a felony or misdemeanor.
Other states distinguish between the timing of the end of imprisonment, parole or probation – and whether all fines and fees have been paid.
The Florida eligibility question
In 2018, for example, Florida voters approved a ballot initiative that “restores the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation.”
Known as Amendment 4, the measure excluded people who committed murder or a felony sex offense.
But before the measure went into effect, a legal dispute arose over the definition of what it meant to complete a sentence. In 2019, Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a law that required payment of outstanding fees and fines before a person convicted of a felony conviction could regain their voting rights.
Though the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the constitutionality of the law in court, a federal appellate court backed the Republican lawmakers.
Over the past nearly 30 years, many states have moved to make it easier for those convicted of felonies to regain their voting rights, starting in 1997 in Texas, where lawmakers eliminated a two-year waiting period before a person convicted of a felony regained their right to vote.
As a result, the number of people with felonies who had lost their right to vote dropped from a high of 6.1 million in 2016 to an estimated 4 million in this election, according to the Sentencing Project. During the U.S. presidential election in 2020, that number was 5.2 million.
So far in 2024 alone, officials in three states have tinkered with their laws on voter eligibility requirements for people convicted of felonies.
In Virginia, lawmakers approved on April 5 a new law that allows registered voters who are imprisoned while awaiting trial or have been convicted of a misdemeanor to vote by absentee ballot.
A month later, in May, Oklahoma lawmakers clarified their existing laws by passing a measure that allows people convicted of felonies to vote under certain conditions, such as receiving a pardon or a reduction of their felony conviction to a lesser misdemeanor.
Though passed by state lawmakers in April 2024, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled on Oct. 16 that the new law could take effect. The law eliminates the two-year waiting period following the completion of a prison sentence before voting rights could be restored.
Increasing voter turnout
Numerous studies of those with felony convictions have shown that they believe the voting process is unclear and confusing.
In our study of voting behavior of people with convictions, we interviewed Raymond, a 49-year-old Black man in Michigan. When asked about the process of registering to vote, he told us: “I ain’t going to say scary, but it was unfamiliar. It can be overwhelming for people who don’t want to do it. You don’t know where to go, you don’t know who to really vote for.”
To get the word out to newly eligible voters, community organizations across the U.S. have launched grassroots operations to inform people with convictions of their voting rights and help guide them through the registration process.
As part of that effort, community organizations such as Alliance for Safety and Justice and TimeDone are working with academic researchers to further understand how different methods of outreach can increase voter turnout among people with felony convictions.
With many people newly eligible to vote in their first presidential election this year, I believe providing them with accurate information about voting and their state’s felony voting laws is critical to ensuring that the idea of a second chance includes the right to vote.
Naomi F. Sugie receives funding from the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Council on Library and Information Resources, Orange County, Alliance for Safety and Justice, Crankstart, and Public Agenda.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly denounced immigrants who enter the U.S. illegally and the danger he says that poor immigrants of color pose for the U.S. – often using hateful language to make his point.
In early October 2024, Trump took his comments a step further when he questioned immigrants’ faulty genes, saying without support that “Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they are now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”
It was far from the first time Trump has invoked eugenics – a false, racist theory that some people, and even some races, are genetically superior to others.
In 1988, for example, Trump told Oprah Winfrey during an interview: “You have to be born lucky in the sense that you have to have the right genes.”
“I always said that winning is somewhat, maybe, innate. Maybe it’s just something you have; you have the winning gene. Frankly it would be wonderful if you could develop it, but I’m not so sure you can. You know, I’m proud to have that German blood, there’s no question about it. Great stuff.”
The Nazis are indeed the most infamous believers of the false idea that white, blue-eyed, blonde-haired people were superior to others – and that the human population should be selectively managed to breed white people.
But the Nazis didn’t originate these ideas. In fact, the Nazis were so impressed with many American eugenic ideas that they incorporated them into their racist, antisemitic laws.
Root of eugenics
The British scientist Francis Galton, a cousin of the evolutionist Charles Darwin, first developed the theory of eugenics in the 1860s, and it gained a foothold in the U.S. and Britain around this time.
By the dawn of the early 1900s, much of the American eugenics scholarship looked down on American immigrants from any place other than Scandinavia, thus coining the term “Nordicism.”
In the late 19th and early 20th century, immigration to the U.S. was at its peak. In 1890, 14.8% of people living in the U.S. were immigrants. Many people felt concerned about immigration in the U.S., and there were many prominent eugenicists in America. Two of the most famous were Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard.
Both were avowed white supremacists who advocated for scientific racism. They wrote popular and widely read books that helped shape American and German law in the 1920s and 1930s.
Grant, Stoddard and other theorists in the U.S. embraced eugenics as a way to justify racial segregation, restrict immigration, enforce sterilization and uphold other systemic inequalities.
Stoddard attacked the United States’ immigration policies in his 1920 book, “The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy.” He wrote: “If the present drift is not changed, we whites are all ultimately doomed. … We now know that men are not, and never will be equal. We now know that environment and education can only develop what heredity brings.”
Another prominent eugenicist was Harry H. Laughlin, an educator and superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office, a now-defunct research group that gathered biological and social information about the American population.
Laughlin wrote an influential 1922 book, “Eugenical Sterilization in the United States,” which included a chapter on model sterilization laws. The Third Reich used his book and laws as a template when implementing them in Germany during the height of the Nazi period.
Laughlin also regularly testified before U.S. Congress, with this 1922 testimony representative of his message to lawmakers: “Immigration is essentially and fundamentally a racial and biological problem. There are many factors to consider, but, from the standpoint of the future, immigration is primarily a long time national investment in human family stocks.”
Eugenicists, including Laughlin, have long been specifically preoccupied with Norwegian genetics – believing that America is under attack when immigration occurs from non-Nordic countries.
In 1924, Congress approved the Immigration Act, which severely limited immigration to the U.S., established quotas for immigrants based on nationality and barred immigrants from Asia.
It was only following the end of World War II and the Holocaust that eugenics fell out of favor and lost its prominence in American thinking.
Trump’s recycling of history
Fears over foreign immigrants weakening the U.S. were popular a century ago, and Trump and many of his followers still embrace them today.
Trump has also promoted eugenicists’ obsession with Scandinavia and the superiority of white people.
In 2018, Trump spoke about immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and Africa, saying “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”
In the same meeting, Trump also reportedly suggested that the U.S. should instead draw in more people from countries like Norway.
In April 2024, Trump again embraced this idea of Scandinavian superiority, saying that he wants immigrants from “Nice countries. You know, like Denmark, Switzerland? Do we have any people coming in from Denmark? How about Switzerland? How about Norway?”
A dangerous flash to the past
A person running for president in 1924 would seem more likely than a candidate in 2024 to espouse this now-discredited point of view.
The idea of America First, at the time, denoted American nationalism and exceptionalism – but also was linked to anti-immigration and fascist movements.
When Coolidge signed the heavily restrictive 1924 Immigration Act into law he stated, “America must remain American.”
One hundred years later, Trump calls to mind an America First mentality, including when he regularly reads the lyrics to a song called “The Snake” during his rallies as a way to explain the dangers of welcoming immigrants into the U.S. The civil rights activist Oscar Brown wrote this poem in 1963, and his family has said that Trump misinterprets the song’s words.
‘I saved you,’ cried that woman.
‘And you’ve bit me even, why’
‘You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die.’
‘Oh shut up, silly woman,’ said the reptile with a grin,
‘You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.’
I have written a book on this and I used many of my citations in Chapter 4 to help develop this piece though I reworded or reframed it.
Cannabis legalization is on the ballot again this November.
Voters in Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota will decide whether to allow adults 21 and up in their states to use cannabis recreationally.
Voters in Nebraska will decide whether to allow medical access under a doctor’s care.
Voters in Arkansas will see a question about medical access on their ballot, but the state supreme court ruled that the votes can’t be counted because the name and title of the measure were “misleading.”
The results of these ballot measures obviously matter to residents of each state, but they also will be telling for the future of the cannabis legalization movement. That’s because these states are all so-called red states where Republicans dominate state politics. They are part of the legalization movement’s biggest obstacle – what I call the “red wall.”
Cannabis legalization hasn’t always been so partisan.
In fact, bipartisanship has been key to the success of the contemporary legalization movement, which began in the 1990s.
How do I know? Because I’ve been told as much by the people who made it happen.
Since 2014, I’ve been researching cannabis legalization in the U.S.. I’ve been trying to understand the contemporary legalization movement’s success and what it means for the future of U.S. drug policy. As an anthropologist, my process is to go where the action is and talk to people with lived experience.
And so I’ve been talking to people in Colorado. In 2012, it became one of the first two states to legalize recreational use of cannabis, also called “adult use.”
Today, 48 states and Washington D.C. have approved cannabis for some kind of medical use, although 10 of those states have legalized only the limited use of oils containing low levels of THC, the active compound in cannabis. Adult use for anyone 21 and older is now allowed in 24 states and Washington.
This is a dramatic change that is undoing decades of prohibition.
Any political movement takes thousands of people to be successful, but it also takes leaders. In Colorado, attorney Brian Vicente and activist Mason Tvert played a pivotal role. With support from the Marijuana Policy Project, they spent most of the 2000s building the movement that made recreational legalization possible in Colorado.
When I asked Vicente and Tvert how they made it happen, they emphasized the same thing: To be effective, they had to build a new kind of coalition. They had to appeal to people who had no personal interest in consuming cannabis.
In Colorado, they made the case that marijuana should be regulated like alcohol, with tax money going to schools. The fact that Colorado allowed ballot initiatives was also key. It let activists take the issue directly to voters, bypassing opposition from the governor and other elected officials.
The strategy worked.
Liberals liked the social justice arguments. Conservatives liked that it enhanced individual liberty. And a broad cross section of voters liked that it would generate tax revenue and let the criminal justice system focus on more serious threats to public safety.
These voters made for a powerful coalition. And for years, such coalitions helped legalization measures pass in blue states like Oregon and California, and in red states like Alaska and Montana.
Hitting the red wall
But since 2020, legalization has become more partisan.
Of the 26 states where cannabis remains illegal for adult use, 20 are red states with a Republican trifecta, meaning that Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s office.
Another four – Kansas, Wisconsin, Kentucky and North Carolina – have Republican-controlled state legislatures and Democratic governors.
Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation where legislative control is split. Medical cannabis was legalized there in 2016, but recreational use is not allowed.
And Hawaii is the lone blue state that has yet to legalize recreational cannabis. A slimmer majority of voters support it than in other blue states, and there are unique concerns such as the potential impact on the tourist economy.
All told, 92% of the states where adult use is still illegal are dominated – if not completely controlled – by Republicans who are much less likely to support legalization than either Democrats or independents. This is true of both elected leaders and rank-and-file party members.
What’s more, 16 of the 26 states that have not legalized adult use cannabis don’t have a ballot initiative process, so supporters can’t take the issue directly to voters. The states with measures on the ballot this November are part of the minority that do.
Voters in states without ballot initiatives have no choice but to wait on their state legislatures to act. But most Republican-controlled legislatures have shown little interest in the issue, even when the majority of voters in the state support it – like in Iowa.
Voters in conservative North Dakota have also rejected adult use legalization twice before, which makes success this year unlikely. On the other hand, it has more support from Republican state legislators than in other states, and more voters are undecided on the issue.
And even if it survives legal challenge, that does not mean recreational legalization is around the corner. The most recent polling of Nebraskans shows lower support for recreational use than medical use, particularly among Republicans.
Second, it has divided party leaders, with the state’s two highest-profile Republicans, Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis, taking different positions on the issue. Trump says he’s voting yes, while DeSantis is a strong no.
And third, it has drawn the ire of some legalization supporters for potentially giving disproportionate control of the market to a small group of large cannabis companies. The concern is that the amendment as written does not require the state to increase the number of licensed businesses. Only already-licensed businesses would be guaranteed the opportunity to expand into the recreational cannabis market.
Ironically, DeSantis’ No campaign has put concerns about corporate control at the center of its own messaging, creating a potential coalition between people who oppose adult use legalization under any circumstances and those who oppose it when there’s too much corporate control.
Fancy, high-quality products such as Rolex watches and Red Wing boots often cost more to make but last longer. This is a principle that manufacturers and customers are familiar with. But while this also applies to biology, scientists rarely discuss it.
Researchers have known for decades that the faster an animal grows, the shorter its lifespan, at least among mammals. This holds across species of different sizes. Ecophysiologists like me have been studying the trade-offs between allocating energy for growth or for maintenance, and how those trade-offs affect aging and lifespan.
One explanation is that since animals have a limited amount of energy available, investing more energy in growth will reduce the energy they have left to maintain their health, therefore leading to faster aging.
Another explanation is based on the observation that metabolism – all the physical and chemical processes that convert or use energy – fuels growth. Some researchers have suggested that fast growth is associated with high metabolism, in turn causing stress that speeds up aging.
However, these two explanations may not capture the whole picture of the trade-off between growth and longevity. For example, certain species allocate a larger fraction of their energy to maintenance but don’t have better resistance to stress than species that allocate less energy to those processes. This finding indicates that the amount of energy allocated to maintenance may not be the only thing that determines its quality.
Meanwhile, I found that this negative association still strongly holds even after accounting for metabolic rate. That means the higher metabolism associated with faster growth cannot completely explain faster aging. There had to be other missing links to consider.
What have scientists overlooked? My recently published research suggests that the energy cost it takes to make biological materials, or the biosynthetic cost, also affects lifespan.
It costs energy to make biological materials, or biomass, such as assembling individual amino acids into whole proteins. It also costs energy to check newly synthesized materials for errors, break down and rebuild materials with errors, and transport finished materials to where they need to be.
To measure the energy investment in building biomass across species, I derived a mathematical relationship between biosynthetic cost and rates of growth and metabolism. I based my equation on the first principle of energy conservation, which states that energy is neither created nor destroyed, and data on the growth and metabolism rates of different mammals routinely measured by other researchers in the field.
While researchers previously believed that the cost of synthesizing new biomass was the same across species, my analysis of data from 139 different animals found that there is a great difference in biosynthetic cost between species. For example, a naked mole rat has a biosynthetic cost that is over three times as that of a mouse with the same body mass. While the naked mole rat has a lifespan of 30 years, the mouse’s lifespan is only two to three years.
My findings suggest that some species spend more energy than others to make one unit of biomass. This is perhaps partially due to living in a more dangerous environment. Animals that grow faster are more likely to reach reproductive maturity than animals that grow more slowly, but the price to pay is low-quality biomaterials.
Biosynthetic cost and aging
If everything else is kept the same, the more expensive growth is, the lower the growth rate will be. But how does this energy cost contribute to the aging process?
I used what I call a cost-quality hypothesis to answer this question. At the cellular level, biosynthetic cost is in part determined by the cell’s tolerance for errors in making materials. Take proteins as an example. Research has repeatedly suggested that protein homeostasis – the collective processes that maintain protein level, structure and function – plays a key role in the aging process. In simple terms, the accumulation of proteins with errors leads to aging.
Protein synthesis and folding is imperfect. Researchers have estimated that 20% to 30% of new proteins are rapidly degraded after they’re made due to errors. Different species have different degrees of error tolerance and protein quality control. For example, the mouse proteome has two- to tenfold higher levels of proteins with incorrect amino acids relative to the proteome of naked mole rats.
Let’s consider two species, where one is picky about protein errors and the other not so much. The picky species will break down and remake a protein when it finds an error, constantly using protein quality control mechanisms to proofread, quickly unfold and refold, degrade or resynthesize proteins. Not only do these processes cost energy, they also slow down an animal’s overall biomass growth rate. A pickier species would spend more energy for a unit of net new biomass synthesized than a species with high tolerance, growing more slowly overall.
On the other hand, a species with higher tolerance to errors would have a lower biosynthetic cost because it would just incorporate the faulty protein into their new biomass. Because this species can function with faulty proteins, it is more resistant to stress and therefore lives longer.
An animal’s ability to maintain homeostasis not only depends on the amount of energy it allocates to maintenance but also on the quality of the tissue it produces. And the quality of that tissue is at least partially due to the energy it invests in making biomass.
In other words, fancy stuff costs more to make but lasts longer.
My hope is that these results could be used as a framework to investigate how differences in a person’s development and growth rate affect their health, risk for aging-related diseases and lifespan. It also opens a door to a new research area: Could we manipulate the mechanisms that determine the energetic cost of biosynthesis and slow aging?
Chen Hou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
From their caramel centers to chocolatey coatings, several widely used candy-making processes go into the production of a single Snickers bar. NurPhoto / Contributor via Getty Images
It’s Halloween. You’ve just finished trick-or-treating and it’s time to assess the haul. You likely have a favorite, whether it’s chocolate bars, peanut butter cups, those gummy clusters with Nerds on them or something else.
For some people, including me, one piece stands out – the Snickers bar, especially if it’s full-size. The combination of nougat, caramel and peanuts coated in milk chocolate makes Snickers a popular candy treat.
As a food engineer studying candy and ice cream at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I now look at candy in a whole different way than I did as a kid. Back then, it was all about shoveling it in as fast as I could.
Now, as a scientist who has made a career studying and writing booksabout confections, I have a very different take on candy. I have no trouble sacrificing a piece for the microscope or the texture analyzer to better understand how all the components add up. I don’t work for, own stock in, or receive funding from Mars Wrigley, the company that makes Snickers bars. But in my work, I do study the different components that make up lots of popular candy bars. Snickers has many of the most common elements you’ll find in your Halloween candy.
Let’s look at the elements of a Snickers bar as an example of candy science. As with almost everything, once you get into it, each component is more complex than you might think.
Let’s start with the nougat. The nougat in a Snickers bar is a slightly aerated candy with small sugar crystals distributed throughout.
One of the ingredients in the nougat is egg white, a protein that helps stabilize the air bubbles that provide a light texture. Often, nougats like this are made by whipping sugar and egg whites together. The egg whites coat the air bubbles created during whipping, which gives the nougat its aerated texture.
A boiled sugar syrup is then slowly mixed into the egg white sugar mixture, after which a melted fat is added. Since fat can cause air bubbles to collapse, this step has to be done last and very carefully.
The final ingredient added before cooling is powdered sugar to provide seeds for the sugar crystallization in the batch. The presence of small sugar crystals makes the nougat “short” – pull it apart between your fingers and it breaks cleanly with no stretch.
Chewy caramel
On top of the nougat layer is a band of chewy caramel. The chewiness of the caramel contrasts the nougat’s light, airy texture, which provides contrast to each bite.
Caramel stands out from other candies as it contains a dairy ingredient, such as cream or evaporated milk. During cooking, the milk proteins react with some of the sugars in a complex series of reactions called Maillard browning, which imparts the brown color and caramelly flavor.
Maillard browning starts with proteins and certain sugars. The end products of these reactions include melanoidins, which are brown coloring compounds, and a variety of flavors. The specific flavor molecules depend on the starting materials and the conditions, such as temperature and water content.
Commercial caramel, like that in the Snickers bar, is cooked up to about 240-245 degrees Fahrenheit (115-118 degrees Celsius), to control the water content. Cook to too high a temperature and the caramel gets too hard, but if the cook temperature is too low, the caramel will flow right off the nougat. In a Snickers bar, the caramel needs to be slightly chewy so the peanuts stick to it.
Chocolate coating
To make chocolate, raw cocoa beans are harvested from cacao pods and then fermented for several days. After the fermented beans are dried, they are roasted to develop the chocolate flavor. As in caramel, the Maillard browning reaction is an important contributor to the flavor of chocolate.
The milk chocolate coating on the Snickers bar happens through a process called enrobing. The naked bar, arranged on a wire mesh conveyor, passes through a curtain of tempered liquid chocolate, covering all sides with a thin layer. Tempering the chocolate coating makes it glossy and gives it a well-defined snap.
The enrobing process in action.
The flow of the tempered chocolate needs to be controlled precisely to give a coating of the desired thickness without leading to tails at the bottom of the candy bar.
The Snickers bar
When done right, the result is a delicious Snickers bar, a popular Halloween – or anytime – candy.
With about 15 million bars made each day, getting every detail just right requires a lot of scientific understanding and engineering precision.
Richard Hartel has previously consulted for Mars Wrigley, but not in the past decade, and does not receive funding from them nor own shares in their company.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nicholas R. Micinski, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, University of Maine
The Israeli parliament’s vote on Oct. 28, 2024, to ban the United Nations agency that provides relief for Palestinian refugees is likely to affect millions of people – it also fits a pattern.
Aid for refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees, has long been politicized, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, has been targeted throughout its 75-year history.
The vote by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to ban the UNRWA goes a step further. It will, when it comes into effect, prevent the UNRWA from operating in Israel and will severely affect its ability to serve refugees in any of the occupied territories that Israel controls, including Gaza. This could have devastating consequences for livelihoods, health, the distribution of food aid and schooling for Palestinians. It would also damage the polio vaccination campaign that the UNRWA and its partner organizations have been carrying out in Gaza since September. Finally, the bill bans communication between Israeli officials and the UNRWA, which would end efforts by the agency to coordinate the movements of aid workers to prevent unintentional targeting by the Israel Defense Forces.
Refugee aid, and humanitarian aid more generally, is theoretically meant to be neutral and impartial. But as experts in migrationandinternational relations, we know funding is often used as a foreign policy tool, whereby allies are rewarded and enemies punished. In this context, we believe Israel’s banning of the UNRWA fits a wider pattern of the politicization of aid to refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees.
What is the UNRWA?
The UNRWA, short for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was established two years after about 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes during the months leading up to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war.
Prior to the UNRWA’s creation, international and local organizations, many of them religious, provided services to displaced Palestinians. But after surveying the extreme poverty and dire situation pervasive across refugee camps, the U.N. General Assembly, including all Arab states and Israel, voted to create the UNRWA in 1949.
Since that time, the UNRWA has been the primary aid organization providing food, medical care, schooling and, in some cases, housing for the 6 million Palestinians living across its five fields: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, as well as the areas that make up the occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The mass displacement of Palestinians – known as the Nakba, or “catastrophe” – occurred prior to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which defined refugees as anyone with a well-founded fear of persecution owing to “events occurring in Europe before 1 January 1951.” Despite a 1967 protocol extending the definition worldwide, Palestinians are still excluded from the primary international system protecting refugees.
While the UNRWA is responsible for providing services to Palestinian refugees, the United Nations also created the U.N. Conciliation Commission for Palestine in 1948 to seek a long-term political solution and “to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation.”
As a result, UNRWA does not have a mandate to push for the traditional durable solutions available in other refugee situations. As it happened, the conciliation commission was active only for a few years and has since been sidelined in favor of the U.S.-brokered peace processes.
Is the UNRWA political?
The UNRWA has been subject to political headwinds since its inception and especially during periods of heightened tension between Palestinians and Israelis.
While it is a U.N. organization and thus ostensibly apolitical, it has frequently been criticized by Palestinians, Israelis as well as donor countries, including the United States, for acting politically.
The UNRWA performs statelike functions across its five fields, including education, health and infrastructure, but it is restricted in its mandate from performing political or security activities.
Initial Palestinian objections to the UNRWA stemmed from the organization’s early focus on economic integration of refugees into host states.
Although the UNRWA officially adhered to the U.N. General Assembly’s Resolution 194 that called for the return of Palestine refugees to their homes, U.N., U.K. and U.S. officials searched for means by which to resettle and integrate Palestinians into host states, viewing this as the favorable political solution to the Palestinian refugee situation and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this sense, Palestinians perceived the UNRWA to be both highly political and actively working against their interests.
In later decades, the UNRWA switched its primary focus from jobs to education at the urging of Palestinian refugees. But the UNRWA’s education materials were viewed by Israel as further feeding Palestinian militancy, and the Israeli government insisted on checking and approving all materials in Gaza and the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967.
A protester is removed by members of the U.S. Capitol Police during a House hearing on Jan. 30, 2024. Alex Wong/Getty Images
While Israel has long been suspicious of the UNRWA’s role in refugee camps and in providing education, the organization’s operation, which is internationally funded, also saves Israel millions of dollars each year in services it would be obliged to deliver as the occupying power.
Since the 1960s, the U.S. – the UNRWA’s primary donor – and other Western countries have repeatedly expressed their desire to use aid to prevent radicalization among refugees.
In response to the increased presence of armed opposition groups, the U.S. attached a provision to its UNRWA aid in 1970, requiring that the “UNRWA take all possible measures to assure that no part of the United States contribution shall be used to furnish assistance to any refugee who is receiving military training as a member of the so-called Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) or any other guerrilla-type organization.”
The UNRWA adheres to this requirement, even publishing an annual list of its employees so that host governments can vet them, but it also employs 30,000 individuals, the vast majority of whom are Palestinian.
Questions over links of the UNRWA to any militancy has led to the rise of Israeli and international watch groups that document the social media activity of the organization’s large Palestinian staff.
In 2018, the Trump administration paused its US$60 million contribution to the UNRWA. Trump claimed the pause would create political pressure for Palestinians to negotiate. President Joe Biden restarted U.S. contributions to the UNRWA in 2021.
While other major donors restored funding to the UNRWA after the conclusion of the investigation in April, the U.S. has yet to do so.
‘An unmitigated disaster’
Israel’s ban of the UNRWA will leave already starving Palestinians without a lifeline. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said banning the UNRWA “would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.” The foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the U.K. issued a joint statement arguing that the ban would have “devastating consequences on an already critical and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, particularly in northern Gaza.”
Reports have emerged of Israeli plans for private security contractors to take over aid distribution in Gaza through dystopian “gated communities,” which would in effect be internment camps. This would be a troubling move. In contrast to the UNRWA, private contractors have little experience delivering aid and are not dedicated to the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality or independence.
However, the Knesset’s explicit ban could, inadvertently, force the United States to suspend weapons transfers to Israel. U.S. law requires that it stop weapons transfers to any country that obstructs the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid. And the U.S. pause on funding for the UNRWA was only meant to be temporary.
The UNRWA is the main conduit for assistance into Gaza, and the Knesset’s ban makes explicit that the Israeli government is preventing aid delivery, making it harder for Washington to ignore. Before the bill passed, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Matt Miller warned that “passage of the legislation could have implications under U.S. law and U.S. policy.”
At the same time, two U.S. government agencies previously alerted the Biden administration that Israel was obstructing aid into Gaza, yet weapons transfers have continued unabated.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Lisa Bitel, Dean’s Professor of Religion & Professor of History, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The Celtic festival of Samhain celebrates a time of year when the division between Earth and the otherworld collapses, allowing spirits to pass through.Matt Cardy/Getty Images
The Irish often get credit – or blame – for the bonfires, pranksters, witches, jack-o’-lanterns and beggars who wander from house to house, threatening tricks and soliciting treats.
The first professional 19th-century folklorists were the ones who created a through line from Samhain to Halloween. Oxford University’s John Rhys and James Frazer of the University of Cambridge were keen to find the origins of their national cultures.
They observed lingering customs in rural areas of Britain and Ireland and searched medieval texts for evidence that these practices and beliefs had ancient pagan roots. They mixed stories of magic and paganism with harvest festivals and whispers of human sacrifice, and you can still find echoes of their outdated theories on websites.
But the Halloween we celebrate today has more to do with the English, a ninth-century pope and America’s obsession with consumerism.
A changing of the seasons
For two millennia, Samhain, the night of Oct. 31, has marked the turn from summer to winter on the Irish calendar. It was one of four seasonal signposts in agricultural and pastoral societies.
After Samhain, people brought the animals inside as refuge from the long, cold nights of winter. Imbolc, which is on Feb. 1, marked the beginning of the lambing season, followed by spring planting. Beltaine signaled the start of mating season for humans and beasts alike on May 1, and Lughnasadh kicked off the harvest on Aug. 1.
But whatever the ancient Irish did on Oct. 31 is lost to scholars because there’s almost no evidence of their pagan traditions except legends written by churchmen around 800 A.D., about 400 years after the Irish started turning Christian. Although they wrote about the adventures of their ancestors, churchmen could only imagine the pagan ways that had disappeared.
These stories about the pagan past told of Irish kings holding annual weeklong feasts, markets and games at Samhain. The day ended early in northwestern Europe, before 5 p.m., and winter nights were long. After sundown, people went inside to eat, drink and listen to storytellers.
The stories did not link Samhain with death and horror. But they did treat Samhain as a night of magic, when the otherworld – what, in Irish, was known as the “sí” – opened its portals to mortals. One tale, “The Adventure of Nera,” warned that if you went out on Samhain Eve, you might meet dead men or warriors from the sí, or you might unknowingly wander into the otherworld.
When Nera went out on a dare, he met a thirsty corpse in search of drink and unwittingly followed warriors through a portal into the otherworld. But instead of ghosts and terror, Nera found love. He ended up marrying a “ban sídh” – pronounced “BAN-shee” – an otherworldly woman. But here’s the medieval twist to the tale: He lived happily ever after in this otherworld with his family and farm.
The Irish otherworld was no hell, either. In medieval tales, it is a sunny place in perpetual spring. Everyone who lives there is beautiful, powerful, immortal and blond. They have good teeth. The rivers flow with mead and wine, and food appears on command. No sexual act is a sin. The houses sparkle with gems and precious metals. Even the horses are perfect.
Clampdown on pagan customs
The link between Oct. 31, ghosts and devils was really the pope’s fault.
In 834, Pope Gregory IV decreed Nov. 1 the day for celebrating all Christian saints. In English, the feast day became All Hallows Day. The night before – Oct. 31 – became known as All Hallows Eve.
Some modern interpretations insist that Pope Gregory created All Hallows Day to quell pagan celebrations of Samhain. But Gregory knew nothing of ancient Irish seasonal holidays. In reality, he probably did it because everyone celebrated All Saints on different days and, like other Popes, Gregory sought to consolidate and control the liturgical calendar.
In the later Middle Ages, All Hallows Eve emerged as a popular celebration of the saints. People went to church and prayed to the saints for favors and blessings. Afterward, they went home to feast. Then, on Nov. 2, they celebrated All Souls’ Day by praying for the souls of their lost loved ones, hoping that prayers would help their dead relatives out of purgatory and into heaven.
But in the 16th century, the Protestant rulers of Britain and Ireland quashed saints’ feast days, because praying to saints seemed idolatrous. Protestant ministers did their best to eliminate popular customs of the early November holidays, such as candle-lit processions and harvest bonfires.
In the minds of ministers, these customs smacked of heathenism.
A mishmash of traditions
Our Halloween of costumed beggars and leering jack-o’-lanterns descends from this mess of traditions, storytelling and antiquarianism.
Jack-o’-lanterns are neither ancient nor Irish. One of the earliest references is an 18th-century account of an eponymous Jack, who tricked the devil one too many times and was condemned to wander the world forever.
Supposedly, Jack, or whatever the hero was called, carved a turnip and stuck a candle in it as his lantern. But the custom of carving turnips in early November probably originated in England with celebrations of All Saints’ Day and another holiday, Guy Fawkes Day on Nov. 5, with its bonfires and fireworks, and it spread from there.
As for ancient bonfires, the Irish and Britons built them to celebrate Beltaine, but not Samhain – at least, not according to the medieval tales.
In 19th-century Ireland, All Hallows Eve was a time for communal suppers, games like bobbing for apples and celebrating the magic of courtship. For instance, girls tried to peel apples in one long peel; then they examined the peels to see what letters they resembled – the initials of their future husbands’ names. Boys crept out of the gathering, despite warnings, to make mischief, taking off farm gates or stealing cabbages and hurling them at the neighbors’ doors.
Halloween with an American sheen
Across the Atlantic, these customs first appeared in the mid-19th century, when the Irish, English and many other immigrant groups brought their holidays to the U.S.
In medieval Scotland, “guisers” were people who dressed in disguise and begged for “soul cakes” on All Souls Day. These guisers probably became the costumed children who threatened – and sometimes perpetrated – mischief unless given treats. Meanwhile, carved turnips became jack-o’-lanterns, since pumpkins were plentiful in North America – and easier to carve.
Like Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Easter, Halloween eventually became a feast of consumerism. Companies mass-produced costumes, paper decorations and packaged candy. People in Britain and Ireland blamed the Americans for the spread of modern Halloween and its customs. British schools even tried to quash the holiday in the 1990s because of its disorderly and demonic connotations.
The only real remnant of Samhain in Halloween is the date. Nowadays, no one expects to stumble into a romance in the sí. Only those drawn to the ancient Celtic past sense the numinous opening of the otherworld at Samhain.
But who’s to say which reality prevails when the portals swing open in the dark of Oct. 31?
Lisa Bitel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Afraid of partisan rancor, nonprofits are biting their tongues, with divisive politics hindering public policy engagement by social service organizations. This is one of our findings in a new study we conducted on behalf of Independent Sector – a coalition of nonprofits, foundations and corporate giving programs.
Although the law bars charitable nonprofits from endorsing political candidates, charities are allowed to engage in at least some advocacy, lobbying and public affairs work tied to issues that are relevant to their own work. For example, a food pantry can hold an event about food insecurity in its neighborhood. Or the executive director of a homeless shelter can lobby elected officials about proposed zoning changes that would interfere with a planned expansion.
Nonprofit advocacy involves attempts to influence government policy. This may include some lobbying, along with information-sharing activities, such as sponsoring events to raise public awareness of an issue, conducting research, or educating the public about policies that affect an organization.
We, scholars who researchnonprofits, spoke with a diverse sample of nonprofit leaders to learn about their organizations’ policy engagement.
Some of the 40 executive directors of social service nonprofits across the nation whom we interviewed had engaged in advocacy, and others had not. The groups were of different sizes and were founded at different times. They were located in red, blue and purple states.
Our team set out to identify some of the causes of a decline in nonprofit advocacy through these interviews.
A few of these nonprofit leaders indicated that they lack expertise or don’t fully understand the restrictions they face regarding advocacy. We also heard many of these executives express concerns about partisanship and political polarization.
As this growing divisiveness has permeated even the most local aspects of American life, many food pantries, homeless shelters and other social service nonprofits are hesitating to take policy positions that may appear partisan to members of their local communities or donors.
When addressing a social media post about Israel and Palestine that had been misconstrued and sparked controversy, the leader of a legal services nonprofit remarked: “The more polarized we are as Americans, the harder it becomes for us to have an open conversation.”
Other nonprofits feared the consequences of any kind of engagement regarding policy questions.
“Nonprofits sometimes are afraid to engage with government officials,” a food security nonprofit leader said, because that advocacy might lead to “some form of retaliation” by the authorities.
Another concern they expressed: Advocacy might alienate donors who disagree with the nonprofit leaders’ stances.
“It’s like there’s no middle ground anymore,” said the executive director of an emergency housing center. Others discussed how polarization has led to more divisions in board rooms and the loss of donors. That makes it harder for these organizations to decide to take a public stand on many issues.
Why it matters
This study followed up on an earlier stage of our research, which showed that nonprofit advocacy and lobbying had declined over the past two decades.
We find this trend especially concerning because charitable nonprofits often serve as a voice for many people who don’t have one in American society.
As a result, when nonprofits fail to engage in the policy process, those voices go unheard, and their needs may become more likely to go unmet. One reason for this is that the people with direct expertise aren’t weighing in on policies that could reduce the need for those services in the first place.
“The loudest voices are the ones that get heard,” as one nonprofit leader put it. The “people we support don’t have a voice.”
What still isn’t known
We don’t know how polarization might affect longer-term engagement by the nonprofit sector.
Indeed, some of these organizations have stepped up their advocacy efforts over the past five years, and some took strategic steps to buffer their organizations from resistance to policy engagement, such as by replacing board members who were opposed to taking policy stances that represented their clients’ interests.
Future research is needed to understand these dynamics more fully and how nonprofits respond to prolonged contentious political discourse.
The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
Heather MacIndoe receives funding from Independent Sector and is a current Visiting Scholar with them.
Lewis Faulk previously received funding from Independent Sector, where he is also a former visiting scholar.
Mirae Kim previously received funding from Independent Sector. She is affiliated with the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) as a non-paid board member.
