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Category: Academic Analysis

  • MIL-OSI Global: A new ‘race science’ network is linked to a history of eugenics that never fully left academia

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lars Cornelissen, Academic Editor, Radboud University

    Antonio Marca/Shutterstock

    The Guardian and anti-fascist group Hope Not Hate have revealed the existence of a new network of far-right intellectuals and activists in an undercover investigation. Called the Human Diversity Foundation (HDF), this group advocates scientific racism and eugenics. Although it presents itself as having a scientific purpose, some of its figureheads have political ambitions in Germany and elsewhere.

    Research shows these kinds of groups are nothing new and are linked to eugenics groups that have been active since the second world war. Defending the scientific legitimacy of eugenics, these organisations worked to keep a discredited intellectual tradition alive.

    Although it has been debunked by decades of research evidence, eugenics once enjoyed a reputation as a credible science since it emerged in the late 19th century.

    First coined by Francis Galton, a prominent Victorian statistician and evolutionary theorist, the term eugenics refers to the study of what Galton considered favourable and unfavourable genetic patterns within the population. Galton believed that the principles of evolutionary theory could be applied to the human species and used to intervene in its genetic fitness.

    Galton and other early eugenicists advocated policies that would ensure that groups they believed held “desirable” traits, such as high intelligence, creative ability, or productivity, could reproduce in greater numbers than groups with less favourable genetics. Some even believed that “undesirable” groups should be prevented from reproducing, through forced sterilisation or abortion.

    Ruling elites used eugenics to justify brutal treatment of disabled people, ethnic minorities, colonial populations, and LGBTQ+ people.

    In the 1930s these ideas came to form the bedrock of Nazi race doctrine. Eugenics was a key component of Nazism and shaped both formal fascist ideology and how the Nazi regime treated its victims.

    Before the second world war, many researchers regarded eugenics as a legitimate science. But in the aftermath of the war came a shift in attitudes, and scientists and society came to view eugenics as scientifically false and morally objectionable.

    Instead of disappearing from academia, however, eugenics merely retreated into the
    margins. Racial research became the focus of a handful of groups intent on keeping
    the eugenics tradition alive.

    Though they operated on the fringes of academia, these groups received financial support from private donors. The most prominent of these donors was the Pioneer Fund, a charity established in 1937 to support race science and white supremacy in the US and elsewhere.

    These groups were close-knit. United by a shared sense of exclusion from the
    academic mainstream, the people involved were prolific writers and together
    generated a large body of work. They inflated their own citation counts by frequently referencing each other’s work and, in this way, established the impression of scientific rigour.

    Pseudoscientific journals

    Seeking to salvage the reputation of eugenics as a legitimate science, these groups
    tended to cluster around journals and periodicals.

    Chief among these was Mankind Quarterly, established in 1961 by a group called the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE). Some decades later ownership of the journal was transferred to the Ulster Institute for Social Research, a eugenicist think tank founded and directed by Richard Lynn. Lynn is widely considered the intellectual figurehead of 21st-century eugenics.

    The Mankind Quarterly quickly became known as a bastion of scientific racism. It published work by notorious pseudoscientists, neo-fascists, and such controversial political figures as former British MP Enoch Powell, remembered for appealing to racial hatred in his speeches.

    Other similar journals emerged in the following decades. In France, Nouvelle École (“New School”) was established in 1967 by a white nationalist group. In Germany, Neue Anthropologie (“New Anthropology”) was first published in 1973.

    These publications were part of the same networks. Their editors received funding from the same sources, including the Pioneer Fund, they published translations of each other’s articles, and their editorial boards overlapped.

    Eugenics today

    Reported to have developed out of the Pioneer Fund and to have taken ownership of Mankind Quarterly, the HDF is the successor to earlier groups like the IAAEE and the Ulster Institute.

    Today, the eugenics movement is experiencing a period of uncertainty following the
    death of Richard Lynn in July 2023. When he died, Lynn was the director of the Pioneer Fund and the editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly. Organisations like HDF, led by people who have worked closely with Lynn, are trying to fill that void.

    Whether the HDF will survive public scrutiny remains to be seen. But the broader networks from which it emerged are arguably stronger than at any previous moment in post-war history, facilitated by the rise of the far right and online extremism. All of which means it has never been more important to remember the tradition’s history.

    Lars Cornelissen 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.

    – ref. A new ‘race science’ network is linked to a history of eugenics that never fully left academia – https://theconversation.com/a-new-race-science-network-is-linked-to-a-history-of-eugenics-that-never-fully-left-academia-241646

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Philosophy at school gives young people the tools to discuss difficult topics such as the Israel-Gaza war

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Laura D’Olimpio, Associate Professor of Philosophy of Education, University of Birmingham

    fizkes/Shutterstock

    The first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the beginning of conflict in Gaza left UK schools with a dilemma: how to mark the event. It has affected many around the world, including school children and their families in the UK.

    Earlier in 2024, government adviser on social cohesion, Sara Khan, suggested that schools were not supporting reasonable debate about the Israel-Gaza conflict because teachers are nervous about handling such a sensitive topic in the classroom.

    But if schools shut down the topic they risk encouraging mistrust, anger, hate and polarisation. Not least because students will instead seek out information online – and are quite likely to stumble upon fake news and conspiracy theories.

    The leader of the UK’s biggest education union, Daniel Kebede, recently noted that there simply isn’t enough space in the curriculum for students to discuss such difficult issues. He claims the solution is to embed philosophy as a subject across England’s school curriculum.

    The subject of philosophy is specifically set up to promote critical thinking skills and teach people how to have difficult conversations about controversial issues.

    Teaching controversial topics

    Controversial and sensitive topics are unavoidable. We encounter them discussed in the media, on the news, in the street and in our homes. Yet we are not always sure what to think, especially when the issue is complex, or how to talk to people we disagree with. And the skills of reasonable dialogue can be even harder when emotions are running high.

    Young people need to learn how to discuss controversial issues like the Israel-Gaza war. The best way to do this is by including philosophy on the curriculum. Philosophy has an excellent toolkit designed to explore various points of view in a critically engaged way and, when taught dialogically – through discussion between students and teachers – students become seekers of shared knowledge and wisdom.

    A key aspect of a democracy involves welcoming different ideas. Such diversity is a strength because it allows for many claims to be scrutinised, with only the best arguments gaining traction. Yet this process of sharing ideas requires our citizens to be able to hold reasoned discussions and to think critically.

    The ability to hold reasoned, critical discussion is a valuable skill.
    fizkes/Shutterstock

    To avoid aggression or chaos, people need to engage charitably with one another, being respectful of various experiences and perspectives while also being critical of the ideas presented.

    The dialogical skills of philosophy

    Philosophy, more than any other subject, encourages students to think about the reasons why they think something, and entertain the possibility that there are other points of view.

    Philosophy is inherently dialogical. The most common teaching approach is to think about the steps in an argument, and then to consider the weaknesses in each of these.

    Philosophy does this by teaching students to check: What assumptions am I making? Are the premises of my position sound? Does the conclusion logically follow from my starting point? What is a counterargument or counterexample to which I need to reply? Could I be wrong about this? What additional information do I need to draw a conclusion?

    These kinds of questions encourage intellectual humility: the idea that I, like anyone else, could be wrong. Intellectual humility goes hand in hand with open-mindedness, ensuring we remain open to relevant new information.

    Such skills of critical thinking and respectful disagreement are vital in a time of disinformation and fake news. Not only do we need young people to learn how to fact check and be critical of what they see and hear, but we also need them to learn that it is OK to disagree.

    Being open-minded

    The influential American philosopher Daniel Dennett, who died earlier this year, wrote about the importance of criticising with kindness and seeking the most charitable version of your opponent’s position. This is so important when discussing controversial topics, because reasonable people will disagree.

    Criticising with kindness means staying humble and open to different points of view when having difficult conversations. And it means creating space for the airing of diverse arguments and examples. In this way, teachers who are trained in philosophy are able to remain politically neutral while helping students converse with one another about important issues that affect them and those they care about.

    Philosophy is about learning to be respectful of others whose views differ from one’s own and to accept reasonable disagreement. It also teaches us to be comfortable with unsettled questions and complex answers. Teaching philosophy in the classroom leads to students engaging with ideas charitably and critically, encouraging open-mindedness and intellectual humility.

    It is the skills of dialogue that we need as our society faces increasing polarisation and violent disagreement. These skills are some of the defining characteristics of a democracy. Happily, teachers are uniquely positioned to embrace the subject of philosophy and the skills it has to offer.

    Laura D’Olimpio is co-founding editor of the open access Journal of Philosophy in Schools.

    – ref. Philosophy at school gives young people the tools to discuss difficult topics such as the Israel-Gaza war – https://theconversation.com/philosophy-at-school-gives-young-people-the-tools-to-discuss-difficult-topics-such-as-the-israel-gaza-war-241085

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Sweden’s libraries caught in a political row about drag story hour

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lisa Magdalena Engström, Senior lecturer in Library and information science, Lund University

    Shutterstock/Bezbod

    Drag story hour is “nothing other than indoctrination and sexualisation of children”, claimed Sweden Democrats politician Jonathan Sager during a session of the local parliament in Kalmar, southern Sweden, in 2022. He was reacting to plans to organise a drag story hour event at the local library, where drag queens would read to children, challenging norms of gender and sexuality. He called (unsuccessfully) for the event to be cancelled.

    For someone not familiar with recent political trends in Sweden, Sager’s view may seem out of character for a country known for its tolerance and progressive approach towards sexual minorities. But just like other countries, Sweden is experiencing a backlash against drag story hour events. Public libraries have repeatedly been the target of hatred and threats from radical right actors, including politicians. Culture wars, often associated with the polarised political climate of the US, have now firmly taken root in Scandinavia.

    In the US, objections against drag queen story hour form part of a larger wave of protests against LGBTQ+ content in libraries, also manifested in attempts to have certain books banned. Although book bans are not as common in Sweden, tensions have arisen over what children read and who reads to them.

    As a result, public libraries, and especially their reading promotion activities for children, are now at the centre of polarising conflicts between the radical right and its opponents.

    Sweden is far from immune to the global growth of far-right influence. Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna or SD), became the second largest party in the national parliament following the most recent election in 2022. The current government depends on their support to function. The party has neo-nazi roots and, despite cleaning up appearances, its representatives still push overtly anti-immigration, white supremacist viewpoints.

    Like many parties of the radical right, SD promotes a conservative view on culture, gender and family, so its opposition to drag story hour is not surprising. However, there is a deeper conflict over the future of Swedish society at play here, too.

    We looked at five instances of political conflict around drag events at libraries in Sweden, finding common themes of dispute over culture and what constitutes a good society.

    ‘Defending’ our children

    In Kalmar, as well as in Trelleborg, another municipality in southern Sweden, local Sweden Democrats have (unsuccessfully) tried to block drag story hours at libraries by arguing that they were “defending” children. In Kalmar, the organiser was accused of “sexualising children”, as though there is something inherently sexual about a drag queen wearing a dress. Sager argued that material that is “gender creative, gender critical or norm critical” should not be used for events involving children.

    Historically, reading promotion activities are part of this fear of harmful influence. For instance, certain types of fiction have been portrayed as having a demoralising effect, leading to initiatives that encourage children to read “quality literature” instead. In Sweden, there is less of a debate around the content of children’s literature, so there aren’t US-style arguments about banning books. But there are heated conversations around the act of reading, especially with children.

    Reading together teaches children to support democratic values, such as by fostering empathy and understanding. Drag story hour fits well with this perspective because it promotes values of acceptance, diversity and positive self-identification. These are values that are expressions of the characteristic emphasis on equity and pluralism in Swedish cultural policy.

    But by ticking these boxes, drag story hour clashes with the politics of the radical right, making the conflict emblematic of a larger tussle over the direction of Nordic cultural policy.

    The dilemma of the safe space

    The dispute around drag story hour has also inflamed arguments about the meaning of safety in a modern society. Is the safest option to bring security into a library or does that very security compromise the library as a safe space?

    In the municipalities of Älmhult and Olofström, in southern Sweden, libraries decided against holding drag story hours because of safety concerns. They felt that bringing in guards was not an option because that would be “completely at odds” with the openness of the library. Visible security measures were seen as incompatible with being a safe space.

    In Malmö, drag story times went ahead with security guards in place. Here, a decision had been made that security measures enabled the library to be a safe space via drag story hour.

    The controversies over drag queen story telling events at public libraries in Sweden continues. Recently, a drag queen story group filed a charge against 106 people – including five SD politicians – for hate crimes. At the same time, public libraries in many parts of Sweden continue to report successful story telling arrangements in the face of opposition from the radical right.

    Fredrik Hanell has received research funding from the Crafoord Foundation (ref. no. 20210680). He is affiliated with the Swedish Green Party.

    Hanna Carlsson and Lisa Magdalena Engström 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.

    – ref. Sweden’s libraries caught in a political row about drag story hour – https://theconversation.com/swedens-libraries-caught-in-a-political-row-about-drag-story-hour-241159

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Why do people do extreme sports? Some of the reasons aren’t always that obvious

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Odette Hornby, PhD Candidate in Sports Psychology, University of South Wales

    It’s about more than danger and adrenaline. Soloviova Liudmyla/Shutterstock

    Participation in extreme sports has surged since COVID-19, with 490 million people estimated to be taking part globally. This may have been fuelled by a desire to break free from lockdown-induced monotony and an explosion of media coverage showcasing the allure of high-adrenaline activities.

    Extreme sports, like Base jumping, free solo climbing, big wave surfing and downhill mountain biking, once reserved for a small percentage of people, are now becoming more mainstream.

    But why are people willing to take such risks? As a climber myself, I was keen to find out. While the popular image of extreme sports participants often revolves around thrill seeking and adrenaline addiction, research from my colleagues and I shows there are far more complex reasons for why people participate.

    An extreme sport is defined as one in which a mismanaged mistake or accident would result in serious injury or death.

    Research has started to explore the reasons behind extreme sports participation, but there’s still a lot to uncover. Several studies have identified factors like personality, motivation, and even neurobiology as playing a role. But it remains unclear which of these consistently drives people to take part in high-risk sports.

    We started our work by conducting a systematic review to consolidate existing research on what drives people to participate in extreme sports. The studies we looked at provided important insights into the various psychological and emotional factors that motivate people to engage in high-risk activities. This helped us build a more complete understanding of the extreme sports mindset. We uncovered five motivational factors.

    Red Bull’s international marketing campaign largely revolves around extreme sports.

    1. Connection

    Participants often describe feeling at one with nature and free from the constraints of everyday life. Many also find a deep sense of belonging in the extreme sports community and are driven by the desire to push their personal boundaries.

    2. Personality

    While some people are indeed drawn to thrill seeking, many use extreme sports as a tool to regulate difficult emotions. This is particularly true for those with alexithymia, which is when people struggle to identify and express their feelings.

    3. Goals

    The drive to succeed plays a big role in why people take part in extreme sports. Of course, many athletes are motivated by setting clear goals, whether it’s winning competitions or improving their performance. In this sense, participation in extreme sport is no different from that of more traditional sport.

    For many of the respondents in the studies we analysed, goal setting boosts confidence and helps them persist through challenges. Participants also often feel a strong sense of control over their activities and find a sense of community with like-minded people.

    4. Managing risk

    Far from being reckless, participants are often highly calculated about the risks they take. They thrive on managing risk, finding excitement in navigating dangerous situations rather than avoiding them.

    5. Addiction-like urges

    Some participants exhibit behaviour resembling addiction, experiencing mood disturbances when not engaging in their chosen extreme sport. This can create a powerful urge to return, a bit like withdrawal symptoms.

    People who take part in extreme sport often thrive on managing risk.
    PhotoFires/Shutterstock

    Our findings have broader implications. They challenge the traditional view of extreme sports enthusiasts as mere “adrenaline junkies”. The research suggests that extreme sports could potentially offer therapeutic benefits, particularly for people struggling with emotional regulation.

    Far from just being about thrill seeking, these types of activities could provide an outlet for experiencing emotions that might otherwise be hard for some people to access. It opens new avenues for exploring how high-risk activities may be used to support mental health and wellbeing.

    My own work in this field is ongoing. Recently, I’ve conducted interviews with elite extreme sport participants to explore their motivations in greater depth. This new research will examine how these motivations shift over time – before, during and after participation. I’m also expanding my studies to compare the motivations driving extreme sport enthusiasts with those of non-extreme sport participants, aiming to uncover what, if anything, truly sets them apart.

    Odette Hornby 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.

    – ref. Why do people do extreme sports? Some of the reasons aren’t always that obvious – https://theconversation.com/why-do-people-do-extreme-sports-some-of-the-reasons-arent-always-that-obvious-239428

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: AI could transform film visual effects. But first, the technology needs to address copyright debate

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dominic Lees, Associate Professor in Filmmaking, University of Reading

    While many people in the creative industries are worrying that AI is about to steal their jobs, Oscar-winning film director James Cameron is embracing the technology. Cameron is famous for making the Avatar and Terminator movies, as well as Titanic. Now he has joined the board of Stability.AI, a leading player in the world of Generative AI.

    In Cameron’s Terminator films, Skynet is an artificial general intelligence that has become self-aware and is determined to destroy the humans who are trying to deactivate it. Forty years after the first of those movies, its director appears to be changing sides and allying himself with AI. So what’s behind this?

    Valued at around a billion dollars, Stability.AI was, until recently at least, headquartered above a chicken shop in Notting Hill. It is famous for Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image tool that creates hyperreal pictures from text requests (or prompts) by its users. Now it is moving into AI-created video.

    Cameron appears to see their work as a potential game changer in film visual effects: “I was at the forefront of CGI over three decades ago, and I’ve stayed on the cutting edge since. Now, the intersection of generative AI and CGI image creation is the next wave,” he commented in a media release from Stability.AI.

    Filmmakers supplement the live action reality that they shoot with two kinds of effects: special effects (SFX) and visual effects (VFX). They come at two different stages of film production. During the shoot, SFX are all the physical effects used to create spectacle – explosions, blood squibs, vehicle crashes, prosthetics, mechanical movement of sets.

    During postproduction, VFX are the digital systems that add new elements to live-action filmed images – computer-generated imagery (CGI), compositing, motion capture rendering. They also combine separately shot images together.

    James Cameron says the intersection of generative AI and CGI image creation is the ‘next wave’ in VFX.
    Paul Smith-Featureflash / Shutterstock

    A recent development of film technology, Virtual Production, has brought some VFX techniques into the film shoot. This process uses what are known as “games engines” – a technology developed for the creation of video games. Actors are filmed in front of sophisticated LED walls, which screen dynamic, pre-produced virtual worlds around the performer.

    The real-world physicality of SFX means that artificial intelligence will have very limited impact here. It is in VFX where AI may have a transformative effect. I’ll be talking about the subject of deepfakes and AI in film at a public lecture on October 30, 2024: ‘Deepfakes and AI in film and media: seeing is not believing’.

    We are also investigating the subject through the Synthetic Media Research Network, a group that I co-lead which brings together film creatives, academic researchers and AI developers. I spoke to a member of this collective, Christian Darkin, a VFX artist who now works as Head of Creative AI for Deep Fusion Films.

    He sees the impact of generative AI on VFX as creating infinite choice in post-production. In future, filming the actors will be just the beginning. “You’ll put in the background later, you’ll change the camera angles, you’ll change the expressions, you’ll ramp up the emotion in the acting, you’ll change the voices, the costumes, the people’s faces, everything,” Christian told me.

    One key motive for the film industry’s incorporation of AI into VFX is simple: the expense of traditional VFX. If you have watched the end credits of a blockbuster movie, you’ll have seen the number of VFX technicians that they employ. Generative AI offers a cheaper way to achieve spectacular screen images, potentially with no loss of quality.

    The implication is that a lot of VFX technicians will lose their jobs as a result. However, in conversations that I have had with people working in these roles there’s a sense that, being highly skilled and technologically savvy, they will probably move into new roles in emerging areas of tech.

    The ethics of AI technology

    Media creatives are now presented with a huge selection of generative AI Tools that offer new ways of creating images, text, voices and music. However, a key problem related to the technology still needs to be addressed: have these AI tools been created ethically?

    Each generative AI tool, from ChatGPT to Midjourney to Runway, rests on a foundation model that has been exposed to vast amounts of data, often from the internet, in order to help it improve at what it does. This process is called “training”.

    AI developers build huge reservoirs of training data by using “crawlers”, bots that scour the internet for useful material and download trillions of files for their own use. This can include books, music, images, the spoken word and videos, created by artists who retain copyright over their material.

    Stability.ai has been involved in a legal action over copyright in the UK courts. Getty Images, holder of a huge collection of pictures and photographs, is currently suing the company.

    A former executive at Stability.ai, Ed Newton-Rex, resigned in November 2023 over the company scraping for creative content to train the model, without payment and claiming it is “fair use”.

    Perhaps Cameron thinks that the AI developers will win the court cases against them and continue their technological trajectory. I asked Stability.ai if, before Cameron joined the company, they had scraped any of his creative material from the internet to use as training data for their foundation models – and did they ask his permission?

    Their response was: “We’re not able to comment on the source of Stability
    AI’s training data.”

    Cameron’s Terminator films warned about the potential catastrophic effects of rogue AI. Yet the director now clearly thinks that he is now sitting on a winning horse.

    Dominic Lees receives funding from the AHRC Impact Acceleration Account (University of Reading).

    – ref. AI could transform film visual effects. But first, the technology needs to address copyright debate – https://theconversation.com/ai-could-transform-film-visual-effects-but-first-the-technology-needs-to-address-copyright-debate-240348

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: People around the world are using courts to question whether climate policies are fair – new study

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Annalisa Savaresi, Senior Lecturer, Environmental Law, University of Stirling

    Coal workers suing their government over job losses. Indigenous people using the courts to block wind farms or anti-deforestation policies that violate their cultural rights. What these cases have in common is they challenge the fairness of climate policies and projects themselves.

    Our new study, carried out with researchers from 16 universities and published in Nature Sustainability, finds that cases like these are increasingly being filed all over the world.

    We coined the term “just transition litigation” to describe these cases. This term captures a focus on ensuring that climate action balances the transition to a low-carbon economy with social justice and the protection of vulnerable communities.

    This phenomenon must be kept distinct from that of climate litigation, which tends to focus on holding governments and companies accountable for failing to reduce emissions or adapt to climate change.

    Our research began in 2020, when we started noticing a growing number of cases that didn’t fit the conventional model of climate litigation. For example, in Chile, union workers sued the government, arguing that they had been excluded from discussions regarding the phase-out of coal plants. The Chilean Supreme Court ruled in favour of the workers, emphasising that a just transition strategy — one that includes consultation with affected communities — is essential for achieving carbon neutrality.

    Similarly, in Norway, the Sami Indigenous people successfully challenged wind farm licenses, which the country’s Supreme Court found to have violated their cultural rights to herd reindeer. In Colombia, Indigenous people argued that projects aimed at reducing deforestation on their land violated their rights to self-determination and cultural integrity.



    Read more:
    Reindeer: ancient migration routes disrupted by roads, dams – and now wind farms

    In pursuit of justice

    Just transition litigation seeks to ensure that the shift toward a greener economy is fair and inclusive, particularly for those who may be disadvantaged by the rapid changes it brings. The applicants in these cases often include regular workers, Indigenous people, women, children, minorities and other groups who are typically underrepresented in legislative and decision-making processes. (Our concept of just transition litigation excludes lawsuits brought by corporations seeking to protect their own interests at the expense of broader societal fairness.)

    At the core of this litigation is the pursuit of justice. As countries shift to low-carbon economies, these policies inevitably produce both winners and losers. Oil and gas workers lose their jobs. Indigenous people are displaced or see the world around them changed by new wind or solar farms. All these people lament being treated unjustly.

    To ensure widespread support for climate policies, their grievances should not be dismissed as mere nimbyism. Rather, they should be recognised as carrying precious insights into the fairness, equity, and social impacts of climate policies and projects.

    The litigation we looked at calls upon courts to assess climate action against various different legal frameworks, ranging from constitutional and human rights law to corporate accountability standards. Some lawsuits use arguments of distributive justice, which focus on the allocation of resources and burdens. Some look at procedural justice, such as inclusive decision-making. Others want what is termed recognition justice, which focuses on respect for marginalised groups.

    Why this matters

    All this reflects a growing recognition that climate action may come at a cost to certain groups, especially those already on the margins of society. It also underscores the need to address the social justice of climate action and ensure it does not make the world even less equal.

    The core issue is that, while much attention is given to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, less emphasis has been placed on ensuring we do so equitably. This is especially the case at a time when governments in the EU , the UK and the US are announcing plans to cut the red tape and expedite the transition.

    As more communities turn to courts to seek justice, our study highlights an urgent need for policymakers to embrace inclusive, transparent and equitable processes. Decisions over who owns land, or what jobs people can do, should involve those most affected. Ensuring that climate policies are fair and just will not only protect vulnerable groups but also foster broader public support.


    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get our award-winning weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Joana Setzer receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Foundation for International Law for the Environment, and the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment

    Annalisa Savaresi 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.

    – ref. People around the world are using courts to question whether climate policies are fair – new study – https://theconversation.com/people-around-the-world-are-using-courts-to-question-whether-climate-policies-are-fair-new-study-241093

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Horrifying black sows and ghostly apparitions: how the magic and mystery of Wales come alive in winter

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mari Ellis Dunning, Associate Lecturer at the School of Languages and Literature and PhD Candidate, Aberystwyth University

    Would you dare let the Mari Lwyd in to your home? Bob Pool/Shutterstock

    For centuries, midway between the autumn equinox and winter solstice, the Welsh people have celebrated Calan Gaeaf on November 1. Nos Galan Gaeaf or “the evening before the first day of winter”, falls a day before, which the western world now recognises as Halloween.

    A time of year filled with monsters and ghouls, here are five spooky winter customs and beliefs unique to Wales and its people.

    1. Hwch Ddu Gwta

    On Nos Galan Gaeaf, the horrifying hwch ddu gwta, or “tailess black sow”, would make its annual appearance. Usually a man draped in cloth or animal hide rising from dwindling fire embers, the hwch ddu would chase the village children home.

    As the fire died and the children anticipated the materialisation of the black sow, they would often chant a spooky verse, like: “Adref, adref am y cynta’, Hwch Ddu Gwta a gipio’r ola,” (“Home, home, at once, the tailess black sow shall snatch the last one.”)

    Juliette Wood, scholar of Celtic folklore, says the macabre ritual has its roots in beliefs about the souls of the dead, people and animals. But on a practical level, it was probably just an effective way of getting children to bed and teaching them about the dangers of straying from the group.

    2. Fortune telling

    Fortune telling would have been rife at this time of year. Questions over who was next to be married, and who may meet an untimely death, were particularly popular. Women looking for love may have wandered around the bounds of a church, chanting “here is the sheath, where is the knife”, hoping to hear the name of the person they would marry as a response.

    In some parts of the country, stwmp naw rhyw, a mash made of nine different root vegetables with milk, butter, salt and pepper, would have a wedding ring placed at the centre. Whoever found the ring in their serving would be the next to be married.



    Read more:
    Why so few witches were executed in Wales in the middle ages

    Though these particular practices were performed at Calan Gaeaf, the widespread belief in fortune telling certainly wasn’t unique to this time of year, nor Wales, of course.

    But Wales does have a long history of reliance on wise-women and soothsayers. Many Welsh people even regularly turned to the church for charms and curses.

    3. Y Ladi Wen and other apparitions

    Regarded as a seasonal boundary, Nos Galan Gaeaf was considered the most ominous of the three spirit nights. The others were Nos Galan Mai, which heralds the beginning of summer, and Noswyl Ifan, known also as the summer solstice.

    As Nos Galan Gaeaf was a time to say goodbye to the recently deceased, the spirits were said to roam freely. Ghosts of the dead were believed to be seen at midnight on every stile, for example. And it makes sense that ghosts were to be found atop stiles. The fact that unbaptised children used to be buried at boundary fences suggests that these lines were liminal places and therefore the favourite perches of ghosts and apparitions.

    Perhaps the most well known of these ghosts was Y Ladi Wen (the White Lady). Y Ladi Wen was an apparition who could be found haunting locations where violent deaths had occurred. She was also said to warn children about their bad behaviour.

    4. Mari Lwyd

    The Mari Lwyd is traditionally a Christmas and New Year wassailing folk custom popular in south Wales. It dates back to the 18th century and involves a horse’s skull placed on a pole, draped in ribbons.

    A person hiding beneath a white sheet would carry the pole and snap the horse’s jaw open and shut. A procession led by Mari would go from house to house, where the group would sing verses asking to be let inside, prompting the hosts to improvise a rebuttal in verse.

    The Mari Lwyd’s weird and somewhat terrifying appearance has led to her appearing earlier in the season, and adopted in different parts of Wales and as far afield as the US and Australia.

    5. Gwrachod Powys

    Perhaps the most sinister and spooky custom is one that could be found in Powys, mid-Wales.

    Men would wander around in gangs wearing sheep skin, old ragged clothes and masks, drinking heavily and demanding gifts. They were called “gwrachod” (meaning hags or witches), probably in allusion to the Celtic belief that fiends, witches and faeries carried out their harmful and destructive tasks at night.



    Read more:
    Nos Galan Gaeaf: the traditional Welsh celebration being eclipsed by modern Halloween

    In the north, the name “gwrachod” was also used to describe men and women who went about their neighbours’ houses dressed in each other’s clothes and wearing masks.

    During this Christmas tradition, which could be seen as a combination of the Mari Lwyd and the gwrachod, members of the party would dance, cheer and perform “antic diversions” in exchange for good cheer, ale, apples and nuts.

    As October draws to a close and we creep towards the darkest days of midwinter, keep your wits about you. You might just end up face to face with a horrifying sow covered in fire ash, or confronted by a ghostly lady draped in white.

    Mari Ellis Dunning 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.

    – ref. Horrifying black sows and ghostly apparitions: how the magic and mystery of Wales come alive in winter – https://theconversation.com/horrifying-black-sows-and-ghostly-apparitions-how-the-magic-and-mystery-of-wales-come-alive-in-winter-238725

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Donald Trump is planning more trade barriers if he becomes president – but they didn’t work last time

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Johnson, Professor of Operations Management, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

    Trump campaigning in Pennsylvania in October 2024. Connor Brady Photography/Shutterstock

    Donald Trump loves tariffs. Making things more expensive if they come from foreign countries is at the heart of his bid for a second term in the White House.

    “Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,” he said in September 2024 at a town hall event in Michigan. And he has promised that if he becomes US president again, he will impose an across-the-board tariff of up to 20% on imports – and even 200% on cars from Mexico – in a bid to encourage American manufacturing.

    This is familiar ground for Trump, who showed he was fond of tariffs during his 2017-2021 presidency. Back then, he claimed his policy would address the trade imbalance with China, bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and raise revenues.

    Tariffs were then imposed on a wide range of goods, from imported steel and aluminium, to solar panels and washing machines.

    But did they work? Our research suggests not.

    In fact, we found that imposing tariffs actually made the US even more reliant on foreign suppliers – and failed to stimulate the domestic job market. They also raised costs for US consumers and provoked retaliatory tariffs from trading partners including China, the EU, Canada, Mexico, India and Turkey.

    China for example, responded by trebling tariffs on American cars. The EU filed a dispute with the World Trade Organisation and substantially raised tariffs on US exports including Harley Davidson motorcycles, jeans and bourbon whiskey.

    And Trump’s tariffs did not lead to a boost for US manufacturing either. After tariffs were imposed, our research shows US manufacturing supply chains evolved to have fewer suppliers – but it was often US firms that got forced out of those supply chains, not their competitors from overseas.

    We found that US manufacturers appeared to reduce their global reach, while actually increasing their dependence on a select few foreign companies – further evidence that Trump’s tariffs failed to produce the intended outcome.

    Our research also suggests that “reshoring” – bringing production and manufacturing back to a company’s home country – is not feasible without an established ecosystem of suppliers, intermediaries and customers. So introducing trade barriers without adequate support for the development of regional supply chains is unlikely to result in stronger local economies or more jobs.

    Essentially, for reshoring to work, the domestic economy needs to have the capacity to match demand. But the US (like the UK) has lost manufacturing capability in many areas, and rebuilding it is not going to happen overnight.

    Establishing a new industry requires buildings, skilled staff and supply chains – and a very specific approach is required for each industry. Getting the right skills and labour is often the trickiest part and may require immigration.

    However, even this may not work in the most complex industries. In the case of computer chips, for example, there are generous incentives in the US under the Biden administration to encourage chip manufacturing. Yet Taiwan still massively dominates the market, raising questions over whether the US could ever really compete.

    Bourbon whiskey exports, on the rocks?
    Smit/Shutterstock

    Other industries that can use automation and robotics in manufacturing (such as chemicals and transportation equipment) might be easier to reboot, but they may not generate the expected number and range of jobs. And often reshoring strategies involve higher investment in automation, machinery and robotics, rather than jobs. Trump’s focus may have been bringing back manufacturing jobs back to the US, but the truth is that many of these jobs may be gone forever.

    Trading places

    Overall then, imposing tariffs without adequate domestic support mechanisms in place has led to US manufacturers increasing their dependence on foreign suppliers and reducing their dependence on local ones.

    Yet tariffs are not exclusively favoured by Trump – or even right-wing politics. And there seems to be a fairly common view among politicians in the west that some tariffs can be an effective economic tool.

    Trade barriers against China for instance, have continued under Joe Biden’s administration (although he has somewhat relaxed tariffs for imports from the EU, Canada and Mexico). And recently, Canada imposed 100% tariffs on Chinese cars and 25% on Chinese steel and aluminium, while the EU has also imposed tariffs on Chinese goods.

    One of the few voices speaking out against tariffs belongs to former US vice-president Mike Pence. He recently proposed scrapping tariffs, saying they just made products more expensive for consumers – and failed to improve prosperity.

    His old boss clearly disagrees. And if Trump does win a second term in office, it seems certain that imposing international tariffs will be high up on his “to do” list. But if their impact is anything like the last time, they will be of little benefit to the US economy or the voters who depend upon it.

    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.

    – ref. Donald Trump is planning more trade barriers if he becomes president – but they didn’t work last time – https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-is-planning-more-trade-barriers-if-he-becomes-president-but-they-didnt-work-last-time-240964

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The gas crisis is not over yet

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Bradshaw, Professor of Global Energy, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick

    Oleksandr Filatov/Shutterstock

    Policy and luck have bought Europe a reprieve from the heights gas prices reached between the winters of 2022 and 2023, but prices are climbing again and the global gas market remains precariously balanced.

    Rising tensions in the Middle East could upend it. If conflict spills into the Persian Gulf, it could disrupt shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Qatar that equal 20% of global exports.

    We believe this winter will be the final act of the gas crisis. Here’s what we should expect.

    Dangerously underprepared

    The case for Britain to rapidly phase out natural gas in heating and power generation is overwhelming. It would unburden household bills of expensive gas imports and leave the country less vulnerable to energy supply crunches, while also cutting carbon emissions. Doing so will take time: as of today, the UK relies on gas for 37% of all energy consumption.

    British households in particular are perilously exposed to gas prices. Directly, because four-fifths of households use gas for space heating. Indirectly, because in the UK, electricity prices are set by the price of gas-fired generation. After a decade of failed home insulation and energy-efficiency policies, the UK still has some of the draughtiest homes in Europe. It simply takes more energy to heat British homes, which lose heat three times faster than European neighbours.

    Since the beginning of the recent crisis, the UK government has done little to change these facts. The end of the winter fuel payment to pensioners adds fresh concern. The Energy Crisis Commission recently found that the UK remains “dangerously underprepared” for a repeat of the gas price explosion of 2022-23.

    All told, the UK cannot be oblivious to developments in the global gas market.

    A crisis in the making

    Resurgent gas demand after the lifting of COVID restrictions led to a quadrupling of UK gas prices in 2021. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin throttled pipeline gas exports to Europe.

    Europe turned to its greatest source of flexible gas supply: seaborne LNG. A price war for cargoes followed. The spending power of European economies pulled shipments away from low-income countries in Asia, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which caused crippling blackouts and a pivot to coal-fired generation.

    Energy bills for an average household in the UK hit £4,279 in January 2023. The government protected consumers from the very worst at a cost of £51 billion in 2022-23, but the average household lost 8% of its budget to energy costs in 2022, rising to 18% for the poorest tenth of households. Roughly 2 million households on pre-payment meters were being cut off from their energy supply at least once a month at the height of the crisis.

    Clement winters, moderate gas demand in Asia and successful measures to curb European gas demand saw UK gas prices fall from mid-2023. But they are still relatively high – at 48% above the average in the three years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    One more winter

    Could things get worse? Back in 2022, experts spoke of a “three-winter crisis” because significant new LNG export capacity (primarily in the US and Qatar) wasn’t expected until 2025. That has held true, and supply and demand in the global LNG market remains taut.

    Several disturbances could destabilise this balance. The International Energy Agency expects that over 2024, global growth in gas demand will exceed the rate of growth in new LNG supply. Attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea by the Houthi militia in Yemen, in response to Israel’s invasion of Gaza, have rerouted LNG shipping routes. Cargoes that would have passed through the Suez Canal must now take the longer route around the Cape of Good Hope.

    At the end of 2024, a major five-year agreement governing the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine will expire, and there is no prospect of renewal. Russian gas supplies to Europe will fall by around 5% of the EU’s total gas imports, or 65% of all gas imports into Austria, Hungary and Slovakia.

    While Europe has been saved by mild winters over the last two years, this luck could break in 2024-25 according to some forecasts. Temperature – and the demand it creates for heating – will probably decide winter gas prices in Europe.

    Geopolitical blowback

    How might the worst-case scenario of conflict in the Persian Gulf happen?

    LNG is shipped by sea on large tankers.
    Wojciech Wrzesien/Shutterstock

    Israel’s escalating military assaults on Hezbollah since September 17 have coincided with a 17% rise in UK gas prices. After Iran’s missile and drone strikes against Israel on October 1, European gas prices hit a new high for the year. This saw three LNG tankers destined for Asia change course mid-journey and head for Europe.

    Israel has vowed retribution for the Iranian strike. Having obliterated Gaza and decapitated Hezbollah’s leadership, and with resolute material support from the US, Israel may now see Iran as vulnerable.

    A severe response by Israel, targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities or oil infrastructure, would further up the ante. Wishing to avoid direct conflict, Iran could decide to target not Israel, but the flow of oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz on which its western backers depend. Qatari LNG shipments through the strait account for 20% of global supply on their own.

    Any interruption would also block Iran’s oil exports, afflict Iran’s friends as much as its foes, and kill Iran’s current reconciliation with the Gulf states. It is unlikely, but one would hope that the warning signs in the global gas market would remind western decision-makers that the conflict in the Middle East can continue to blow back on them.


    Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

    Get our award-winning weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

    Michael Bradshaw receives funding from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) that is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). He also advises the government, thinktanks and companies on energy matters.

    Louis Fletcher receives funding from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), which is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

    – ref. The gas crisis is not over yet – https://theconversation.com/the-gas-crisis-is-not-over-yet-241538

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: ‘Nobody Wants This’ amps laughs about intermarriage in Judaism but intended humour hurts

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Celia E. Rothenberg, Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University

    Kristen Bell and Adam Brody star in ‘Nobody Wants This.’ (Netflix)

    Netflix’s new rom-com Nobody Wants This debuted with great success: it occupied the No. 1 spot on Netflix’s Top 10 list for two weeks. It has been praised by a range of critics for its humour, “millennial magic” and pitch-perfect casting.

    Nobody Wants This presents viewers with a mix of classic stereotypes of both Jewish women and men, and the contemporary issue of intermarriage — marriage of two partners who are members of different religions — in Jewish communities.

    It revolves around a young, ambitious rabbi, Noah (Adam Brody), who falls in love with a non-Jewish woman, Joanne (Kristen Bell).

    Joanne and her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) produce a podcast that features frank, spontaneous talk about sex and relationships, a discursive foil for Rabbi Noah’s carefully composed and tame sermons.

    The show is loosely inspired by creator Erin Foster’s own life as an agnostic woman who fell in love with her husband, Simon Tikhman, a Jewish man. Tikhman, although not a rabbi, wanted to marry a Jewish woman, leading Foster to convert to Judaism. Her conversion and involvement in her Jewish family led to the creation of Nobody Wants This.

    Foster has said she wanted to shed positive light on Jewish culture and her experiences of being brought into it.

    From my perspective as a scholar who has examined aspects of Jewish life and practice in North America, the problem is that Foster’s good intentions fall flat at best, and at worst, could hurt the very people Foster has joined.

    The character Joanne and her sister Morgan produce a podcast which features frank, spontaneous talk about sex and relationships.
    (Netflix)

    Stereotypes of women

    Quickly following the accolades, criticism of the show has particularly focused on its problematic stereotypes of Jewish women. Jessica Radloff wrote in Glamour that after watching two episodes she called her mom and said (speaking of Jewish women), “we come off as controlling, marriage-hungry women who want to plan dinner parties and alienate anyone who doesn’t share those same dreams.” Jessica Grose in the New York Times argues that nearly all the Jewish women in Nobody Wants This are “manipulative, spoiled and selfish.”

    Nobody Wants This reflects long-standing and popular Jewish stereotypes consistently featured in American films – the meddling matriarch, pampered princess and neurotic nebbish – stereotypes that have proven to be widely appealing and thus quite profitable.

    Rabbi Noah’s mother, Bina, is not only the meddling matriarch extreme version, but also a hypocrite who refuses to accept Joanne’s hostess gift when they first meet — a lovely charcuterie tray — because it contains pork (prosciutto). Joanne later discovers Bina secretly stuffing the prosciutto into her mouth.

    Noah’s ex-girlfriend, sister-in-law and their friends seem the epitome of pampered princesses, or JAPs (Jewish American Princesses) — one-dimensional characters who exclude Joanne from their social circle, often appearing overly concerned with jewelry or solely focused on husbands, children and social lives.

    The rabbi

    Foster has said the character of a weed-smoking Rabbi Noah defies stereotypes of a rabbi, yet he can equally be seen to echo the neurotic nebbish, an American Jewish man who is “emasculated, insecure, passive, … romantically obsessed with Gentile women.”

    While Rabbi Noah might be called “hot rabbi” at his Jewish summer camp by teen girls, he works to appease his mother’s demands, he can’t (really) play basketball and he won’t commit to his long-term Jewish girlfriend (who eventually finds his hidden engagement ring and gives it to herself).

    Foster has said these characters are “not, in my opinion, Jewish stereotypes. They’re comedic points of view,” and has also pointed to the show’s sensitive female characters, such as a female rabbi who welcomes Joanne. Present in the writer’s room, Foster noted, were Jewish women, including converts, as well as men with a variety of Jewish backgrounds.

    Rabbi Steve Leder, former senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles was also a consultant on the show.

    Trailer for ‘Nobody Wants This.’

    Perhaps there is some room for comedy here, but the timing is less than ideal. Antisemitism is at a new level of ferocity in the United States and around the world.

    Stereotypes, however potentially humorous, can create, affirm or increase prejudice and distorted understandings of Jews and Jewish life.

    Religious intermarriage

    And what of intermarriage, the seemingly most pressing issue standing between Rabbi Noah and Joanne?

    Is intermarriage so unimaginable, impractical and undesirable for rabbis and their congregants to navigate? There are rabbis who work within liberal streams of Judaism who are not only not opposed to intermarriage, but also in intermarriages themselves.

    Rabbi Gershon Winkler, a formerly Orthodox rabbi who left Orthodoxy and now identifies as independent, points to Jewish precedent for such marriages: the Biblical and Talmudic figures of Moses, Eliezer the High Priest, Joshua, Boaz and Rabbi Akiva who were all married to non-Jews.

    Intermarried rabbis exist within Humanist, Reform (Rabbi Noah’s most likely affiliation), Jewish Renewal and Reconstructionist Jewish movements, although not within Conservative and Orthodox streams.

    Statistics about intermarriage in the U.S. demonstrate quite a varied portrait of Jewish life: overall, 42 per cent of American Jewish adults have a non-Jewish spouse; among those who married after 2010, intermarriage rates reach 61 per cent. Of non-Orthodox Jews, 72 per cent are intermarried, while 98 per cent of Orthodox Jews report their spouse is Jewish.

    In real life, harmful stereotypes of Jews persist, while intermarriage in Jewish communities, lived by many couples and families in the U.S. and beyond, is a nuanced and rich reality reflecting many factors.

    Nobody Wants This makes for a successful and profitable rom-com that hurts some while others laugh.

    Celia E. Rothenberg 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.

    – ref. ‘Nobody Wants This’ amps laughs about intermarriage in Judaism but intended humour hurts – https://theconversation.com/nobody-wants-this-amps-laughs-about-intermarriage-in-judaism-but-intended-humour-hurts-241070

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What are you really eating? 1 in 5 seafood products in our study were mislabelled

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Matthew R. J. Morris, Associate Professor of Biology, Ambrose University

    If you eat seafood, you could be unknowingly consuming an endangered species without realizing it due to fish mislabelling. Mislabelling is a worldwide issue, and it occurs when the species of fish you think you’re buying is not the one you actually receive.

    Tracing fish from capture to table is logistically complex, as fish products often pass through multiple countries. Along the way, products can be misidentified as another species or intentionally renamed to make more profit.

    For instance, a cheap fish like tilapia may be given the name of a more expensive fish, like red snapper, or an endangered species might be passed off as a better-faring alternative.

    Seafood mislabelling not only threatens vulnerable marine populations, but makes it harder for people to make informed, ethical choices about the food they eat.

    Searching for mislabelling in Calgary

    To investigate this issue in Canada, our recent research paper examined mislabelling and ambiguous market names in invertebrate and finfish products — fish with fins, like cod, salmon and tuna — in Calgary between 2014 and 2020. This was the first study of its kind in Canada to compare shellfish to finfish.

    University students sampled 347 finfish product and 109 shellfish — including shrimp, octopus and oysters — from Calgary restaurants and grocery stores. These samples were then genetically tested using a species-specific marker called a DNA barcode.

    In Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency maintains a Fish List that provides the acceptable common names for the labelling of fish in Canada.

    A seafood product was considered mislabelled if it was sold using a name not found on the Fish List for the DNA-identified species. For instance, there is only one species that can be sold under the name salmon: Atlantic salmon. If sockeye salmon was sold as salmon without any other qualifier, it was considered mislabelled.

    Seafood mislabelling not only threatens vulnerable marine populations, but makes it harder for people to make informed, ethical choices about the food they eat.
    (Shutterstock)

    1 in 5 seafood products were mislabelled

    We discovered that mislabelling is running rampant in Calgary, and that certain product names are more likely to hide species of conservation concern. The result: one in five finfish, and one in five shellfish, were not as advertised. These results fell within the predicted global rates of seafood mislabelling.

    It was not difficult for students to stumble upon examples of mislabelling. Notable findings include:

    • 100 per cent of snapper and red snapper products were mislabelled. They were either tilapia (79 per cent) or a species of rockfish or snapper that cannot be sold under those names (21 per cent).
    • Nine salmon products were determined to be rainbow trout, which are cheaper.
    • Three Pacific cod were determined to be Atlantic cod, which are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
    • Two eel products were determined to be the critically endangered European eel.
    • Cuttlefish, squid and octopus were often mislabelled as one another.

    Some products, however, fared better than others. All Atlantic salmon, basa, halibut, mackerel, sockeye salmon and Pacific white shrimp were as advertised.

    Mislabelling hurts

    Calgary’s mislabelled seafoods has far-reaching and well-documented implications for public health, conservation and the economy.

    For instance, one student purchased “white tuna” at an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet that turned out to be escolar. Escolar is sometimes called the “laxative of the sea” for the effects its fatty acids can have on digestion. People have landed in the hospital because of this fish.

    Several examples of mislabelling involved substituting an expensive product for a cheaper species: tilapia for snapper, rainbow trout for Atlantic salmon. While companies in places like Miami and Mississippi have faced fines for such fraudulent practices, the global nature of fisheries makes legal action difficult.



    Read more:
    Confusion at the fish counter: How to eat fish responsibly

    European eel are critically endangered, yet students found this species twice in the Calgary market. There is a global black market for European eel and a Canadian company was fined in 2021 for illegally importing them.

    Although red snapper is faring poorly in the wild, replacing it with tilapia is not helping snapper conservation. Instead it provides an illusion of snapper abundance.

    The situation is even murkier when it comes to invertebrates like shrimp, squid and octopus. Unfortunately, so little is known about their conservation status that we couldn’t assess their risks.

    The study found that 100 per cent of snapper and red snapper products were mislabelled.
    (Shutterstock)

    What you can do

    If you eat seafood, there is a chance you could be misled as a consumer and end up eating threatened species. You can reduce these possibilities by doing the following:

    1. Purchase whole, head-on finfish whenever possible, as they are harder to mislabel.

    2. Purchase seafood products that are certified sustainable, as these have been shown to have lower rates of mislabelling.

    3. Purchase products that clearly name the exact species being purchased.

    4. Write to your MPs in support for laws seeking to trace fish from boat to table — Canada has improved its regulations, but it can do better.

    This will require that you brush up on your fish identification skills, but it’s a small price to pay for protecting our fish, saving on groceries and limiting unexpected and urgent trips to the restroom.

    Ambiguous names hide protected species

    To help vendors, the Fish List permits the use of ambiguous names, meaning the same name can be applied to multiple species. Snapper could refer to 96 different species, tuna to 14, cod to two. This helps vendors when related species are difficult to tell apart and is expected to reduce mislabelling.

    We noticed that seafood products with ambiguous names were just as likely to be mislabelled as those with precise names. We wondered: which is worse for conservation, mislabelling or ambiguous names? After all, tuna could legally include yellowfin tuna (least concern) or southern bluefin tuna (endangered).

    A statistical test found that ambiguous names were more important than mislabelling in hiding threatened species. This is a good thing, because it suggests there is a way consumers can help.

    Just as you wouldn’t go to a restaurant and order a “mammal sandwich,” why settle for “fish and chips?” If we as consumers can vote with our wallets by buying Pacific cod instead of cod, or yellowfin tuna instead of tuna, we can be more confident that we aren’t eating the ocean’s equivalent of the giant panda.

    Matthew R. J. Morris received funding from Internationalization at Home in Science Education (i@Home) for this research.

    – ref. What are you really eating? 1 in 5 seafood products in our study were mislabelled – https://theconversation.com/what-are-you-really-eating-1-in-5-seafood-products-in-our-study-were-mislabelled-240891

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The best government money can buy? How New Zealanders feel about political party funding

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mona Krewel, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

    Getty Images

    Companies and shareholders associated with the government’s fast-track projects gave more than $500,000 in donations to National, ACT and New Zealand First, according to a recent analysis by RNZ.

    While it is impossible to say whether these companies were listed for consideration because of their donations, allegations of possible “undue influence” are inevitably made.

    New Zealand’s reputation as a country with little to no corruption owes nothing to our lack of rigour in the regulation of party donations. As Philippa Yasbek, the author of a report by the Helen Clark Foundation calling for tougher rules to combat the risk of political corruption, said:

    Our political integrity and honesty have largely evolved from social norms over many decades. Politicians by and large knew the conduct that was expected of them by New Zealand society. Sadly, today, we’re naive to think that’s enough.

    Some political parties seem to take little heed of the existing rules. The Electoral Commission has issued warnings to several parties about large donations being declared too late.

    The Independent Electoral Review released early this year recommended parties give up access to corporate donations in exchange for greater public funding. Other recommendations included a cap on political donations set at NZ$30,000, and a much lower threshold for disclosing donors’ names.

    As one might expect, the political parties disagree about how funding should be regulated, as their main income sources vary. Labour approves of the proposals, although analysis indicates its revenue streams would suffer most if such policies were in place.

    ACT is strongly opposed to the principle of public funding, although there are already significant public funds supporting parliament and party advertising during election campaigns.

    What New Zealanders think

    But what about public opinion? Do people believe large donors have “undue influence”?

    The latest New Zealand Election Study, conducted after the 2023 election, included a module of questions that give insights into New Zealanders’ attitudes to potential party funding reforms. The study is a representative sample of nearly 2,000 eligible voters.

    What stands out? Many people answered “don’t know” to the questions – which is quite reasonable. The laws that regulate political party activity in New Zealand are complex and of little relevance to most.

    Nonetheless, some clear messages emerge. In general, a near majority of people were concerned about the influence of “big interests”. When asked if they agreed with the statement “The New Zealand government is largely run by a few big interests”, 45% agreed and 27% disagreed.

    Drilling deeper into the data, about 35% of business owners agreed, compared to just under half of people who don’t own a business.

    Asked whether they believed donors exert “undue influence” on politicians, 43% agreed. Only 18% disagreed. Almost 40% had no opinion on this topic and either didn’t know or took a neutral position.

    While Labour, Green and NZ First voters leaned heavily to “undue influence”, National and ACT voters were evenly divided between “undue” and “not undue”.

    National voters also strongly opted for “don’t know”. About a third of business owners perceived undue influence, compared with about 45% of non-owners.

    The 2023 Election Study also included a question on the recommendation made by the Electoral Review that corporate groups and trade unions should be prohibited from making direct donations to political parties: 53% supported this change, while only 17% opposed it.

    The Independent Electoral Review also recommended a limit of $30,000 for any individual donation: 57% agreed, compared to 14% who disagreed. While support was strongest on the left and among New Zealand First voters, significant numbers of National and ACT voters also agreed (47% and 44%).

    Finally, we asked for people’s views on anonymity of “promoter donations”. Promoters are people or groups registered to advertise during an election campaign for an issue, or for or against a political party. They can collect anonymous donations that are not subject to the same disclosure requirements as parties.

    Only 14% of respondents believed in continued promoter donation anonymity on the basis of privacy, and 47% preferred greater transparency. Breaking this down by party vote, some National and ACT voters prefer transparency over privacy, although more were either neutral or answered “don’t know”.

    Support for reform

    These results show public perceptions of undue influence by donors are widespread. While these perceptions are strongest on the left, they also penetrate deeply into groups who vote for the parties on the right, and into the business community.

    And while the political parties have conflicts of interest, there is significant support for the recommendations of the Independent Electoral review across party lines among the New Zealand public, and inside the business community.

    Assuming political parties in a democracy should be responsive to voters’ concerns and demands, this should give them food for thought when it comes to potential party funding reform.

    This article is based on our submission to the Justice Select Committee inquiry into the 2023 general election.

    The New Zealand Election Study (NZES) has been funded by Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, the New Zealand Electoral Commission, the Gama Foundation, and the University of Auckland.

    – ref. The best government money can buy? How New Zealanders feel about political party funding – https://theconversation.com/the-best-government-money-can-buy-how-new-zealanders-feel-about-political-party-funding-241881

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ‘They do not respect our land. They do not respect our people’. Brazil’s traditional people take on BHP in one of the world’s biggest class actions

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ebony Birchall, Lecturer, Law School, Macquarie University

    Australian mining giant BHP is at the centre of one of the world’s largest class actions, the trial for which started this week in London.

    The Fundão Dam in Mariana, Brazil, co-owned by BHP, collapsed in 2015 spilling a gigantic wave of toxic mud across 700 kilometres of land. Nineteen people were killed, villages and livestock wiped out, vast areas of land rendered uninhabitable and rivers and water supplies contaminated.

    Corporate accountability

    The class action has renewed questions about the responsibilities multibillion-dollar corporations have to local communities.

    Leaders of the traditional people groups impacted by the disaster visited Australia with their lawyer Tom Goodhead from international legal firm Pogust Goodhead to raise awareness of the case two weeks ago.

    Goodhead told a public forum at Macquarie University this was a case of corporate negligence and putting profit before safety. He said the operators were warned of the risk of dam collapse and continued to push operations beyond what was safe.

    The class action is brought on behalf of more than 600,000 claimants. The trial is expected to run for 12 weeks and will be heard in the UK, because this is where BHP was headquartered at the time of the disaster.

    The UK courts will apply the Brazilian laws, which say environmental polluters must pay for the damage they cause.

    Can BHP fix this?

    The claimants’ lawyers say the case is valued at more than A$68.8 billion. The figure is based on an estimation of the impact of the disaster on land, culture and sacred places, as well as some form of recompense for the lost lives.

    Maycon Krenak, one of the Krenak chiefs, explained:

    [the] river has always been there for us to guarantee our livelihoods. It is a sacred space for us. The river is where we carry out our sacred practices. That’s where we sing, where we dance, where we gather. The new leaders, [our] children, have to learn how to swim in a water tank of a thousand litres.

    BHP is reported as saying its Renova Foundation, established in 2016, has spent more than A$11.5 billion to compensate victims and remediate the environment.

    But Thatiele Monic, president of the Vila Santa Efigênia and Adjacências Quilombola Association said the victims don’t trust the foundation.

    In the same way that the mining company invades our land, the Renova Foundation also is invading our space and our territories. They do not respect our land. They do not respect our people, and they are creating more and more conflict. So that people are essentially giving up pursuing this.

    Poor human rights record

    Australian corporations operating overseas have a poor record on human rights.

    Two weeks ago, a preliminary report of the Panguna Mine Legacy Impact Assessment uncovered human rights violations, including risks to life, at Rio Tinto’s abandoned Panguna mine in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

    The gold and copper mine triggered a brutal civil war between 1988 and 1998. Despite decades passing since the mine was decommissioned, the recent report confirms the mine continues to pose risks to life and safety due to the collapsing mine and ongoing contamination down rivers and into new areas.

    Australian mining corporations have also been linked to death and destruction in their operations in Africa.

    Corporate activities within Australia have impacted our own Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. For example, Rio Tinto’s explosion at Juukan Gorge destroyed sites of cultural significance dating more than 46,000 years.

    Where Australia stands

    The Australian government has endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises both of which outline corporations’ human rights obligations.

    The UNGPs say states should set out clearly the expectation that corporations in their jurisdiction respect human rights in all their operations – even those occurring overseas.

    The Human Rights Law Centre found in a 2018 report on this topic that the Australian government was not doing enough to hold corporations to account.

    It found Australian corporations operating overseas did so with impunity. Efforts to seek justice locally is often thwarted by corruption, lack of resources or ineffective legal process. At the same time, attempts by overseas communities to take legal action in Australian courts face enormous hurdles and rarely succeed.

    This is why cases like the class action for claimants in Mariana are crucial for corporate accountability.

    In my 2023 report with colleagues Surya Deva and Justine Nolan, we found this kind of litigation can raise awareness, facilitate broader industry developments and shape laws and policy.

    Our report also found litigation needs to be supported by strong regulatory responses from governments, and complementary advocacy like shareholder or consumer engagement.

    Cost of litigation

    Litigation comes with significant risks to victims and their allies.

    In a controversial development for corporate accountability in Australia, oil and gas giant Santos is using legal processes to challenge environmental groups who supported traditional owners opposing their Barossa gas project. Santos’ tactics, if allowed to continue, could limit public interest litigation in the future.

    Thatiele Monic ended her speech at the Macquarie University event with a question worth repeating

    This has happened in Brazil, but it has happened in many other places, and if we don’t do anything about it, and we don’t talk about it, it will continue to happen in many more other places. This is not the future I want for myself and for my people. I’d like to know. What future do you want for yourselves?

    Ebony Birchall is affiliated with Macquarie University’s B&HR Access to Justice Lab.

    – ref. ‘They do not respect our land. They do not respect our people’. Brazil’s traditional people take on BHP in one of the world’s biggest class actions – https://theconversation.com/they-do-not-respect-our-land-they-do-not-respect-our-people-brazils-traditional-people-take-on-bhp-in-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-class-actions-241777

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: What’s the difference between fusion and fission? A nuclear physicist explains

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Hole, Professor, Mathematical Sciences Institute and School of Computing, Australian National University

    Quality Stock Arts/Shutterstock

    Globally, nuclear power accounts for roughly 10% of electricity generation. In some countries, such as France, this figure is nearly 70%.

    Big tech companies such as Google are also turning to nuclear power to meet the huge power demands of their data centres.

    The source of all nuclear power is the binding energy of an atom. The energy stored in an atom can be released in two main ways: fission or fusion. Fission involves splitting big heavy atoms into smaller, lighter ones. Fusion involves combining little atoms together into bigger ones.

    Both processes release a lot of energy. For example, one nuclear fission decay of U235, an isotope of uranium typically used as the fuel in most power plants, produces more than 6 million times the energy per single chemical reaction of the purest coal. This means they are great processes for generating power.

    What is fission?

    Fission is the process behind every nuclear power plant in operation today. It occurs when a tiny subatomic particle called a neutron is slammed into an uranium atom, splitting it. This releases more neutrons, which continue colliding with other atoms, setting off a nuclear chain reaction. This in turn releases a tremendous amount of energy.

    To convert this energy to electricity a heat exchanger is installed, which turns water to steam, driving a turbine to produce power.

    The fission reaction can be controlled by suppressing the supply of neutrons. This is achieved by inserting “control rods” which soak up neutrons. Historically, nuclear accidents such as Chernobyl have occurred when the control rods fail to engage and quench the neutron supply, and/or coolant circulation fails.

    So called “third generation” designs improve on early designs by incorporating passive or inherent safety features which require no active controls or human intervention to avoid accidents in the event of malfunction. These features may rely on pressure differentials, gravity, natural convection, or the natural response of materials to high temperatures.

    The first third generation reactors were the Kashiwazaki 6 and 7 advanced boiling water reactors in Japan.

    The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station in Japan.
    Tokyo Electric Power Co, CC BY-SA

    An unresolved challenge for fission is that the byproducts of the reaction are radioactive for a long time, in the order of thousands of years. If reprocessed, the fuel source and waste can also be used to make a nuclear weapon.

    Fission power is a demonstrated technology. It is also scalable from large scale (the largest is the 7.97 gigawatt Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant in Japan) through to small-to-medium reactors that produce around 150 megawatts of electricity, as used on a ship or nuclear submarine. These are the reactors that will power Australia’s eight nuclear submarines promised as part of a trilateral security partnership with the United Kingdom and the United States.

    What is fusion?

    Fusion is the process that powers the Sun and stars. It is the opposite process to fission. It occurs when atoms are fused together.

    The easiest reaction to initiate in the laboratory is the fusion of isotopes of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. Per unit mass, the reaction produces 4 times more energy than the fission of U235.

    The fuel ion deuterium is incredibly abundant on Earth and in the universe. Tritium is radioactive with a half-life of 12 years, so is very rare on Earth. The universe is 13.8 billion years old; the only isotopes of light nuclei (hydrogen, helium and lithium) found in nature are those that are stable on those time scales.

    In a fusion power plant, tritium would be manufactured using a “lithium blanket”. This is a solid lithium wall in which fusion neutrons slow and ultimately react to form tritium.

    However, at present it’s very difficult for scientists to create a fusion reaction outside of the laboratory. That’s because it requires incredibly hot conditions to fuse: the optimal conditions are 150 million degrees Celsius.

    Fusion is the process that powers the Sun.
    SOHO (ESA & NASA)

    At these temperatures the fuel ions exist in the plasma state, where electrons and (nuclear) ions are dissociated. The byproduct of this process isn’t radioactive; rather, it’s helium, an inert gas.

    The leading technology path to demonstrate sustained fusion is called “toroidal magnetic confinement”. This is when the plasma is confined at extreme temperatures in a very large doughnut-shaped magnetic bottle.

    Unlike fission, this technology path requires continuous external heating to reach fusion conditions and a strong confining field. Terminate either and the reaction stops. The challenge is not uncontrolled meltdown, but getting the reaction to occur at all.

    A major unresolved challenge for toroidal magnetic confinement fusion, which attracts the majority of research interest, is the demonstration of a burning self-heated plasma. This is when the heating power produced by the reaction itself is primary. This is the objective of the publicly funded multi-national ITER project, the world’s largest fusion experiment, and the privately funded SPARC experiment at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    However, the consensus of much of the scientific community is that fusion will not be commercially viable until at least 2050.

    A climate solution?

    I am often asked if nuclear power could save Earth from climate change. I have many colleagues in climate science, and indeed my late wife was a high-profile climate scientist.

    The science is clear: it is too late to stop climate change. The world needs to do everything it can to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and minimise catastrophic damage, and it needs to have done it decades ago.

    For the planet, fission is part of that global solution, together with widespread rollout and adoption of renewable sources of power such as wind and solar.

    On a longer time scale, one hopes that fusion might replace fission. The fuel supply is much larger and ubiquitously distributed, the waste problem is orders of magnitude smaller in volume and timescale, and the technology cannot be weaponised.

    Matthew Hole receives funding from the Australian government through the Australian Research Council and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), and the Simons Foundation. He is also affiliated with ANSTO, the ITER Organisation as an ITER Science Fellow, and is Chair of the Australian ITER Forum.

    – ref. What’s the difference between fusion and fission? A nuclear physicist explains – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-difference-between-fusion-and-fission-a-nuclear-physicist-explains-240438

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Labor looks set for a resounding defeat in Queensland. But the state’s elections have long thrown up surprises

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pandanus Petter, Research Fellow School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University

    On Saturday October 26, Queensland Premier Steven Miles’ Labor is vying for a fourth consecutive term in government, up against David Crisafulli’s Liberal National Party (LNP).

    Although Labor won the previous election in 2020 comfortably, opinion polls in the lead up to this election have consistently pointed to an LNP win.

    Recent Queensland history shows voters can produce dramatic election results, such as the 2012 wipeout of Labor, and its equally dramatic return to government in 2015. With no upper house to provide a check on government power, whoever wins will likely have a relatively free hand to enact their policy agenda.

    A continuing trend of increased early voting means many Queenslanders have already made their judgement. But what have been the big issues dominating the campaign, and what priorities will the next government be working toward?

    The usual suspects

    The big issues of concern to voters in Queensland are likely familiar to people in other states:

    • cost of living

    • housing

    • crime

    • health

    • to a lesser extent, economic management.

    However, the two main parties have different emphases and approaches.

    A campaign on crime and crises

    The LNP is focused on attacking Labor’s record. Crisafulli has largely tried to keep the party firmly on-message, highlighting what they describe as “crises” in housing, youth crime, cost of living, health and government integrity for at least the last year.

    The extent of youth crime, what causes it and what solves it are a matter of debate.

    But the LNP has been keen to present themselves as proposing tougher solutions than their opponents. They’ve made promises to change youth sentencing laws to deter offenders under the slogan “adult crime, adult time”.

    They’ve also promised to provide “tough love” to at-risk youth with mandatory re-training camps.

    On other issues, they’ve been promising more efficient health services, incentives to home ownership and greater government transparency.

    However, they’ve been careful to try to avoid more controversial issues and present a “small target” on economic management. Interestingly, the LNP has largely confirmed they’ll adopt many of Labor’s budgetary priorities on cost of living relief.

    Despite this, a last minute emphasis on the possible reversal of legislation decriminalising abortion and voluntary assisted dying has threatened to derail their careful messaging.

    Reverting to old ways, the LNP is backing an “indefinite” commitment to coal fired power plants and dumping a controversial proposed hydroelectric dam.

    Crisafulli has walked back earlier support for Treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

    If they win government, the LNP would also likely shut down the freshly minted Truth Telling and Healing Inquiry, claiming they will focus on “practical” help for Indigenous communities instead.

    They’re also promising electoral reform with a longstanding commitment to remove “corrupt” compulsory preferential voting and the reversal of laws that banned property developer donations.

    Progressive balancing act

    Steven Miles took over from Annastacia Palaszczuk as Labor leader and premier less than a year ago.

    Labor has also been focused on using incumbency to address key issues, while trying to stake out a position as a force for progressive change.

    They have warned of the potential “hidden” dangers of the LNP, pointing to unpopular cuts to the civil service last time the LNP governed.

    On cost of living, they’ve given direct relief to households, with 50 cent fares for public transport, $1000 household energy rebates and promised free lunches for public school students.

    They have been keen to say this is a dividend from increased royalties charged to coal mining companies.

    On housing, they have continued their focus on addressing the undersupply of social and affordable housing alongside modest reforms to renters’ rights (although ruling out any caps on prices).

    They’re promising a new era of state intervention to improve competition in petrol and energy retail.

    On crime, Labor has followed the LNP’s lead in some matters, such as investing in extra police resources. They’ve also controversially ignored the Human Rights Act to keep youth imprisoned while emphasising diversion over punishment.

    Of more comfort to progressive voters, they have positioned themselves as firmly committed to keeping their abortion and voluntary assisted dying legislation intact. Labor will also continue the transition to renewable energy.

    Disenchantment with the major parties

    Despite their efforts, or perhaps because of Crisafulli’s disciplined messaging, it doesn’t look as if voters have been swayed to keep the government. There’s a clear mood for change.

    However, it should be noted this isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of Crisafulli or the LNP’s whole agenda, as opinion polls show neither is particularly popular.

    After trailing for most of the campaign, Miles is still behind, but has made up a lot of ground in the past week.

    Whoever wins, they will have to govern in an era when more people are disenchanted with the mainstream parties.

    Among those vying to hold or increase their crossbench seats in regional Queensland are the socially conservative Katter’s Australian Party, as well as some popular local mayors running as independents.

    Meanwhile, the Greens are pushing to claim more Brisbane seats.

    The minor parties are campaigning hard on persistent problems in housing, cost of living, health and crime. These are all hard to solve quickly and not necessarily helped by rushed responses.

    The next parliament will have to find a way to represent a state divided in public opinion between those in the city and those in regional areas across all of the key issues.

    Pandanus Petter receives funding from the Australian Research Council to study public opinion polling, democratic responsiveness and the idea of ‘the Fair Go’ in public policy.

    – ref. Labor looks set for a resounding defeat in Queensland. But the state’s elections have long thrown up surprises – https://theconversation.com/labor-looks-set-for-a-resounding-defeat-in-queensland-but-the-states-elections-have-long-thrown-up-surprises-241774

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Are cats good for our health?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hazel, Associate Professor, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide

    Yerlin Matu/Unsplash

    Cats have lived with humans for thousands of years. And long before cat memes and viral TikToks took over the internet, they’ve been comforting us with their purrs and making us laugh with their weird antics.

    But what does the research say – are cats good for us?

    Living with a cat can have a profound – and sometimes surprising – effect on our physical and mental health. Still, living with cats is not without risks.

    Part of the family

    You may have heard cats don’t have owners, they have “staff”. In fact, multiple studies show the humans who live with them feel more like beloved relatives.

    In a study of 1,800 Dutch cat owners, half said their cat was family. One in three viewed their cat as a child or best friend and found them loyal, supportive and empathetic.

    Another US study developed a “family bondedness” scale and found cats were just as important a part of families as dogs.



    Read more:
    Is owning a dog good for your health?

    Many cats would choose human interaction over food or toys. And they can distinguish when we are talking to them (rather than another human).

    In fact we’ve adapted to each other. Cats are more likely to approach human strangers who first give a “kitty kiss” – narrowing your eyes and blinking slowly. And research suggests cats have developed specific meows that tune into our nurturing instincts.

    What does this close relationship mean for health outcomes?

    Cats slow blink when they’re feeling relaxed.
    beton studio/Shutterstock

    A sense of purpose

    Owning a pet is associated with less social isolation. And some cat owners say “providing for the cat” increases their feelings of enjoyment and sense of purpose.

    But the benefits of the relationship may depend on how you relate to your cat.

    One study looked at different relationship styles between humans and cats, including “remote”, “casual” and “co-dependent”. It found people whose relationship with their cat was co-dependent or like a friend had a higher emotional connection to their pet.

    Links to heart health

    People who own – or have owned – a cat have a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases such as stroke or heart disease. This result has been repeated in several studies.

    However a problem interpreting population studies is they only tell us about an association. This means while people with cats have lower risk of dying from cardiovascular diseases, we can’t say for sure cats are the cause.

    People who own a cat – or have in the past – are at lower risk of stroke and heart disease.
    Ruth McHugh-Dillon, CC BY-NC

    Cat ownership has also been associated with some positive changes in the gut microbiota, especially in women, such as improved blood glucose control and reduced inflammation.

    Helping mental health

    Having cat or dog is also associated with higher psychological well-being. For people with depression, patting or playing with their cat has been shown to reduce symptoms (although this was over a short, two-hour period and can’t be extrapolated longer-term).

    Another way to find out about the health impact of cats is qualitative research: asking people what their cats mean to them, beyond the numbers.

    When colleagues and I surveyed veterans, we found people more attached to their pets actually had poorer mental health scores. But their survey responses told a different story. One respondent said, “my cats are the reason I get up in the morning”.

    Another wrote:

    I consider my pet to be a service animal. My cat helps me to relax when I’m dealing with my anxiety, depression or when I wake during the night from the frequent nightmares I have. My cat isn’t just a pet to me, my cat is a part of me, my cat is part of my family.

    It may be that veterans were more attached to their cats because they had worse mental health – and relied on their cats more for comfort – rather than the other way around.

    Mental health downsides

    It is possible being attached to your cat has downsides. If your cat becomes sick, the burden of caring for them may have a negative impact on your mental health.

    In our study of owners whose cats had epilepsy, around one third experienced a clinical level of burden as caregivers that was likely to interfere with their day-to-day functioning.

    People with depression report reduced symptoms after playing with their cat.
    Artacke Pictures/Shutterstock

    Toxoplasmosis

    Cats can also carry zoonotic diseases, which are infections which spread from animals to humans.

    They are the main host for toxoplasmosis, a parasite excreted in cat faeces which can affect other mammals, including humans. The parasite is more likely to be carried by feral cats that hunt for their food than domestic cats.

    Most people have mild symptoms that may be similar to flu. But infection during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage or stillbirth, or cause problems for the baby including blindness and seizures.

    Pregnant women and people with lowered immunity are most at risk. It is recommended these groups don’t empty cat litter trays, or use gloves if they have to. Changing the litter tray daily prevents the parasite reaching a stage that could infect people.

    Allergies

    Up to one in five people have an allergy to cats and this is increasing.

    When cats lick their fur, their saliva deposits an allergen. When their fur and dander (flakes of skin) come loose, it can set off an allergic reaction.

    People without severe allergies can still live with cats if they regularly wash their hands, clean surfaces and vacuum to eliminate dander. They can also exclude cats from areas they want to be allergen-free, such as bedrooms.

    People with allergies can live with cats if their symptoms aren’t severe.
    Ruth McHugh-Dillon, CC BY-NC

    While cats can provoke allergic reactions, there is also evidence contact with cats can have a protective role in preventing asthma and allergic reactions developing. This is because exposure may modify the immune system, making it less likely allergic reactions will occur.

    Susan Hazel is affiliated with the Dog & Cat Management Board of South Australia, Animal Therapies Ltd and the RSPCA South Australia.

    – ref. Are cats good for our health? – https://theconversation.com/are-cats-good-for-our-health-238993

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: No home left behind: a postcode approach to electrification

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gill Armstrong, Researcher in architecture and urban planning, Climateworks Centre

    EndeavourEnergy

    In Australia and overseas, it’s clear that homes without gas – running on clean energy – are healthier, have cheaper power bills, and produce lower greenhouse emissions.

    The emissions part is crucial. Collectively, homes are responsible for 10% of Australia’s greenhouse emissions. But how do we get Australia’s 11 million homes to ditch gas and switch to electricity for cooking, hot water and home heating?

    The current approach is slow and piecemeal. State and local governments offer incentives to individual households, but few adopt them. For those that do, little coordinated support and guidance is available. The households must deal with suppliers and tradies on their own, which can be a frustrating and lonely process.

    A pilot project to electrify 500 homes in a single postcode south of Sydney could show a better way. After a two-year campaign by residents, “Electrify 2515” has won A$5.4 million in federal funding, along with industry support. Challenges remain, but this pilot promises to demonstrate how household electrification can be accelerated and coordinated at scale.

    As independent climate transitions specialists within Monash University, Climateworks Centre has no direct involvement in this project. But our ongoing Renovation Pathways Program focuses on ways to decarbonise Australia’s existing houses and bring about a national renovation wave. So we are watching with keen interest.

    Testing extra incentives

    The 2515 postcode sits between Wollongong and Sydney in New South Wales. It covers the suburbs of Austinmer, Clifton, Coledale, Scarborough, Thirroul and Wombarra.

    The pilot encourages households to retire three types of gas appliance: water heaters, space heaters and cookers. Financial subsidies of up to $1,000 off electric hot water systems, reverse-cycle air conditioners and induction cooktops, and up to $1,500 off home batteries, are available. Higher subsidies are available to low-income households.

    Successful applicants receive the subsidies as a discount on the purchase price of these new electrical appliances, rather than a rebate. Money for this is coming from the federal government’s Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

    Such incentives prompt households within a single community to make the switch together, retiring their electric appliances before their gas appliances fail or break, speeding up the transition.

    A fully subsidised smart energy device, valued at around $1,500, is also installed in every home to track and optimise energy use. Subsidies are also available for upgrades to switchboards where required to meet modern safety standards.

    Rooftop solar and electric vehicle chargers can also be purchased through the pilot, but will not be subsidised.

    How it works.
    Electrify 2515

    The 2515 difference

    2515 is not the first community to rally behind clean energy. Grassroots initiatives are scattered around the country, such as in Yackandandah in northeast Victoria, Parkes in central west NSW, and Broken Hill in far west NSW.

    Home energy pilot projects are also already underway through the Cooperative Research Centre Race2030, which partners with industry and research institutions. But these initiatives, along with those at a state and local government level, tend to recruit individual households across a wider geographic area.

    In contrast, Electrify 2515 offers holistic support for households within a community. It is not driven by a single government program, or by a gas supply problem – which was the case for the people of Esperance in Western Australia.

    By electrifying 500 homes in a single community, Electrify 2515 will provide a tangible measure of what’s required to drive rapid household electrification. The main challenge isn’t technological – it’s social. The technology is here. Getting the social drivers and settings right, at scale, is the key.

    The holistic approach will demonstrate what consumers need to make the shift from gas to electricity. This includes what conversations are needed and which incentives enable all households to act in a coordinated way.

    Local 2515 residents explain why everyone should join them in applying for the Electrify 2515 Community Pilot.

    The bright side of a community approach

    The whole-of-community focus brings technical and financial advantages.

    After completing an application form and receiving an offer, households receive guidance and support from the installation partner Brighte, a commercial company that provides consumer loans for clean energy appliances such as solar panels and batteries. The service streamlines the decision-making process, which is often the biggest barrier stopping households from progressing with electrification.

    Being able to work with a larger number of homes at once is likely to streamline and scale up installation with dedicated teams of installers and tradespeople.

    It also helps build households’ trust in literature about payback times and financial benefits through friendly neighbourhood conversations and, importantly, through access to local real-world evidence, not just theory.

    Thermal efficiency is also key

    The electrification pilot is a solid starting point, especially for a community in a relatively mild coastal climate such as postcode 2515.

    For homes in more extreme climates, or for inefficient older homes – which a lot of Australia’s homes sadly are – the fundamental thermal efficiency of the building must be improved alongside electrification of appliances.

    The thermal efficiency of homes can be improved by insulating ceilings, walls and floors, double-glazing windows and sealing gaps. These measures make a home more comfortable for occupants. They can also reduce peak demand on the energy network and save on household energy bills.

    Electrify 2515 currently focuses on appliance upgrades but adding thermal efficiency upgrades could take it to the next level. Without these upgrades, there is a risk of households in harsher climates using more electricity in a heatwave if homes are draughty and inefficient.

    There are various ways to upgrade a home’s capacity to stay cool in summer and warm in winter.
    Climateworks Centre, 2023, Climate-ready homes: Building the case for a renovation wave in Australia.

    When paired with electrification, thermal upgrades could save Australian households around $2,200 annually on their energy bills (based on 2023 gas and electricity prices), according to Climateworks Centre analysis.

    Projects like Electrify 2515 should include both home thermal efficiency improvements and electrification efforts, particularly for communities in harsher climates in order to maximise benefits to households.

    Electrification challenges

    Electrify 2515 caters for low-income households, by offering higher subsidies to households in the lowest 25% income percentile to ensure these groups comprise 25% of community buy-in.

    Renters are encouraged to put their hand up too. But it may still be challenging to encourage their landlords to invest in upgrades.

    Further challenges include decarbonising homes that cannot generate electricity from rooftop solar panels due to being shaded by taller buildings or trees. This can sometimes be an issue for homes in colder winter climates with higher annual energy demands, such as Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT.

    Building momentum for widescale rollout

    The technology for all-electric homes exists. Now we must identify the key social drivers and settings required to spur Australia’s electrification wave.

    Electrify 2515 is a promising approach. It’s a way to build momentum, showcase technology at scale, and prompt meaningful discussions around the benefits and challenges of getting off gas.

    This program, and others like it, can provide a tangible real-world foundation to bring about bills savings, emissions reductions and healthier homes across Australia. And it will help ensure no one is left behind.

    Climateworks Centre is a part of Monash University. It receives funding from a range of external sources including philanthropy, governments and businesses.

    – ref. No home left behind: a postcode approach to electrification – https://theconversation.com/no-home-left-behind-a-postcode-approach-to-electrification-241471

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Rebuilding homes after a disaster is an opportunity to build back better – why isn’t the insurance industry on board?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antonia Settle, Lecturer, Monash University

    For many Australians, 2022 was a dark and devastating year. Major floods wreaked havoc on hundreds of communities in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. But for some, the floods themselves were only half the disaster.

    As a recent report by Financial Counselling Victoria showed, many affected households had their insurance claims rejected or diminished, whether due to complicated exclusion clauses or because their “sum insured” had been whittled away by unexpected costs.

    A long parliamentary inquiry sought to examine the insurance industry’s response to this disaster. Its final report – released to little fanfare last Friday – revealed a sector in crisis.

    The report put forward 86 recommendations, which taken together could deliver real progress in pushing the insurance sector to deliver on its promises.

    Some standout areas of focus included abolishing a principle called “like-for-like reinstatement” and increasing accountability and oversight. Making sure households can rely on their own coverage is a vital step.

    But the report also highlighted just how vulnerable Australia’s housing stock is to climate change, which is no easy problem to solve.



    Read more:
    How extreme weather and costs of housing and insurance trap some households in a vicious cycle

    Forced to repeat the same mistakes

    To address the challenge of rising climate risk, we need to increase the resilience of Australian homes. Insurance will only be affordable if risk exposure can be brought down.

    Recommendation 26 of the inquiry’s final report deals with the principle of “like-for-like reinstatement”. Written into many policies, this protects insurers from having to pay for home improvements in an insurance claim – known as “betterment” in insurance jargon.

    ‘Like-for-like’ rules can prevent households from improving their disaster resilience when rebuilding.
    Anna Mente/Shutterstock

    The underlying idea is to stop households sneaking an extra en-suite bathroom into their insurer-funded rebuild. The same dimensions and building materials have to be used.

    But this can mean a home that has been flooded ends up being rebuilt with exactly the same flood risk.

    This was the experience of Madeleine Serle, whose home was flooded in Melbourne in 2022. She told me she had asked her insurer to rebuild using polished concrete floors in the downstairs rooms of her home, instead of the plasterboard and wood that had soaked up the floodwaters. Serle reasoned that if it flooded again, it wouldn’t cause so much damage.

    Her insurer refused. Even when Serle offered to pay any extra costs herself that might arise from concrete flooring, her insurer insisted on a “like-for-like reinstatement”. This meant using the same low-resilience materials that will likely be destroyed if inundated again by floodwater.

    Bringing ‘betterment’ to the fore

    Serle was actively trying to reduce her future flood risk, but this was precluded by the terms of her insurance contract.

    By seeking an end to like-for-like reinstatement, recommendation 26 is pushing for “betterment” to be brought to the forefront of how we think about insurer rebuilds.

    It proposes allowing households to swap out size for quality in an insurer rebuild. That could allow them to use the money saved from reducing the footprint of their home on resilience measures, which are often much more expensive.

    This wouldn’t just reduce their exposure to climate risks – fire, flooding and so on. It could also improve the energy efficiency of our houses, which is another key part of the climate challenge in Australia.

    Standardised products

    Many of the report’s other recommendations centred on the better handling of claims and better outcomes for households.

    This includes by strengthening accountability through stronger regulatory oversight (recommendations 2, 4, 9, 41, 47, 49), tightening up some key loopholes (recommendations 3, 10, 13), and penalising insurers for delays in the resolution of claims (recommendations 19 and 57).

    It also laid out ways to improve communications between insurers and households (recommendations 6, 10, 24, 25, 28, 33), so people can better understand what they should expect from their insurer – and when their insurer might be falling short.

    These proposed reforms aim to create more standardised insurance products across the industry. But they could have gone further. The report didn’t go as far as recommending a fully standardised insurance product that all insurers would have to offer.

    Making insurance products more standardised could make them easier to compare.
    DC Studio/Shutterstock

    As the Financial Rights Legal Centre has argued, standardisation is vital to untangling the “confusopoly” that leaves households unable to make informed decisions about the merits of different policies on the market without reading reams of product disclosure statements.

    Reform alone isn’t enough

    The inquiry’s final report recommends the government buy back some of the riskiest homes (recommendation 81), alongside much stronger government support for households looking to mitigate their own risks.

    But insurance reform alone isn’t enough to solve the problem that Australian households face in securing their housing amid worsening climate risk.

    The bigger overarching problem faced by Australia is one of climate change mitigation and adaption. While our country is exposed to relatively high levels of climate risk, much of this risk is borne by individuals through home ownership.

    With nearly half of all renter retirees living in poverty, Australians know owning their own home is a powerful way to secure their economic future. That’s why home ownership is referred to as part of the “third pillar” of the retirement income system (voluntary private savings), along with superannuation and the public pension.

    Reforming our insurance system can make important strides in providing households with better tools to manage climate risk.

    Only with stronger safety nets, and by grappling with risks at the societal level, can we counteract the extreme individualisation of climate risk that we experience here in Australia.



    Read more:
    Some New Zealand homes are becoming uninsurable because of natural disasters – but all may not be lost

    Antonia Settle 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.

    – ref. Rebuilding homes after a disaster is an opportunity to build back better – why isn’t the insurance industry on board? – https://theconversation.com/rebuilding-homes-after-a-disaster-is-an-opportunity-to-build-back-better-why-isnt-the-insurance-industry-on-board-241576

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Walk or run in the rain? A physics-based approached to staying dry (or at least drier)

    Source: The Conversation – France – By Jacques Treiner, Physicien théoricien, Université Paris Cité

    We’ve all been there – caught outside without an umbrella as the sky opens up. Whether it’s a light drizzle or a heavy downpour, instinct tells us that running will minimise how wet we get. But is that really true? Let’s take a scientific look at this common dilemma.

    You’re out and about, and it starts to rain – and naturally you’ve forgotten your umbrella. Instinctively, you lean forward and quicken your pace. We all tend to believe that moving faster means we’ll spend less time getting wet, even if it means getting hit with more rain as we move forward.

    But is this instinct actually correct? Can we build a simple model to find out if speeding up really reduces how wet we’ll get? More specifically, does the amount of water that hits you depend on your speed? And is there an ideal speed that minimises the total water you encounter on your way from point A to point B?

    Let’s break it down while keeping the scenario simple. Imagine rain falling evenly and vertically. We can divide your body into two surfaces: those that are vertical (your front and back) and those that are horizontal (your head and shoulders).

    When moving forward in the rain, vertical surfaces such as a person’s body will be hit by more raindrops as speed increases. From the walker’s perspective, the drops appear to fall at an angle, with a horizontal velocity equal to their own walking speed.

    While walking faster means encountering more drops per second, it also reduces the time spent in the rain. As a result, the two effects balance each other out: more drops per unit of time, but less time in the rain overall.

    When the walker is stationary, rain only falls on horizontal surfaces – the top of the head and shoulders. As the walker begins to move, she or he receives raindrops that would have fallen in front, while missing the drops that now fall behind. This creates a balance, and ultimately, the amount of rain received on horizontal surfaces remains unchanged, regardless of the walking speed.

    However, since walking faster reduces the total time spent in the rain, the overall amount of water collected on horizontal surfaces will be less.

    All in all, it’s a good idea to pick up the pace when walking in the rain

    For those who enjoy a mathematical approach, here’s a breakdown:

    Let ρ represent the number of drops per unit volume, and let a denote their vertical velocity. We’ll denote Sh as the horizontal surface area of the individual (e.g., the head and shoulders) and Sv as the vertical surface area (e.g., the body).

    When you’re standing still, the rain only falls on the horizontal surface, Sh. This is the amount of water you’ll receive on these areas.

    Even if the rain falls vertically, from the perspective of a walker moving at speed v, it appears to fall obliquely, with the angle of the drops’ trajectory depending on your speed.

    During a time period T, a raindrop travels a distance of aT. Therefore, all raindrops within a shorter distance will reach the surface: these are the drops inside a cylinder with a base of Sh and a height of aT, which gives:

    ρ.Sh.a.T.

    As we have seen, as we move forward, the drops appear to be animated by an oblique velocity that results from the composition of velocity a and velocity v. The number of drops reaching Sh remains unchanged, since velocity v is horizontal and therefore parallel to Sh. However, the number of drops reaching surface Sv – which was previously zero when the walker was stationary – has now increased. This is equal to the number of drops contained within a horizontal cylinder with a base area of Sv and a length of v.T. This length represents the horizontal distance the drops travel during this time interval.

    In total, the walker receives a number of drops given by the expression:

    ρ.(Sh.a + Sv.v). T

    Now we need to take into account the time interval during which the walker is exposed to the rain. If you’re covering a distance d at constant speed v, the time you spend walking is d/v. Plugging this into the equation, the total amount of water you encounter is:

    ρ.(Sh.a + Sv.v). d/v = ρ.(Sh.a/v + Sv). d

    This equation gives us two key insights:

    • The faster you move, the less water hits our head and shoulders.

    • The water hitting the vertical part of your body stays the same regardless of speed, because the shorter time spent in the rain is offset by encountering more raindrops per second.

    To sum it all up: it’s a good idea to lean forward and move quickly when you’re caught in the rain. But careful: leaning forward increases Sh. To really stay drier, you’ll need to increase your speed enough to compensate for this.

    Jacques Treiner ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

    – ref. Walk or run in the rain? A physics-based approached to staying dry (or at least drier) – https://theconversation.com/walk-or-run-in-the-rain-a-physics-based-approached-to-staying-dry-or-at-least-drier-240849

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Yoruba vs Igbo: how a 1977 football cup caused ethnic tensions to boil over in Nigeria

    Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Chuka Onwumechili, Professor of Communications, Howard University

    Football is a game of passion, and passions can become particularly inflamed when the sport represents larger political struggles. In Nigeria in 1977, an Africa-wide football contest fuelled the ethnic rivalry between the Yoruba and the Igbo people to the point that the military had to intervene. The game was to be played as a semi-final in the Africa Cup Winners’ Cup, the club football tournament that would go on to become the Caf Confederation Cup.

    As scholars of sports communication, we recently published a research paper about that 1977 confrontation between Shooting Stars of Ibadan (Ibadan is home to a Yoruba majority in the south-west) and Enugu Rangers (Enugu is an Igbo state).



    Read more:
    Hamas-Israel conflict: Algeria offers to host Palestine’s football matches – the bigger history

    Our study adds to a history of football and politics that is not well documented in Africa. In the process it shows that football represents more than just sport, but can also be a way of understanding cultural and political issues.

    Yoruba vs Igbo

    The rivalry between the Igbos and Yorubas is almost as old as the formation of Nigeria in 1914. Both groups vie politically and for jobs. Each forms roughly a fifth of the Nigerian population. The Igbo had lost political power after the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-1970.

    This rivalry became particularly visible in Nigerian football from the 1950s when ethnic groups contested annually for the Alex Oni Cup. The Yorubas often won, the Igbos a close second but the tournament was eventually discontinued because of fights between players and spectators.

    After this, Igbos did not have a representative club team in national competitions until after the war ended in 1970. Top Igbo footballers were employed at various clubs across the country, particularly in Lagos. Yorubas played for various clubs in their home region. One such club was the Shooting Stars. They made up the bulk of the Ibadan Lions team that won the national Challenge Cup four times from 1959 to 1969.



    Read more:
    Football and politics in Kinshasa: how DRC’s elite use sport to build their reputations and hold on to power

    After the civil war, most Igbo footballers – who had fought unsuccessfully for the secession of Biafra state – were afraid to live in other parts of the country. Enugu Rangers was formed and the club dominated Nigerian football in the 1970s and 1980s.

    Shooting Stars had become the beacon club of the Yorubas and quickly developed a rivalry with Enugu Rangers.

    The semi-final that caused all the trouble

    This ongoing rivalry escalated when the two clubs beat off opposition from across the continent to meet in the two legs of the semi-final of the Africa Cup Winners Cup in 1977. Shooting Stars were defending the title. Rangers chose not to take part in the more prestigious Africa Champions Club’s Cup – instead they sought to equal Shooting Stars’ feat of winning the Cup Winners Cup.

    To add to the tension, Nigeria’s national team was made up of mainly by players from these two clubs – and the national team was competing in the last stage of the qualifiers for the 1978 men’s football World Cup. It was feared that the rivalry would affect its chances. Almost daily, the newspapers reported on accusations levelled by officials of the two teams at each other and the Nigerian Football Association (today the Nigeria Football Federation).

    The association had to find solutions – fast. Both teams had played their home matches in their own cities so far. The association decided that their two semi-final games should be played in a “neutral” location: Lagos.



    Read more:
    Egypt’s powerful football fans and politics: a toxic mix that could combust during Afcon

    But after the first leg, a designated “home game” for Shooting Stars, ended 0-0, controversy erupted. Lagos is in the west of the country, home of the Yorubas. This was seen to give the Shooting Stars an advantage. There was also controversy about whether the teams could call up some or all of their players in the national team. The association’s authority to re-schedule the second leg was then called into question. These issues were argued at fever pitch and publicly by fans and in the media, with threats and ethnic undertones.

    The association wanted to bar both Rangers and Shooting Stars from using their national team players, but was eventually forced to agree on the release of all players to play in the final leg of the Africa Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final. But not before making a very late request that the Confederation of African Football put off the game until after the national team’s World Cup qualifying games.

    Shooting Stars, frustrated by the postponement, lashed out publicly and in the media. They accused Nigeria’s federal sports commissioner, Dandeson Isokrari, of ethnocentrism and favouritism. Isokrari was an easterner, from Enugu Rangers territory.

    With tension boiling over and threats issued from both sides, the second-in-command of the Nigeria state, Major General Musa Yar’ Adua, stepped in to avoid ethnic strife and possible violence. He instructed the match to move to Kaduna, a northern city, away from the homes of the clubs. This decision by the country’s military leadership calmed nerves.



    Read more:
    Morocco will co-host the 2030 World Cup – Palestine and Western Sahara will be burning issues

    An overflowing crowd packed the Kaduna venue from the early morning. In the early minutes of the game, Shooting Stars mounted a siege in the Rangers’ goal area. It was so tense that journalists and photographers converged behind the Rangers goal. Angry Rangers supporters claimed they were not journalists and photographers, but disguised juju men concocting mystical incantations that kept the ball rooted in the Rangers goal area.

    The match ended in another 0-0 tie but Rangers advanced when goalkeeper Emmanuel Okala helped to turn the penalty kick tiebreaker in the club’s favour, 4-2. Despite the tensions, there were no reported incidents of violence during the match.

    This epic contest between two clubs during a continental cup contest in 1977 reminds us of the rivalry that persists even today among ethnic groups across the continent. Football often represents such ethnic rivalries beyond the field of play – and in the case of Enugu Rangers and Shooting Stars it reached a dangerous level that forced the state to step in.

    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.

    – ref. Yoruba vs Igbo: how a 1977 football cup caused ethnic tensions to boil over in Nigeria – https://theconversation.com/yoruba-vs-igbo-how-a-1977-football-cup-caused-ethnic-tensions-to-boil-over-in-nigeria-239128

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-Evening Report: It would cost billions, but pay for itself over time. The economic case for air conditioning every Australian school

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, University of Technology Sydney

    Later this week the government will receive the report of the year-long independent inquiry into its handling of the COVID pandemic.

    Among the issues it will have to contend with is air quality, in particular the air quality in high occupancy public buildings such as schools, aged-care facilities, shops, pubs and clubs.

    Many already have high quality air. High-fitration air conditioning (so-called mechanical ventilation) is standard in offices, hospitals and shopping centres.

    But not in schools. Almost all of our schools (98% in NSW) use windows.

    In Australia’s national construction code, this is called “natural ventilation” and it is allowed so long as the window, opening or door has a ventilating area of not less than 5% of the floor area, a requirement research suggests is insufficient.

    Windows, but no requirement to keep them open

    There’s no requirement to actually open the windows. School windows are often shut to keep in the heat in (or to keep out the heat in summer).

    The result can be very, very stuffy classrooms, far stuffier than we would tolerate in shopping centres. This matters for learning. Study after study has found that when air circulation gets low, people can’t concentrate well or learn well.

    And they get sick. Diseases such as flu, COVID and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) spread when viruses get recirculated instead of diluted with fresh air.

    The costs of the resulting sickness are borne by students, parents, teachers and education systems that need to find replacement staff to cover for teachers who are sick and parents who need to look after sick children at home.

    A pilot study prepared for the Australian Research Council Centre for Advanced Building Systems Against Airborne Infection (known as “Thrive”), suggests the entire cost of installing high-filtration air conditioning in every Australian school would be offset by the savings in reduced sickness.

    What classroom air is like

    The study carried out by the education architecture firm ARINA compared the ventilation of 60 so-called naturally ventilated schools in southern NSW and the Australian Capital Territory to that of a school in Sydney that happened to have been fitted with a Standards Australia-compliant air conditioning system to control aircraft noise.

    It used carbon dioxide levels to measure ventilation. Carbon dioxide is a good proxy for ventilation because its levels are determined by both the number of people breathing out concentrated carbon dioxide and the clean air available to dilute it.

    Under a normal load, defined as 26 students, one teacher and one assistant, measured levels of carbon dioxide in the air-conditioned school stayed below 750 parts per million (ppm) and were typically between 500 and 600 ppm.

    A reading of 700 ppm is particularly good. It means the people in the room breathe in less than 0.5% of air breathed out by others.

    But in “naturally ventilated” classrooms the reading often climbed to 2,500 ppm and sometimes more, within an hour of a class commencing.

    At 2,500 parts per million, people in the room are breathing in 5.5% of the air breathed out by others. This is also high enough to affect cognition, learning and behaviour, something that begins when carbon dioxide climbs above 1,200 ppm.

    Research suggests using ventilation to cut carbon dioxide to 700 ppm can cut the risk of airborne transmission of disease by a factor of two and up to five.

    The economic case for healthy air

    In 2023, Australia had 9,629 schools with 4,086,998 students.

    ARINA has previously estimated the cost of ensuring all of these schools are mechanically ventilated at A$2 billion per year over five years.

    Offsetting that cost would be less sickness. Documents released under freedom of information laws show Victoria spent $360.8 million on casual relief teachers between May 2023 and May 2024, 54% more than before COVID in 2019.

    The figures for other states are harder to get, but if Victoria (with 26% of Australia’s population) is spending $234 million more per year on casual relief teachers than before COVID, it is likely that Australia is spending $900 million per year more.

    Add in the teachers in non-government schools (37% of Australia’s total) and the potential saving from air conditioning schools exceeds $1 billion per year.

    Add in the other non-COVID viruses that would no longer be concentrated and circulated in classrooms and the potential savings grow higher still.

    Worth more than $1 billion per year

    And, in any event, the cost of replacement teachers is a woefully incomplete measure of the cost of illness in schools. Many ill teachers can’t be replaced because replacements aren’t available, making schools cancel lessons and combine classes, costing days, weeks and sometimes months of lost education.

    Also, the bacteria and viruses spread by recirculated air infect students as well as teachers, keeping students (and often their parents) at home as well.

    This suggests the costs per year of not air conditioning schools exceed $1 billion and may well approach or exceed $2 billion, which is the estimated cost per year over five years of air conditioning every Australian school.

    Natural ventilation was never a good idea for classrooms: it was cheap at the time, but not cheap at all when the costs are considered. Those costs happen to extend beyond disease to thermal comfort, energy use and the ability of students to concentrate.

    It’s time we gave students and teachers the kind of protections we demand for ourselves in our offices, our shopping centres and often our homes. It would soon pay for itself.

    Geoff Hanmer is a member of the executive of the Industry Training and Transformation Centre for Advanced Building Systems against Airborne Infection Transmission (known as Thrive) which receives funding from the Australian Research Council, QUT, the University of Melbourne and industry partners in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. He is a director of the health expert body OzSAGE and the managing director of ARINA, an architectural consultancy.

    – ref. It would cost billions, but pay for itself over time. The economic case for air conditioning every Australian school – https://theconversation.com/it-would-cost-billions-but-pay-for-itself-over-time-the-economic-case-for-air-conditioning-every-australian-school-241465

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: A technical fix to keep kids safe online? Here’s what happened last time Australia tried to make a ‘clean’ internet

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Houlihan, PhD Candidate in History, Monash University

    Prostock Studio / Shutterstock

    For anyone who has been online in Australia longer than a decade or so, the discussion around current proposals to set a minimum age for social media use might trigger a touch of déjà vu.

    Between 2007 and 2012, the Rudd–Gillard government’s efforts to implement a “Clean Feed” internet filter sparked very similar debates.

    Beset by technical problems and facing fierce opposition, the Clean Feed was eventually abandoned in favour of laws that already existed. Will the proposed social media ban face a similar fate?

    How to regulate cyberspace

    The question of how to regulate a cyberspace occupied by both adults and children has puzzled governments for a long time. Traditional controls on physical media are difficult to apply to online spaces, particularly when so much online media comes from overseas.

    As early as 1998, an Australian Broadcasting Authority report noted a key difficulty in online regulation. Namely, balancing adults’ access to legal online spaces and content with restrictions on childrens’ access to age-inappropriate material and bans on illegal content.

    The Clean Feed proposal attempted to address parental concerns about age-inappropriate websites. First raised in 2006 by Labor in opposition, it became a campaign promise at the 2007 election.

    The proposal aimed to solve the issue of overseas content. Australian authorities could already require website owners in Australia to take down illegal content, but they had no power over international sites.

    To address this, the Clean Feed would require internet service providers to run a government-created filter blocking all material given a “Refused” classification by the Australian Classification Board, which meant it was illegal. Labor argued the filter would protect children from “harmful and inappropriate” content, including child pornography and X-rated media. The Australian Communications and Media Authority created a “blacklist” of websites that the filter would block.

    Technical trouble

    The Clean Feed was plagued by technical issues. Trials in 2008 revealed it might slow internet speeds by up to 87%, block access to legal websites, and wouldn’t block all illegal content.

    While the effect on speeds was improved, the 2008 trials and others in 2009 revealed another problem: determined users could bypass the filter.

    There were also fears the blacklist would be used to block legal websites. While the government maintained the filter would only target illegal content, some questioned whether this was true.

    Internet service providers were already required to prevent access to content that had been given a Refused classification. This, along with unclear government statements about removing age-inappropriate material, led many to believe the blacklist could be more far-reaching.

    The government also planned to keep the list secret, on the grounds that a published list could become a guide for finding illegal material.

    The blacklist

    In 2009, the whistleblowing website Wikileaks published a list of sites blacklisted in Denmark. The government banned those pages of Wikileaks, and in response Wikileaks published what it said was the Australian government blacklist. (The government denied it was the actual blacklist.)

    Newspapers noted that around half the websites on the published list were not related to child pornography.

    Wikileaks published what it claimed was the government’s planned ‘blacklist’ of websites, along with a rationale for publishing the list.
    Wikileaks

    The alleged blacklist also contained legal content, including Wikipedia pages, YouTube links, and even the website of a Queensland dentist. This lent weight to fears the filter would block more than just illegal websites.

    More debates emerged surrounding how the Refused classification category was applied offline as well as on the internet.

    In January 2010, the Australian Sex Party reported claims from pornography studios that customs officials had confiscated material featuring female ejaculation (as an “abhorrent depiction” or form of urination) and small-breasted adult women (who might appear to be minors). Many questioned whether these should be banned, and if such depictions would be added to the blacklist – including members of hacker-activist group Anonymous.

    Operation Titstorm and the end of the Clean Feed

    While Anonymous members had already protested the Clean Feed, this new information sparked a new protest action dubbed Operation Titstorm.

    On February 10 2010, activists targeted several government websites. The Australian Parliament site was down for three days. Protesters also mass-emailed politicians and their staff the kinds of pornography set to be blocked by the filter.

    While Operation Titstorm gained media attention, other digital activists (such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and other members of Anonymous) criticised its illegal tactics. Many dismissed the protest as juvenile.

    In February 2010, hacker-activists from Anonymous launched denial-of-service attacks and email campaigns in protest of proposed internet filters.
    WIkipedia

    However, one participant argued that many protesters were children, who had used these methods because “kids and teenagers don’t really get the chance to voice their opinions”. The protesters may have been the very people the Clean Feed was supposed to protect.

    The government abandoned the Clean Feed in 2012 and used existing legislation to require internet service providers to block INTERPOL’s “worst of” child abuse list. It remains to be seen whether the social media minimum age will similarly crumble under the weight of controversy and be rendered redundant by existing legislation.

    The same, but different

    The Clean Feed tried to balance the rights of adults to access legal material with protecting children from age-inappropriate content and making cyberspace safer for them. In a sense, it did this by regulating adults.

    The filter limited the material adults could access. Given it was government-created and mandatory, it also decided for parents what content was age-appropriate for their children.

    The current proposal to set a minimum age for social media flips this solution by determining what online spaces children can occupy. Similar to the filter, it also makes this decision on parents’ behalf.

    The Clean Feed saga reveals some of the difficulties of policing the internet. It also reminds us that anxiety about what Australian youth can interact with online is nothing new – and is unlikely to go away.

    Rebecca Houlihan 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.

    – ref. A technical fix to keep kids safe online? Here’s what happened last time Australia tried to make a ‘clean’ internet – https://theconversation.com/a-technical-fix-to-keep-kids-safe-online-heres-what-happened-last-time-australia-tried-to-make-a-clean-internet-241371

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Genome sequencing developed to trace COVID is now protecting babies in intensive care from infectious diseases

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rhys Thomas White, Scientist, Genomics and Bioinformatics, ESR

    Getty Images

    Anyone who has spent time inside a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) knows it’s intense.

    For the tiny babies cared for in these wards, any infection could prove fatal. Great care is taken to prevent the spread of pathogens, but outbreaks still occur.

    Traditionally, detecting outbreaks within a NICU has been reactive – only after multiple babies fall ill at the same time.

    Our research is advancing the use of whole-genome sequencing technologies to detect outbreaks early and stamp out bacteria before they threaten more babies.

    From reactive to proactive

    NICU outbreak surveillance usually involves monitoring rates of illness and identifying spikes and long-term trends that may point to a pathogen circulating on the ward.

    When a potential outbreak is identified, bacteria may be cultured and retrospectively sequenced to determine if they can be linked to a shared source or transmission on the ward.

    Wellington Regional Hospital has changed its approach to infection surveillance in the NICU. Rather than waiting for infants to fall ill, they are using the same sequencing technology we developed at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR) for genomic contact tracking during the COVID pandemic.

    Infants in the unit have diagnostic swab samples taken as part of routine practice. If any key bacteria are cultured from these samples, they are sequenced promptly to identify possible transmission events in near real time. This allows us to monitor the situation closely and respond quickly to emerging outbreaks.

    Genome sequencing allows NICU teams to monitor infectious bacteria before babies fall ill.
    Getty Images

    Because not all infants carrying a particular bacterial strain will experience a severe infection, this proactive approach can detect an outbreak before any babies fall ill.

    And because whole-genome sequencing decodes the entire genetic makeup of bacteria, it also provides the NICU team with information on how pathogens are related to each other. This allows them to differentiate one-off cases imported to the unit from any circulating within it.

    This level of detail allows for precise infection monitoring and fast, informed decisions on outbreak control.

    A case study

    This shift was recently tested when proactive genomic surveillance showed two infants in the NICU had eye infections caused by the same organism, an uncommon strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

    MRSA is notorious for its resistance to common antibiotics, making it particularly dangerous in hospitals.

    The onsite sequencing showed the two cases were likely linked. The priorities were to establish whether other infants were affected and limit the pathogen’s spread as quickly as possible. Screening of infants in the NICU found six more carrying the same strain of MRSA (though none with serious illness).

    This meant these infants could be isolated rapidly and the outbreak contained before any others developed a significant infection. ESR’s experience as genomic contact tracers helped establish how these infections spread in the unit.

    An outbreak response takes up resources and involves multiple steps, from the initial confirmation of the infection and its transmission route to communication with parents.

    This proactive approach to infection surveillance provides an early-warning system. It means the NICU team can be confident an outbreak is underway and act quickly to contain it.

    MRSA in New Zealand

    The power of genome sequencing extends beyond immediate outbreak control.

    By comparing the genomic data generated in the lab to that collected in national surveillance projects, our team was able to show the strain that caused the eye infections may have emerged in the early 1990s.

    This strain has slowly accumulated the genes required to evade first-choice antibiotics, underpinning the risk of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in Aotearoa New Zealand.

    We also highlighted the power of genomics to reveal connections when we found the MRSA strain causing illness in the NICU was related to bacteria collected from cattle. This discovery underscores the concept of “One Health” – the idea that human health, animal health and environmental health are inextricably linked.

    The data suggest bacteria from a cow milk tank and from babies in a hospital may have shared a common ancestor at some point.

    Future focus

    As we continue to unravel the complex world of microbes, tools like whole-genome sequencing offer hope in the ongoing battle against infectious diseases. The work at Wellington Regional Hospital’s NICU is just the beginning.

    From protecting our most vulnerable newborns to uncovering unlikely connections between farm animals and hospital patients, genomic technology is changing how we combat infectious diseases.

    As this technology continues to evolve, it promises to play an increasingly crucial role in safeguarding public health, one DNA sequence at a time.

    In the face of growing antibiotic resistance and emerging pathogens, this proactive, genomics-based approach to infection control may well be our best defence.

    We would like to acknowledge the contributions by Max Bloomfield and the teams at Awanui Labs, and Emma Voss and team at Livestock Improvement Corporation.

    Rhys White received a travel bursary from Oxford Nanopore Technologies and a travel grant from the UK Microbiology Society.

    David Winter and Suzanne Manning 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.

    – ref. Genome sequencing developed to trace COVID is now protecting babies in intensive care from infectious diseases – https://theconversation.com/genome-sequencing-developed-to-trace-covid-is-now-protecting-babies-in-intensive-care-from-infectious-diseases-240299

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: What are executive function delays? Research shows they’re similar in ADHD and autism

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Guastella, Professor and Clinical Psychologist, Michael Crouch Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health, University of Sydney

    ABO Photography/Shutterstock

    Neurodevelopmental conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism affect about one in ten children. These conditions impact learning, behaviour and development.

    Executive function delays are core to challenges people with neurodevelopmental conditions experience. This includes skills such as paying attention, switching attention, controlling impulses, planning, organising and problem-solving.

    These skills are important for learning and long-term development. They have been linked with future occupational, social, academic and mental health outcomes. Children with improved executive function skills and supports for these skills do better long term.

    Decades of studies have described how difficulties in attention and impulse control underpin ADHD. Meanwhile, difficulties with switching attention and flexibility of thinking have been proposed to underpin autism.

    As a result, different supports and interventions developed for different neurodevelopmental conditions target these skills. It sets up a system where a diagnosis is made first, then a set of supports is provided based on that diagnosis.

    But our recent study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, shows executive function problems are similar across all neurodevelopmental conditions. Understanding these common needs could lead to better access to supports before waiting for a specific diagnosis.

    Our study found more similarities than differences

    We looked at 180 studies, over 45 years, that compared executive function skills across two or more neurodevelopmental conditions.

    We brought the research together for all neurodevelopmental conditions that have been defined by diagnostic manuals, including ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome, communication disorders and intellectual disabilities.

    Surprisingly, we found most neurodevelopmental conditions showed very similar delays in their executive skills.

    Children with ADHD showed difficulties with attention and impulse control, for example, but so did children with autism, communication and specific learning conditions.

    There were very few differences between each neurodevelopmental condition and the type of executive function delay.

    This suggests executive function delay is best considered as a common difficulty for all children with neurodevelopmental conditions. All of these children could benefit from similar supports to improve executive skills.

    But supports have become siloed

    For decades, research has failed to integrate findings across conditions. This has led to siloed research and practices across the education, health and disability sectors.

    Our data showed a gradual shift in the type of conditions that have been studied since 1980. In the earlier days, as a percentage, there were a far greater proportion of studies conducted on tic disorders, such as Tourette’s syndrome. In the past ten years, autism has been of greater focus.

    This means research and practice is also siloed, based on the focus on funding and interest in the community. Some groups miss out from good science and practice when they become less visible in the political landscape.

    This has led to a skewed support system where only children with a specific diagnosis can be offered certain interventions. It also reduces access to supports if families can’t access diagnostic services, which can be particularly difficult in regional and rural communities.

    Due to these diagnosis-driven research practices, there are now assessment services, guidelines and treatments that are recommended for autism. These are usually independent from and not offered to children with ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome, communication disorders or intellectual disabilities despite a significant overlap in children’s needs.

    How does this affect access to support

    Families often find it hard to get the help they need. They often describe the assessment and support process as confusing, with long wait times and lots of barriers.

    We have previously shown caregivers often attend assessment and support services with a broad range of needs, but leave with many needs unaddressed.

    Recent national child mental health, autism and ADHD guidelines call for more integrated supports for children. But most services are not well set up to do this. It will take time to drive such system change if this is to be achieved.

    Why we need integrated research

    More integrated research will lead to more cohesive support systems across education, health and disability for all children in need.

    Studies show, for example, that many risk factors (genetic and environmental) are common to all neurodevelopmental conditions. These include a broad overlap of risk genes that are the same between conditions, and common environmental factors that influence development in the womb, such as the use of certain drugs, stress and a significant immune response.

    Other studies show how most children diagnosed with one neurodevelopmental condition will also be diagnosed with others.

    But gaps remain. While we know certain stimulant medications can work well for ADHD, for example, we have less information about how they might help children with other neurodevelopmental conditions who have attention difficulties.

    Unlike our knowledge about social supports for children with autism, we don’t have much research on how we can help children with ADHD with their social needs.

    We should take a wider view of children’s needs

    It’s important for families to be aware that if their child meets criteria for one neurodevelopmental condition, it is very likely that they will meet criteria for other neurodvelopmental conditions. They will likely have many needs relevant to other conditions.

    It is worth asking clinical services about broader needs beyond a diagnosis. This should include developmental, mental and physical health needs.

    It is also important to consider that many common interventions may have potential to support all children with neurodevelopmental conditions.

    This is an important issue for government. Reviews are under way for supporting the needs of people with autism, intellectual disability and ADHD.

    It’s time to establish more integrated systems, supports and strategies for all people with neurodevelopmental conditions for their home, school, play and work.

    Adam Guastella receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and Australian Research Council for research into neurodevelopmental conditions. He is director of the Clinic for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Research and scientific chair of Neurodevelopment Australia, a scientific group seeking to improve the knowledge and supports for all people with neurodevelopmental conditions.

    Kelsie Boulton 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.

    – ref. What are executive function delays? Research shows they’re similar in ADHD and autism – https://theconversation.com/what-are-executive-function-delays-research-shows-theyre-similar-in-adhd-and-autism-238760

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How light helped shape our skin colour, eyes and curly hair

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mike Lee, Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University

    Pictrider/Shutterstock

    Welcome to our ‘Light and health’ series. Over six articles, we look at how light affects our physical and mental health in sometimes surprising ways.

    For most of our evolutionary history, human activity has been linked to daylight. Technology has liberated us from these ancient sleep-wake cycles, but there is evidence sunlight has left and continues to leave its mark.

    Not only do we still tend to be awake in the daytime and sleep at night, we can thank light for many other aspects of our biology.

    Light may have driven our ancestors to walk upright on two legs. Light helps explain the evolution of our skin colour, why some of us have curly hair, and even the size of our eyes.

    As we’ll explore in future articles in this series, light helps shape our mood, our immune system, how our gut works, and much more. Light can make us sick, tell us why we’re sick, then treat us.

    Million of years of evolutionary history means humans are still very much creatures of the light.

    We stood up, then walked out of Africa

    The first modern humans evolved in warm African climates. And reducing exposure to the harsh sunlight is one explanation for why humans began to walk upright on two legs. When we stand up and the Sun is directly overhead, far less sunshine hits our body.

    Curly hair may have also protected us from the hot Sun. The idea is that it provides a thicker layer of insulation than straight hair to shield the scalp.

    Early Homo sapiens had extra Sun protection in the form of strongly pigmented skin. Sunlight breaks down folate (vitamin B9), accelerates ageing and damages DNA. In our bright ancestral climates, dark skin protected against this. But this dark skin still admitted enough UV light to stimulate vital production of vitamin D.

    However, when people colonised temperate zones, with weaker light, they repeatedly evolved lighter skin, via different genes in different populations. This happened rapidly, probably within the past 40,000 years.

    With reduced UV radiation nearer the poles, less pigmentation was needed to protect sunlight from breaking down our folate. A lighter complexion also let in more of the scarce light so the body could make vitamin D. But there was one big drawback: less pigmentation meant less protection against Sun damage.

    How our skin pigmentation adapted with migration patterns and changing light.

    This evolutionary background contributes to Australia having among the highest rates of skin cancer in the world.

    Our colonial history means more than 50% of Australians are of Anglo-Celtic descent, with light skin, transplanted into a high-UV environment. Little wonder we’re described as “a sunburnt country”.

    Sunlight has also contributed to variation in human eyes. Humans from high latitudes have less protective pigment in their irises. They also have larger eye sockets (and presumably eyeballs), maybe to admit more precious light.

    Again, these features make Australians of European descent especially vulnerable to our harsh light. So it’s no surprise Australia has unusually high rates of eye cancers.

    We cannot shake our body clock

    Our circadian rhythm – the wake-sleep cycle driven by our brains and hormones – is another piece of heavy evolutionary baggage triggered by light.

    Humans are adapted to daylight. In bright light, humans can see well and have refined colour vision. But we see poorly in dim light, and we lack senses such as sharp hearing or acute smell, to make up for it.

    Our nearest relatives (chimps, gorillas and orangutans) are also active during daylight and sleep at night, reinforcing the view that the earliest humans had similar diurnal behaviours.

    This lifestyle likely stretches further back into our evolutionary history, before the great apes, to the very dawn of primates.

    The earliest mammals were generally nocturnal, using their small size and the cover of darkness to hide from dinosaurs. However, the meteorite impact that wiped out these fearsome reptiles allowed some mammalian survivors, notably primates, to evolve largely diurnal lifestyles.

    If we inherited our daylight activity pattern directly from these early primates, then this rhythm would have been part of our lineage’s evolutionary history for nearly 66 million years.

    This explains why our 24-hour clock is very difficult to shake; it’s so deeply ingrained in our evolutionary history.

    Successive improvements in lighting technology have increasingly liberated us from dependence on daylight: fire, candles, oil and gas lamps, and finally electric lighting. So we can theoretically work and play at any time.

    However, our cognitive and physical performance deteriorates when our intrinsic daily cycles are disturbed, for instance through sleep deprivation, shift work or jet lag.

    Futurists have already considered the circadian rhythms required for life on Mars. Luckily, a day on Mars is around 24.7 hours, so similar to our own. This slight difference should be the least of the worries for the first intrepid martian colonists.

    How would humans cope on Mars? At least they wouldn’t have to worry too much about their body clocks.
    NikoNomad/NASA/Shutterstock

    Light is still changing us

    In the past 200 years or so, artificial lighting has helped to (partly) decouple us from our ancestral circadian rhythms. But in recent decades, this has come at a cost to our eyesight.

    Many genes associated with short-sightedness (myopia) have become more common in just 25 years, a striking example of rapid evolutionary change in the human gene pool.

    And if you have some genetic predisposition to myopia, reduced exposure to natural light (and spending more time in artificial light) makes it more likely. These noticeable changes have occurred within many people’s lifetimes.

    Light will no doubt continue to shape our biology over the coming millennia, but those longer-term effects might be difficult to predict.

    Mike Lee receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Hermon Slade Foundation

    – ref. How light helped shape our skin colour, eyes and curly hair – https://theconversation.com/how-light-helped-shape-our-skin-colour-eyes-and-curly-hair-237240

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Do electric cars greatly increase the average mass of cars on the road? Not in Australia

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robin Smit, Adjunct Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney

    Karolis Kavolelis/Shutterstock

    Statements have been circulating online, including leading news platforms, that battery electric cars will greatly increase the average mass of the on-road fleet. This claim is used as an argument against these cars.

    Even the Australian motoring organisation NRMA has posed the question: “EVs are heavy. Are they safe on our roads and carparks?” (It does say the answer is yes.)

    The stated reason for such concerns is generally that electric car batteries are heavy and increase overall vehicle mass. A heavier vehicle needs more energy to drive it and so will typically increase emissions. A greater mass also reduces traffic safety and could have damaging impacts on parking spaces and roads.

    A critical review released yesterday took a closer look at these claims to see if they hold true in Australia. It finds these claims don’t stack up in a country where sales of fossil-fuelled (petrol, diesel, LPG) vehicles skew towards large and heavy utes and SUVs.

    When adjusted for actual top 10 vehicles sold and using realistic mass values, the average mass of battery electric and fossil-fuelled cars differs by just 68 kilograms. That difference is not significant, especially because electric cars are much more energy-efficient.

    Oversimplifying a complex topic

    The claims being made often oversimplify a complex reality. They tell only part of the story, which can be misleading.

    For instance, internal combustion engine cars have consistently increased in mass over time. Known as car obesity, this fact is often unfairly ignored in comparisons.

    Similarly, these statements pretend to know how complex consumer behaviour will respond to future availability of battery electric cars and their fast-changing and improving features. Often, the results of overseas studies cannot be directly applied to different Australian conditions.

    4 points of contention

    Our report identifies and unpacks four main points of contention.

    First, there are different ways to define and compare the mass of battery electric and combustion engine cars. In practice, the choice is rather arbitrary. Depending on the method, the comparison may be neither adequate nor accurate.

    Often the comparison is made between similar or similarly sized battery electric and combustion engine cars. Or electric cars can be compared only to an equivalent non-electric version of models such as the VW Golf. Another variation is to simply compare the average mass of a large range of cars currently on sale, without considering the impact of sales volumes.

    Second, a common argument is that batteries are heavy, so electric cars are heavier than fossil-fuelled cars. But this is simplistic – it’s not only the battery that matters.

    Offsetting the extra battery mass, other parts of the electric car such as their motors are smaller and lighter. They can cut its mass by up to 50%.

    And actual extra battery mass itself depends on a range of factors. Battery chemistry, battery size and energy storage capacity (which determines how often a car needs recharging) all affect the mass. Indeed, battery mass varies between 100 and 900 kilograms for cars.

    Third, car obesity has greatly and consistently increased fossil-fuelled car mass. Unless we include this rise in car obesity, the comparison with battery electric cars tells only half the story.

    Finally, it is challenging to accurately predict the mass impacts of electric cars. A common assumption is that future vehicle buyers’ behaviour does not change when switching to battery electric cars. This assumption seems unlikely and again oversimplifies the comparison.

    For instance, market availability, marketing focus, purchase price and performance characteristics will largely guide buyers’ decisions. These considerations are all highly dynamic. They are changing significantly and fast.

    So how do they compare in Australia?

    A proper comparison needs, at least, to include realistic vehicle mass and sales data. Our study compares the differences in vehicle mass between the top ten best-selling cars for both battery electric and fossil-fuelled vehicles in Australia in 2022, as shown below.

    Masses of the top 10 most popular new battery electric (top) and fossil-fuelled (bottom) passenger cars sold in Australia in 2022. Circle sizes represent sales volumes. The top-selling internal combustion engine car is the Toyota Hilux (64,391 sold). For pure battery electric cars it’s the Tesla Model 3 (10,877 sold). Vehicle mass is defined as ‘mass in running order’, adjusted for average vehicle occupancy.
    Author provided, Transport Energy/Emission Research (TER)

    Currently sold top 10 models of battery electric cars cluster more at the heavy end, but the most popular cars are relatively light. The top 10 models of fossil-fuelled cars have a larger spread in mass. Yet, when it comes to sales, most are relatively heavy SUVs or utes.

    When ranked by popularity and compared, battery electric cars are not always heavier. They can be almost 300kg (12%) lighter to almost 800kg (55%) heavier than the corresponding fossil-fuelled car. Importantly, the overall difference in the average mass of the two categories when adjusted for sales is just 68kg (about 3% of total vehicle mass).

    This small difference is insignificant in terms of energy and emission impacts. A more important factor here is the superior energy efficiency of battery electric vehicles.

    How will they compare in future?

    Clearly, future sales profiles may differ from current sales profiles. The current profile may be largely defined by a certain type of customer (such as a high-income early adopter). They might not be typical of mainstream consumers in coming years.

    Buyers’ future behaviour is uncertain and hard to predict. It would depend on the effectiveness of (new) policy measures such as Australia’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, the actual vehicles offered for sale, marketing efforts by car suppliers and possibly also cultural changes.

    Any shifts in buyer behaviour could greatly influence the car fleet’s average mass. They could continue the current trend towards larger and heavier vehicles, or shift to smaller and lighter vehicles.

    But this is the point: the impacts of electrification of passenger vehicles on average mass are highly uncertain. Statements on the matter are often speculative and can be unfairly biased by the methods used.

    In markets where heavy petrol and diesel vehicles dominate car sales, such as Australia and New Zealand, current evidence suggests increased electric car sales are unlikely to greatly increase average vehicle mass. In fact, average mass could actually go down as cheaper and lighter electric cars go on sale here.

    Vehicle mass remains important

    Importantly, the report is not downplaying the importance of vehicle mass for transport emission abatement.

    In previous research it was estimated that only a passenger vehicle fleet dominated by small and light battery electric vehicles may get Australia close to achieving the net-zero emissions target in 2050.

    To meet the target, it is thus important to reverse the trend of increasing car obesity, for all cars. But vehicle mass should not be used as an argument against electrification.

    Robin Smit is the founding Research Director at the Transport Energy/Emission Research (TER) consultancy.

    – ref. Do electric cars greatly increase the average mass of cars on the road? Not in Australia – https://theconversation.com/do-electric-cars-greatly-increase-the-average-mass-of-cars-on-the-road-not-in-australia-240555

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why do some schools still force girls to wear skirts or dresses?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kayla Mildren, PhD Candidate in the politics of school uniform policies, Griffith University

    A Queensland tribunal has ruled it is not discriminatory for a school to require girls to wear a skirt at formal events.

    The private high school said girls needed to wear skirts for occasions including excursions, ceremonies and class photographs.

    A female student had complained to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal about different treatment for boys and girls.

    While the tribunal acknowledged there was “different treatment between the sexes”, it found there was not enough evidence to show this was “unfavourable”.

    Why are female students still made to wear skirts and dresses? And why is this a problem?

    Who decides?

    In Australia, uniform rules are largely determined by individual schools.

    Schools have some obligations to their communities, governing bodies (such as state education departments and independent school peak bodies) and anti-discrimination legislation.

    For example, Victoria’s Education Department requires policies to include an exemption process and “support inclusion”.

    But ultimately, it’s up to the school to decide how their uniform looks, who can access different items, where and when items may be worn, and what non-uniform items are regulated.

    School uniforms are ultimately decided by the school.
    Monkey Business Images/ Shutterstock



    Read more:
    No mullets, no mohawks, no ‘awkwardly contrasting colours’: what are school policies on hair and why do they matter so much?

    The pants question

    Pants occupy an odd space here. For public schools, most state education departments require girls to have the option of pants (which can include shorts or trousers), for both sport and regular uniforms.

    This is a relatively new standard. For example, Queensland introduced this in 2019 and New South Wales allowed it from mid-2018.

    Often, these changes were prompted by sustained campaigning by families and lobby groups.

    But private schools do not have the same obligations. Some are starting to update their policies and allow girls to wear shorts or pants if they choose.

    Others, however, have been met with conservative backlash when they do.

    So, when can girls wear pants?

    Girls’ access to pants is not as straightforward as a school including them within the uniform policy.

    As researchers note, simply allowing girls to wear pants may not be enough. If school cultures are not welcoming, or if the design is uncomfortable, girls may still avoid them.

    Or, as can be the case with private schools, a school may offer pants on a limited basis, such as only during winter. Alternatively, there may be a special order process for pants, making them difficult to obtain.

    Or schools may permit their use, except on special occasions such as photo days or excursions, like the Queensland case.

    Why does it matter?

    The skirt itself isn’t the issue. The element of choice is.

    As researchers note, skirts and dresses are linked to outdated expectations of modesty and femininity. They can be targets of fetish and harassment, and entrench binary ideals of gender.

    Flexible policies support gender-diverse youth and enable all students to select uniform items based on their body rather than their gender. Research shows offering students pants or shorts can also promote physical activity.

    These school uniform debates are also taking place amid concerns about misogyny and harassment of female students and teachers in schools and concern for queer young people’s wellbeing.

    The longer gender-normativity is baked into school policies, the longer students are denied their right to equitable education. And the longer that schools promote the idea of “girl” and “boy” as opposite and concrete categories, the harder it will be to combat schoolyard misogyny and queerphobia.

    Kayla Mildren 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.

    – ref. Why do some schools still force girls to wear skirts or dresses? – https://theconversation.com/why-do-some-schools-still-force-girls-to-wear-skirts-or-dresses-241484

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI Global: B.C. election tells the tale of two British Columbias divided along ideological fault lines

    Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Philip Resnick, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, University of British Columbia

    The British Columbia election has turned out to be a nail-biter. Throughout the four-week campaign, the polls predicted a very close race between the incumbent NDP led by David Eby and a newly rejuvenated Conservative Party under the leadership of John Rustad. Those polls turned out to be accurate as no clear winner has emerged in the hours after British Columbians cast their ballots.

    The B.C. Liberal Party, a right-of-centre amalgam of Liberal and Conservative voters federally that had ruled the province between 2001-2017, disappeared from the scene, resulting in a political realignment — New Democrats vs. Conservatives — and matching what has become the norm in Canada’s three other western provinces.

    As I write this, the NDP leads or is elected in 46 seats, the Conservatives in 45, with the Green Party’s two elected members holding the balance of power. The results are so close in several ridings that it may be at least another week for outstanding mail ballots to come in and recounts to occur before knowing the definitive result.

    Parallels to previous elections

    In one way, the 2024 election is a repeat of the 2017 vote, when the B.C. Liberals and the NDP were just two seats apart. The Greens threw their three seats behind the NDP to pave the way for an NDP government. The same may well prove to be the case this time around once the dust has settled.

    In another way, this election is reminiscent of 1952, when a newly led Social Credit party under W.A.C. Bennett came out of nowhere to topple the old-line Liberal and Conservative parties, edge out the CCF (the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) — predecessor to today’s NDP — by a single seat and go on to rule the province for a full 20 years.



    Read more:
    How the British Columbia election is being haunted by the ghosts of 1952

    In 1951, Bennett had broken with his party, the Conservatives, to sit as an Independent MLA. Rustad had been turfed out of his party, the B.C. Liberals, to sit as an Independent MLA, before assuming the leadership of a B.C.’s dormant Conservative Party. The Conservatives had not held a seat in the provincial legislature for almost 50 years, and had last won a provincial election in 1928.

    Yet in 2024, with 43.5 per cent of the popular vote compared to the NDP’s 44.5 per cent, Rustad’s party is a major contender for power.

    Geographical and ideological divides

    What the election results ultimately show is that there are two British Columbias. The NDP tends to dominate on the coast, with a clear majority of the seats in the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island. The Conservatives dominate the B.C. Interior of the province, with a fair sprinkling of suburban seats in the Lower Mainland as well.

    Beyond the geographical divide lies a deeper ideological one. In some ways it parallels the old divide between a more free-enterprise oriented party and one with a stronger commitment to the welfare state. Rustad said as much in his speech on election night. But there is more to the story than that.

    The NDP, after all, has become much more of a centrist party than it was previously, in particular when it governed the province under Dave Barrett between 1972 and 1975.

    It’s no accident that in the 2024 election, no small number of federal Liberal supporters voiced their support for the NDP rather than the Conservatives. With respect to issues like gun control, protection of the environment, reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples or vaccine mandates during pandemics, their views align more closely with the NDP than the Conservatives.

    The Conservatives, on the other hand, spoke to the frustrations many British Columbians feel in terms of the housing affordability crisis, the serious shortcomings in the province’s health-care system and the toxic drug crisis in B.C. cities. Eby admitted as much in his own election night speech.

    The B.C. Conservatives’ call for change echoed what federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been saying at the federal level. Not surprisingly, support for the Conservatives provincially closely matches for support for the federal Conservatives in the province.

    Governing from the centre

    British Columbia is clearly polarized politically, a phenomenon we’re seeing even more distinctly south of the border and in various European countries.

    The task of governing from the centre — on the assumption that the NDP and Greens reach a confidence-and-supply agreement — may therefore prove a more challenging one than before due to a much empowered Conservative opposition.

    But had the Conservatives won a clear mandate to govern, they would have faced significant opposition from the more liberal-minded sections of the population given some of the party’s hard-line positions on unabashed resource development, Indigenous reconciliation and the role of private versus public providers in the health-care system.

    Such is the state of play in Canada’s westernmost province.

    Philip Resnick 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.

    – ref. B.C. election tells the tale of two British Columbias divided along ideological fault lines – https://theconversation.com/b-c-election-tells-the-tale-of-two-british-columbias-divided-along-ideological-fault-lines-241767

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: What does class mean today in Britain? Podcast

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Laura Hood, Host, Know Your Place podcast, The Conversation

    Gig economy workers take a break in Chinatow, London. Shutterstock/Grant Rooney

    Social class continues to influence British people’s opportunities and the way they think about them, even if the boundaries between those classes have shifted.

    In the third part of Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics, a podcast series from The Conversation Documentaries, we explore how class is defined and measured, and how the UK’s changing class identity interacts with identity politics.

    Over the course of the last half century, there’s been a big shift in the make up of the labour market, and a decline in what are traditionally considered working class jobs, such as in manufacturing. And yet, data from the annual British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey run by the National Centre for Social Research, found that 52% of people identify as working class compared with 43% who identify as middle class.

    According to Oliver Heath, professor of politics at Royal Holloway University of London, who co-authored the chapter on class for the BSA report in 2023, people still think about themselves in class terms to exactly the same degree as they did 40 years ago.

    There’s been no decline in terms of whether people think of themselves as identifying with a class, and no decline in whether they identify with being working class or not. So that seems remarkably stable and if anything showed some signs of actually increasing.

    The growth of self-employment, and in particular the gig economy, has disrupted the UK’s traditional class structure, according to Daniel Evans, a lecturer of criminology, sociology and social policy at Swansea University.

    The size of the formally self-employed has absolutely exploded. It’s close to about 5 million,  which is coming very close to the size of the entire public sector. This is absolutely unprecedented. In the early 1970s, it was about 1 million self-employed people.

    Evans argues this has also muddled what it means to be part of the petit bourgeoisie, someone who own the means of your own production in a Marxist sense.

    So many people are doing almost like bogus forms of self-employment. Whereas in the past, lots and lots of people are doing this voluntarily, a lot of working class people aspired to join the ranks of the self-employed because they wanted to be their own boss … more and more people have been forced, basically, into self-employment.

    Education, education, education

    Amid these shifts, education has become a dominant force in recent years, overriding class defined by occupation or income as the most influential factor in voter behaviour. According to Paula Surridge, professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, this was true for the Brexit vote too, she says.

    Education is a stronger predictor of Brexit vote than class, with those with degree or higher level education more likely to vote remain than those with lower level qualifications. And the reason for that is the Brexit vote was primarily driven by a set of social values that don’t relate to economics.

    Town and gown: Britain’s modern political divide.
    Shutterstock

    This can be a tricky dynamic to talk about. The education divide is not a term intended to deliver a value judgement but describes two distinct experiences of life. The university population in the UK has exploded since the 1990s and going to university has a profound effect on a person’s outlook, according to John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde and senior research fellow at Natcen:

    The experience of university, where people get mixed with people from diverse backgrounds, they’re encouraged, particularly in the humanities, to be critically reflective about culture, etc. that that seems to create a rather more socially liberal ambience.

    For more analysis, listen to the full episode of Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics on The Conversation Documentaries.

    A transcript is available on Apple Podcasts.

    Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics is produced and mixed by Anouk Millet for The Conversation. It’s supported by the National Centre for Social Research.

    Newsclips in the episode from BBC Newsnight, Financial Times, The Frost Report, CBC News, Sky News, France24 English, AP Archive, BBC News, Official Jeremy Corbyn Channel and Channel 4 News.

    Listen to The Conversation Documentaries via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.

    John Curtice receives funding from UKRI-ESRC. Tim Bale has previously received funding for research on the Conservative Party and party members from the Leverhulme Trust and from the Economic and Social Research Council. Oliver Heath 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. Paula Surridge 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. Daniel Evans 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. Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics is supported by the National Centre for Social Research.

    – ref. What does class mean today in Britain? Podcast – https://theconversation.com/what-does-class-mean-today-in-britain-podcast-241412

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Toothbrushes and showerheads covered in viruses ‘unlike anything we’ve seen before’ – new study

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Primrose Freestone, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Microbiology, University of Leicester

    Toothbrushes and showerheads in American homes are teeming with viruses known as bacteriophages (bacteria eaters), a new study has found. Many of these “phages” – as they’re known for short – have never been identified before.

    The researchers, from Northwestern University in Illinois, swabbed 92 showerheads and 36 toothbrushes. They described what they found as “unlike anything we’ve seen before” and “absolutely wild”. But how alarming is this finding? And what should you do to remain safe?

    It is increasingly recognised that wherever you look for microbial species (viruses and bacteria) you will probably find them, particularly in damp places where they thrive, such as showerheads and toothbrushes. The fact that bacteria-infecting viruses were found in great numbers on showerheads and toothbrushes should not come as a surprise. Where there are bacteria, there will inevitably be viruses that infect them.

    People’s homes are host to a variety of microbial communities, which include bacteria, viruses, fungi and protozoa. And it has been known for over a decade that showerheads and their hoses can harbour various bacterial species. These include ones that can cause ill health, such as mycobacteria, which can cause respiratory infections, Legionella which causes legionnaire’s disease and Pontiac fever, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause ear and eye infections.

    Showerheads

    These bacteria have been found on showerheads at levels over 100 times those found in tap water.

    In showerheads, there will inevitably be viruses that infect the bacteria found on them. And the more species of bacteria there are, the greater the diversity of phages likely to be present.

    The presence of a microscopic ecosystem in your showerhead also means every time you shower, you are coating yourself in the showerhead bacteria and their related phage viruses. And this is an infection risk.

    To disinfect your showerhead, soak it in vinegar. It has the added benefit of removing any limescale.

    Unscrew the showerhead, brush off any soap residue, and place the showerhead in a plastic bag or other container with enough undiluted white vinegar to cover the item. Leave it for up to two hours.

    Rinse the showerhead well after taking it out of the vinegar solution, and repeat every month or so, depending on usage.

    Toothbrushes

    The researchers at Northwestern University also looked at phages inhabiting regularly used toothbrushes. Unsurprisingly, they also found a diversity of phages on the brush heads.

    During brushing, toothbrushes come into contact with structures in the mouth (gum, teeth, tongue, cheeks, uvula and palates). And each of these is home to hundreds of species of bacteria and other microbes.

    Oral microbes play an important role in keeping the mouth healthy by excluding harmful germs (pathogens), helping digest food, and regulating the working of the heart and immune system.

    The bacterial diversity of the mouth and tooth microbiomes will, as the US study found, influence the diversity of phages deposited onto toothbrushes.

    The study provides an interesting snapshot of the diversity of the oral micro-ecosystems (bacteria and viruses) that are deposited on toothbrushes but may cause some people to worry that the microbes on their toothbrushes are a potential source of infection.

    The toothbrush viruses identified were bacterial, not human viruses so they are not a health concern. However, while toothbrush microbes are not a risk to the toothbrush owner, as the microbes on it are their own, they can cause infections in others if a toothbrush is shared. One person’s harmless oral microbes can be another’s pathogens, leading to illnesses ranging from colds to endocarditis (a life-threatening inflammation of the heart’s inner lining).

    Phages explained.

    It is a good idea to clean your toothbrush regularly. The NHS advises running it under the hot tap for about 30 seconds, followed by air drying.

    Other websites advise soaking toothbrush heads in antibacterial mouthwash or denture cleaners. For electric toothbrushes, you should follow the manufacturer’s cleaning guidance.

    The take-home message from the Northwestern study is that we live in a richly microbial world and that interactions with bacteria and other microbes in our homes are an integral part of our human biology. Also, despite many new phage species being discovered, there is no cause for alarm – as long as you follow the advice above and keep your showerhead and toothbrush clean.

    Primrose Freestone 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.

    – ref. Toothbrushes and showerheads covered in viruses ‘unlike anything we’ve seen before’ – new study – https://theconversation.com/toothbrushes-and-showerheads-covered-in-viruses-unlike-anything-weve-seen-before-new-study-241072

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –