Despite serving as crucial guardians of biodiversity, traditional communities continue to be systematically excluded from developing and managing protected areas. This often subtle, silent exclusion has fueled persistent, complex socio-environmental conflicts, harming both conservation and the welfare of Indigenous peoples, riverside populations, Afro-Brazilian quilombola communities, and smallholder farmers.
A recent study, “Socio-environmental Conflicts and Traditional Communities in Protected Areas: A Scientometric Analysis,” published in the Journal for Nature Conservation, mapped how scientific literature has examined these conflicts over time.
Researchers from the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA), the Federal University of Pará (UFPA), the University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (UNILAB), and the Vale Institute of Technology (ITV) collaborated on the study as part of the National Institute of Science and Technology in Synthesis of Amazonian Biodiversity (INCT-SynBiAm) and the Eastern Amazon Biodiversity Research Program (PPBio-AmOr).
The team reviewed 263 scientific articles published worldwide between 1990 and August 2024, sourced from Scopus and Web of Science. Their analysis revealed significant gaps in research on this topic and offered recommendations for more just, inclusive, and effective management of protected territories.
What does science reveal about these conflicts?
The research shows not only a rise in conflicts involving traditional communities and protected zones, but also their diversity. The main sources of tension are:
1. Access to subsistence resources: Local prohibitions—often unilaterally enacted—restrict fishing, hunting, gathering, and subsistence agriculture, all vital for food and income. These constraints sever longstanding traditions of sustainable resource use, leading to food insecurity and marginalization.
2. Exclusionary management of protected areas: Community voices are rarely included in decisions about protected area creation or management. The absence of prior consultation and disregard for traditional knowledge often yield policies disconnected from local realities. Such centralized management breeds resentment and undermines conservation; participatory governance is essential to socio-environmental justice.
A study in Chile involving Aymaras, Atacameñas, and Mapuche-Huilliches communities found that while participatory practices and technical support from the CONAF forest agency improved perceptions, dissatisfaction persists due to initial exclusion. Many continue to assert ancestral land rights and demand meaningful input, highlighting the urgent need to build trust and align conservation with social justice.
3. Conflicts involving wildlife: Local communities contend with damaged crops, attacks on domestic animals, and even threats to personal safety. Large mammals such as elephants, lions, jaguars, and buffalo are the main culprits. Habitat loss and depleted food sources exacerbate these incidents. Peaceful coexistence requires inclusive, context-specific solutions.
4. Territorial disputes and land rights: Many protected areas overlap with territories long used by traditional peoples. Disavowed land rights provoke legal battles, forced displacement, and greater insecurity, compounding social challenges. Formal recognition of collective land title is key to reducing conflict and ensuring autonomy; these disputes exemplify the global fight for territorial justice.
In Mexico, a recent study documents the impact of land privatization, livestock expansion, plantations, and urbanization in the protected areas of Veracruz, Chiapas, and Morelos. It generated a land market that is disrupting Indigenous and peasant communities and threatening both their territories and forest conservation.
5. Cultural and socioeconomic disruption: Establishing protected areas can upend ways of life rooted in symbolic, generational relationships with nature. Prohibiting customary practices disrupts rituals, beliefs, and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge, silently eroding local cultures.
In the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, studies have noted frequent friction between Indigenous groups, recreational visitors, and managing agencies. Issues include access to sacred sites and resources on traditional lands, visitor infrastructure, permitted activities, and even place names.
6. Lack of recognition and real participation: When communities are denied a voice in decisions, historical inequities deepen, fueling conflict. Despite legal progress, many traditional groups remain excluded from governance. Without meaningful participation, environmental policy fails to address local needs—highlighting the urgent need for community leadership and real power-sharing in conservation.
Italy’s Monti Sibillini National Park in the Central Apennines offers an instructive case: rural depopulation has coincided with rising friction between environmental managers and locals. Imposed bureaucratic guidelines, unresponsiveness to community aspirations, and challenging collaboration between the park and municipalities have generated mutual frustration and hostility. This underscores the need for “knowledge democracy” and truly participatory stewardship that respects diverse ways of living on the land.
Within Brazil, the same types of socio-environmental strife observed worldwide are especially acute in national protected areas. Research shows that even in sustainably managed zones like Extractive Reserves, communities regularly face resource restrictions and limited decision-making power—a recipe for lingering resentment and compromised conservation. Centralized authority and denial of customary land rights often lead to drawn-out disputes, mirroring patterns across the Global South.
These findings highlight Brazil’s urgent need for strong co-management models—mechanisms that value local knowledge and foster territorial justice.
Such tensions cluster in nature reserves and national parks, where regulatory regimes often disregard local lifeways and worldviews. Although the law guarantees consultation and participation mechanisms like free, prior, and informed consultation, they are often ignored or implemented ineffectively.
Another key finding: 66.54% of studies focused on non-Indigenous populations, while only 16.73% examined Indigenous peoples exclusively. This imbalance exposes the under-representation of research attentive to the full range of traditional communities.
Such gaps hinder efforts to understand these peoples’ rich cultural and ecological realities—and in turn, weakens recognition of their expertise and the value of their knowledge for global biodiversity conservation. Scientific consensus now affirms the vital role these communities play in preservation, yet too often they are treated as problems to be managed, not as collaborative partners.
Why does conservation demand inclusion?
Ensuring traditional communities participate in planning and stewarding protected lands is not only a matter of justice, but fundamental to effective conservation. Sustainable outcomes depend on their involvement. This study underscores the urgent need for public policies that are both inclusive and tailored to local conditions, embedding traditional knowledge as an indispensable part of conservation solutions, not as an obstacle.
Worldwide, co-management experiments show that community involvement fosters compliance with conservation rules, improves governance, and delivers stronger socio-environmental benefits.
Shifting the focus to Amazonian science
While most studies reviewed focus on countries in the Global South—like Brazil and India—research production is dominated by institutions in the Global North. This reflects persistent “parachute science”: fieldwork by foreign scientists in rich biodiversity zones, often excluding local scientists and communities from the research process. Such projects often leave little local benefit, treating Amazonian residents as data collectors or study subjects.
To address this, efforts must shift toward empowering Amazonian scientific institutions and researchers, strengthening their role in shaping conservation and research agendas, and realizing epistemic justice. Investments are especially needed in institutions serving remote, often overlooked regions of the Amazon.
With robust support, these institutions can fill crucial gaps—producing research attuned to local realities, expanding our understanding of Amazonian ecosystems, and inspiring new generations of scientists.
Researchers living and working in the Amazon possess deep, context-sensitive knowledge of the territory, enabling them to pose more relevant questions and craft solutions suited to regional challenges and opportunities. Their scholarship, in ongoing dialogue with both environment and community, enriches global science and yields practical advances that matter for daily life in the forest.
Proximity to Indigenous, riverside, and urban populations also enables more authentic community participation in research. When research projects originate from local priorities and perspectives, they strengthen communities, help protect biodiversity, and affirm the possibility of uniting science, social justice, and climate action.
Leandro Juen has a productivity grant from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), research projects funded by CNPq, the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), the Amazon Foundation for Studies and Research (FAPESPA) and the BRC Biodiversity Consortium.
Everton Silva, Fernando Abreu Oliveira, Fernando Geraldo de Carvalho, James Ferreira Moura Junior, José Max B. Oliveira-Junior, Karina Dias-Silva e Mayerly Alexandra Guerrero Moreno não presta consultoria, trabalha, possui ações ou recebe financiamento de qualquer empresa ou organização que poderia se beneficiar com a publicação deste artigo e não revelou nenhum vínculo relevante além de seu cargo acadêmico.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Joshua Lens, Associate Professor of Instruction of Sport & Recreation Management, University of Iowa
Former Arizona State University swimmer Grant House is one of the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit filed against the NCAA.Mike Comer/NCAA Photos via Getty Images
The business of college sports was upended after a federal judge approved a settlement between the NCAA and former college athletes on June 6, 2025.
After a lengthy litigation process, the NCAA has agreed to provide US$2.8 billion in back pay to former and current college athletes, while allowing schools to directly pay athletes for the first time.
Joshua Lens, whose scholarship centers on the intersection of sports, business and the law, tells the story of this settlement and explains its significance within the rapidly changing world of college sports.
What will change for players and schools with this settlement?
The terms of the settlement included the following changes:
The NCAA and conferences will distribute approximately $2.8 billion in media rights revenue back pay to thousands of athletes who competed since 2016.
Universities will have the ability to enter name, image and likeness, or NIL, agreements with student-athletes. So schools can now, for example, pay them to appear in ads for the school or for public appearances.
Each university that opts in to the settlement can disburse up to $20.5 million to student-athletes in the 2025-26 academic year, a number that will likely rise in future academic years.
Athletes’ NIL agreements with certain individuals and entities will be subject to an evaluation that will determine whether the NIL compensation exceeds an acceptable range based on a perceived fair market value, which could result in the athlete having to restructure or forego the deal.
The NCAA’s maximum sport program scholarship limits will be replaced with maximum team roster size limits for universities that choose to be part of the settlement.
Why did the NCAA agree to settle with, rather than fight, the plaintiffs?
In 2020, roughly 14,000 current and former college athletes filed a class action lawsuit, House v. NCAA, seeking damages for past restrictions on their ability to earn money.
For decades, college athletics’ primary governing body, the NCAA, permitted universities whose athletics programs compete in Division I to provide their athletes with scholarships that would help cover their educational expenses, such as tuition, room and board, fees and books. By focusing only on educational expenses, the NCAA was able to reinforce the notion that collegiate athletes are amateurs who may not receive pay for participating in athletics, despite making money for their schools.
A year later, in 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in a separate case, Alston v. NCAA, that the NCAA violated antitrust laws by limiting the amount of education-related benefits, such as laptops, books and musical instruments, that universities could provide to their athletes. The ruling challenged the NCAA’s amateurism model while opening the door for future lawsuits tied to athlete compensation.
It also burnished the plaintiffs’ case in House v. NCAA, compelling college athletics’ governing body to take part in settlement talks.
What were some of the key changes that took place in college sports after the Supreme Court’s decision in Alston v. NCAA?
Following Alston, the NCAA permitted universities to dole out several thousand dollars in what’s called “education benefits pay” to student-athletes. This could include cash bonuses for maintaining a certain GPA or simply satisfying NCAA academic eligibility requirements.
But contrary to popular belief, the Supreme Court’s Alston decision didn’t let college athletes be paid via NIL deals. The NCAA continued to maintain that this would violate its principles of amateurism.
With over a dozen states looking to pass similar laws, the NCAA folded on June 30, 2021, changing its policy so athletes could accept NIL compensation for the first time.
Will colleges and universities be able to weather all of these financial commitments?
Universities and their athletics departments, on the other hand, will have to reallocate resources or cut spending. Some will cut back on travel expenses for some sports, others have paused facility renovations, while other athletic departments may resort to cutting sports whose revenue does not exceed their expenses.
As Texas A&M University athletic director Trev Alberts has explained, however, that college sports does not have a revenue problem – it has a spending problem. Even in the well-resourced Southeastern Conference, for example, many universities’ athletics expenses exceed its revenue.
Do you see any future conflicts on the horizon?
Many observers hope the settlement brings stability to the industry. But there’s always a chance that the settlement will be appealed.
More potential challenges could involve Title IX, the federal gender equity statute that prohibits discrimination based on sex in schools.
What if, for example, a university subject to the statute distributes the vast majority of revenue to male athletes? Such a scenario could violate Title IX.
NCAA President Charlie Baker, who has served in his role since 2023, has overseen major changes in conference governance and athlete compensation. David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
On the other hand, a university that more equitably distributes revenue among male and female athletes could face legal backlash from football athletes who argue that they should be entitled to more revenue, since their games earn the big bucks.
And as I pointed out in a recent law review article, an athlete or university may challenge
the new enforcement process that will attempt to limit athletes’ NIL compensation within an acceptable range that is based on a fair market valuation.
The NCAA and the conferences named in the lawsuit have hired the accountancy firm Deloitte to determine whether athletes’ compensation from NIL deals fall within an acceptable range based on a fair market valuation, looking to other collegiate and professional athletes to set a benchmark range. If athletes and universities have struck deals that are too generous, both could be penalized, according to the terms of the settlement.
Finally, the settlement does not address – let alone solve – issues facing international student-athletes who want to earn money via NIL. Most international student-athletes’ visas, and the laws regulating them, heavily limit their ability to accept compensation for work, including NIL pay. Some lawmakers have tried to address this issue in the past, but it hasn’t been a priority for the NCAA, as it has lobbied Congress for a federal NIL law.
Joshua Lens owns The Compliance Group, which provides NCAA compliance consulting services for universities and conferences.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kendall Deas, Assistant Professor of Education Policy, Law, and Politics, University of South Carolina
Originally developed as a tool to help Black children attend better schools, school voucher programs now serve a different purpose.Drazen via Getty Images
School voucher programs that allow families to use public funds to pay tuition to attend private schools have become increasingly popular.
The first vouchers were offered in the 1800s to help children in sparsely populated towns in rural Vermont and Maine attend classes in public and private schools in nearby districts.
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, in which justices ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional, segregationists used vouchers to avoid school integration.
More recently, school voucher programs have been pitched as a tool to provide children from low-income families with quality education options.
As a scholar who specializes in education policy, law and politics, I can share how current policies have strayed from efforts to support low-income Black children.
History of school voucher programs
Over time, as school voucher policies grew in popularity, they evolved into education subsidies for middle-class families. Peter Dazeley/Getty Images
Research from education history scholars shows that more recent support for school choice was not anchored in an agenda to privatize public schools but rooted in a mission to support Black students.
Over time, as school voucher policies grew in popularity, they evolved into subsidies for middle-class families to send their children to private and parochial schools.
School choice policies have also expanded to include education savings account programs and vouchers funded by tax credit donations.
School voucher programs can negatively impact the quality of public schools serving Black students. Connect Images via Getty Images
States looking to add or expand school choice and voucher programs have adopted language from civil rights activists pushing for equal access to quality education for all children. For example, they contend that school choice is a civil right all families and students should have as U.S. citizens. But school voucher programs can exclude Black students and harm public schools serving Black students in a host of ways, research shows.
Since the Brown v. Board ruling, school voucher programs have been linked to racial segregation. These programs were at times used to circumvent integration efforts: They allowed white families to transfer their children out of diverse public schools into private schools.
For example, private schools that receive voucher funding are not always required to adopt the same antidiscrimination policies as public schools.
School voucher programs can also negatively impact the quality of public schools serving Black students.
As some of the best and brightest students leave to attend private or parochial ones, public schools in communities serving Black students often face declining enrollments and reduced resources.
In cities such as Macon, Georgia, families say that majority Black schools lack resources because so many families use the state’s voucher-style program to attend mostly white private schools.
Moreover, the cost of attending a private or parochial school can be so expensive that even with a school voucher, Black families still struggle to afford the cost of sending children to these schools.
Vouchers can siphon school funding
Voucher programs can disproportionately affect funding in majority Black school districts. kali9/Getty Images
Research from the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., shows that voucher programs in Ohio result in majority Black school systems such as the Cleveland Metropolitan School District losing millions in education funding.
Another example is the Marion County School District, a South Carolina system where about 77% of students are Black.
Marion County is in the heart of the region of the state known as the “Corridor of Shame,” known for its inadequate funding and its levels of poor student achievement. The 17 counties along the corridor are predominantly minority communities, with high poverty rates and poor public school funding because of the area’s low tax base due to a lack of industry.
On average, South Carolina school districts spent an estimated US$18,842 per student during the 2024-25 school year.
In Marion County, per-student funding was $16,463 during the 2024-2025 school year.
By comparison, in Charleston County, the most affluent in the state, per-student funding was more than $26,000.
Returning voucher policy to its roots
Rather than focus on school choice and voucher programs that take money away from public schools serving Black students, I argue that policymakers should address systemic inequities in education to ensure that all students have access to a quality education.
Establishing restrictions on the use of funds and requiring preferences for low-income Black students could help direct school voucher policies back toward their intent.
It would also be beneficial to expand and enforce civil rights laws to prevent discrimination against Black students.
These measures would help ensure all students, regardless of background, have access to quality education.
Kendall Deas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Yet as fascination with America’s founding endures, controversy colors how the revolution is taught across the United States. From contested efforts by The New York Times “1619 Project” to put slavery at the center of America’s story, to attempts to limit teaching about race and racism, partisanship surrounds the teaching of American history. Anniversaries can inspire public passion, but they can also open old wounds.
As an American historian and a naturalized citizen of the United States, I regard the American Revolution with both personal and professional interest. The fact that I grew up in the United Kingdom amuses my students to no end whenever we discuss the Revolutionary War. Sometimes, in my British-accented English, I remind them I did not personally grow up with King George. Teaching history is encouraging students to think critically about the past without dictating what emotions they should feel – patriotic or otherwise.
Sadly, in the U.S., the sort of objective historical knowledge once taken for granted now appears to be waning. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, just 13% of eighth graders in 2023 ranked “proficient” in American history. A 2010 survey found that 26% of adults could not identify from whom America declared its independence, with China, Mexico and France among the responses.
America divorcing France would have been news to Gilbert du Motier, better known as the Marquis de Lafayette. His commitment to the new country not only helped secure its independence, but it also helped solidify American identity decades later.
Key alliance
A privileged aristocrat who served in both the American and French revolutions, Lafayette went to war at age 19. Commissioning and equipping his own expedition across the Atlantic in 1777, he fought in many battles against the British, including decisive action at Yorktown. Earning George Washington’s confidence, Lafayette attained the rank of major general in the Continental Army.
‘The reception of Lafayette at Mount Vernon, home of Washington,’ painted by Herman Bencke around 1875. Bencke & Scott/Library of Congress
Lafayette’s enrollment in the U.S. military predated the 1778 alliance between his home country and the United States. Eventually, France’s alliance turned the tide against Great Britain on land and at sea. By the war’s end, the French had supplied some 12,000 soldiers, 22,000 sailors and dozens of warships to the American cause, plus huge financial resources. When Lafayette volunteered, however, he was one of just a few foreign volunteers – and the most acclaimed.
“Nowadays,” as historian Sarah Vowell conceded, Americans think of Lafayette as “a place, not a person.” But an abundance of cities, counties and thoroughfares named after the revolutionary hero attest to his former celebrity. During World War I, U.S. troops sailed to France under the slogan “Lafayette here we come,” promising to repay America’s debt of gratitude to France.
A growing country
Older Americans may recall the U.S. bicentennial of 1976, marked with much pageantry and even a state visit by Queen Elizabeth II. America’s semicentennial, however – the 50th anniversary of independence – played a far greater role shaping the idea of America in the minds of its citizens.
Lafayette starred in the buildup to this 1826 commemoration, the first of its kind at the national level. President James Monroe, a fellow veteran of the War of Independence, invited Lafayette to be “the guest of America,” honored as the last living major general of the Continental Army. Beginning in July 1824, at the age of 66, Lafayette embarked on a triumphal tour of all 24 states then comprising the union – nearly double the original 13.
As Lafayette headed west, borne by horse-drawn carriage, steamboat and canal barge, he journeyed across a changing America. Nowhere was America’s economic and demographic growth more evident than Cincinnati, where a crowd of 50,000 welcomed Lafayette in May 1825. Once a small frontier town, Cincinnati was growing faster than any comparably sized city in the nation: Its population increased from around 15,000 to roughly 115,000 in the quarter century following Lafayette’s visit.
He addressed his audience with emotion: “The highest reward that can be bestowed on a revolutionary veteran is to welcome him with a sight of the blessings which have issued from our struggle for independence, freedom and equal rights.”
Lafayette gave human face to America’s national commemoration. He granted citizens of frontier states like Ohio – hitherto excluded from the revolutionary narrative – license to celebrate themselves. High turnouts in western stops such as Cincinnati reflected enthusiasm for grand spectacles. They also reflected the growth of America’s print media, which had advertised his visit, and improved transportation in formerly remote regions of the country.
Lafayette’s tour culminated with a September 1825 state banquet in Washington, D.C., hosted by the new president, John Quincy Adams. Adams – the son of America’s second president, John Adams – praised “that tie of love, stronger than death,” connecting Lafayette “for the endless ages of time, with the name of Washington.”
Rose-colored glasses
The enthusiasm that welcomed Lafayette 200 years ago was authentic. But like all good history lessons, Lafayette’s legacy is open to interpretation.
His grand tour cemented the myth of “the Era of Good Feelings”: a golden age of American political harmony. In reality, the seeds of America’s civil war were already evident. Missouri’s 1820 admission to the union threatened the country’s precarious balance between states that opposed slavery and states that allowed it – a crisis Thomas Jefferson warned was “a fire bell in the night.”
Likewise, Lafayette’s lionization in the western United States coincided with the ongoing forced removal of Indigenous people. Ohio, for example, forcibly removed its last Native American tribe in 1843.
Despite the uses and abuses of historical memory and the aversion of modern historians toward hero-worship, Lafayette remains a charismatic figure – a “citizen of two worlds” who championed both abolitionism and women’s rights. I believe his fading public memory indicates a troubling amnesia. America’s anniversary offers the opportunity to reconsider his legacy, alongside revolutionary stories of Americans from all walks of life.
As Lafayette wrote home following the British army’s surrender in 1781: “Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.”
Matthew Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
When people use the term “Orwellian,” it’s not a good sign.
It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power.
It’s a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications inevitably connect to both the future and the past.
But while Orwell believed in the existence of an objective truth about history, he did not necessarily believe that truth would prevail.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to determine whether ‘public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties … have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history.’ Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Winners write the history
During World War II, the Nazis broadcast reports on German radio describing nonexistent air raids over Britain.
Orwell knew about those reports and wrote: “Now, we are aware that those raids did not happen. But what use would our knowledge be if the Germans conquered Britain? For the purposes of a future historian, did those raids happen, or didn’t they?”
The answer, Orwell wrote, was, “If Hitler survives, they happened, and if he falls, they didn’t happen. So with innumerable other events of the past ten or twenty years. … In no case do you get one answer which is universally accepted because it is true: in each case you get a number of totally incompatible answers, one of which is finally adopted as the result of a physical struggle. History is written by the winners.”
As Orwell wrote in “1984,” his final, dystopian novel, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
Power, Orwell appreciated, allowed those who possessed it to create their own historical narrative. It also allowed those in power to silence or censor opposing narratives, quashing the possibility of productive dialogue about history that could ultimately allow truth to come out.
The Ministry of Truth
The desire to eradicate counternarratives drives Winston Smith’s job at the ironically named Ministry of Truth in “1984.”
The novel is set in Oceania, a geographical entity covering North America and the British Isles and which governs much of the Global South.
Oceania is an absolute tyranny governed by Big Brother, the leader of a political party whose only goal is the perpetuation of its own power. In this society, truth is what Big Brother and the party say it is.
The regime imposes near total censorship so that not only dissident speech but subversive private reflection, or “thought crime,” is viciously prosecuted. In this way, it controls the present.
But it also controls the past. As the party’s protean policy evolves, Smith and his colleagues are tasked with systematically destroying any historical records that conflict with the current version of history. Smith literally disposes of artifacts of inexpedient history by throwing them down “memory holes,” where they are “wiped … out of existence and out of memory.”
At a key point in the novel, Smith recalls briefly holding on to a newspaper clipping that proved that an enemy of the regime had not actually committed the crime he had been accused of. Smith recognizes the power over the regime that this clipping gives him, but he simultaneously fears that power will make him a target. In the end, fear of retaliation leads him to drop the slip of newsprint down a memory hole.
The contemporary U.S. is a far cry from Orwell’s Oceania. Yet the Trump administration is doing its best to exert control over the present and the past.
As part of efforts to purge references to gay people, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the removal of gay rights advocate Harvey Milk’s name from a Navy ship. Screenshot, Military.com
Other erasures have included the deletion of content on government sites related to the life of Harriet Tubman, the Maryland woman who escaped slavery and then played a pioneering role as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to freedom.
The administration also directed the removal of content concerning the Tuskegee Airmen, the group of African American pilots who flew missions in World War II.
Over the past several months, many of Trump’s opponents have bemoaned the fecklessness of the Democratic Party in mounting an effective opposition to the president’s agenda.
Current proponents of the “anti-woke” agenda at both the federaland state level are focused on reshaping educational curricula in a way that will make it inconceivable for future generations to question their historical claims.
Orwell’s “1984” ends with an appendix on the history of “Newspeak,” Oceania’s official language, which, while it had not yet superseded “Oldspeak” or standard English, was rapidly gaining ground as both a written and spoken dialect.
According to the appendix, “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.”
Orwell, as so often in his writing, makes the abstract theory concrete: “The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds.’ … political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts.”
The goal of this language streamlining was total control over past, present and future.
If it is illegal to even speak of systemic racism, for example, let alone discuss its causes and possible remedies, it constrains the potential for, even prohibits, social change.
It has become a cliché that those who do not understand history are bound to repeat it. As George Orwell appreciated, the correlate is that social and historical progress require an awareness of, and receptivity to, both historical fact and competing historical narratives.
Laura Beers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
While many Americans do not trust national news, they still say they have faith in local news. iStock/Getty Images Plus
Many Americans say they have lost trust in national news – but most still believe they can rely on the accuracy of local news.
In 2023, trust in national newspapers, TV and radio reached historic lows. Just 32% of Americans said they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in these news sources. In 1976, by comparison, 72% of Americans said they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in mass media, including newspapers, TV and radio.
And in 2021, the United States ranked last among 46 countries in the trust citizens placed in news outlets.
Yet even as the local news industry is declining in the U.S. – more than 3,200 local and regional newspapers have closed since 2005 – Americans still place much more trust in local news than they do in national news.
In 2024, 74% of Americans said they had “a lot of” or “some” trust in their local news organizations, and 85% believed their local news outlets are at least somewhat important to their community.
Despite their trust in local news, many Americans are not willing to pay for it. Only 23% of Americans who say they pay for online news report paying for a local or regional newspaper.
News organizations in the U.S. have long relied on commercial business practices – such as advertising from companies and subscriptions from readers – that have not been financially sustainable since the mid-2000s.
Newspapers’ advertising revenue peaked around 2005 and has since rapidly declined from more than $49 billion a year in 2005 to less than $10 billion in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. This drop was driven by the rise of the internet.
As a result, the U.S. has lost more than a third of its local and regional newspapers since 2004.
Now, “news deserts” have become more common. This term describes places where there are not enough reliable news sources to help people get information about their local communities.
Of the local newspapers that remain, 80% are weeklies, as opposed to the daily local newspapers that were more common in the past.
Americans also read local newspapers less than they once did. Since 2015, print and digital circulation numbers have dropped 40% for weekday news editions and 45% for Sunday editions among locally focused daily newspapers and their websites.
Despite local news’ problems with declining revenue and readership, Americans still trust local news – and this trust crosses partisan lines.
A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that both Republicans and Democrats think local journalists are in touch with their local communities. The majority of Democrats and Republicans in this survey agreed that local news media “report news accurately,” “are transparent about their reporting,” “cover the most important stories/issues” and “keep an eye on local political leaders.”
This might be because local newspapers can focus on issues people encounter in their day-to-day lives rather than on national politics. In many cases, readers are also able to more easily connect with local journalists in their communities and share story ideas or feedback.
Local news gives constituents information they need to monitor whether their local leaders are implementing campaign promises. People who regularly follow local news are more likely to participate in politics, including voting in local elections, contacting a local public official and attending a town hall meeting.
A man reads the New York Post, a local New York City paper, on Nov. 5, 2008, in Grand Central Station. Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images
Some Americans started relying more heavily on national news when local newspapers shut down, which research shows led to increases in political polarization. My research found that when people trust a partisan-leaning national news source, for example, they’re very likely to agree with the partisan-slanted news stories published by that source.
As nonpartisan local newspapers have vanished or downsized, partisan-leaning online local news content has cropped up over the past several years. These sites publish news stories that are focused on local issues but approach it with a partisan bent. As a result, people looking for local news information may take in unreliable information that is presented as local news and interpret it as trustworthy.
Verifying the origins and intentions of information continues to be paramount for news consumers to make sure they are receiving accurate information – including when it comes to local news.
While the local news industry continues to face financial problems, research shows that local journalists could consider new content ideas to increase readers’ interest, such as engaging with community members by answering their specific questions.
Meanwhile, I believe that news consumers should consider whether they are willing to pay for and continuously support the local news they say that they trust. Without that support, their trusted local news source may disappear.
Jennifer Hoewe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michael A. Little, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Binghamton University, State University of New York
If people stopped having babies, how long would it be before humans were all gone? – Jeffrey
Very few people live beyond a century. So, if no one had babies anymore, there would probably be no humans left on Earth within 100 years. But first, the population would shrink as older folks died and no one was being born.
Even if all births were to suddenly cease, this decline would start slowly.
Eventually there would not be enough young people coming of age to do essential work, causing societies throughout the world to quickly fall apart. Some of these breakdowns would be in humanity’s ability to produce food, provide health care and do everything else we all rely on.
Food would become scarce even though there would be fewer people to feed.
As an anthropology professor who has spent his career studying human behavior, biology and cultures, I readily admit that this would not be a pretty picture. Eventually, civilization would crumble. It’s likely that there would not be many people left within 70 or 80 years, rather than 100, due to shortages of food, clean water, prescription drugs and everything else that you can easily buy today and need to survive.
Sudden change could follow a catastrophe
To be sure, an abrupt halt in births is highly unlikely unless there’s a global catastrophe. Here’s one potential scenario, which writer Kurt Vonnegut explored in his novel “Galapagos”: A highly contagious disease could render all people of reproductive age infertile – meaning that no one would be capable of having babies anymore.
A lot of these works are science fiction involving a lot of space travel. Others seek to predict a less fanciful Earth-bound future where people can no longer reproduce easily, causing collective despair and the loss of personal freedom for those who are capable of having babies.
Two of my favorite books along these lines are “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, and “The Children of Men,” by British writer P.D. James. They are dystopian stories, meaning that they take place in an unpleasant future with a great deal of human suffering and disorder. And both have become the basis of television series and movies.
In the 1960s and 1970s, many people also worried that there would be too many people on Earth, which would cause different kinds of catastrophes. Those scenarios also became the focus of dystopian books and movies.
‘The Last Man on Earth’ is an American postapocalyptic comedy television series about what might happen after a deadly virus wipes out most of the people in the world.
Heading toward 10 billion people
To be sure, the number of people in the world is still growing, even though the pace of that growth has slowed down. Experts who study population changes predict that the total will peak at 10 billion in the 2080s, up from 8 billion today and 4 billion in 1974.
The U.S. population currently stands at 342 million. That’s about 200 million more people than were here when I was born in the 1930s. This is a lot of people, but both worldwide and in the U.S. these numbers could gradually fall if more people die than are born.
One thing that will be important as these patterns change is whether there’s a manageable balance between young people and older people. That’s because the young often are the engine of society. They tend to be the ones to implement new ideas and produce everything we use.
Also, many older people need help from younger people with basic activities, like cooking and getting dressed. And a wide range of jobs are more appropriate for people under 65 rather than those who have reached the typical age for retirement.
Declining birth rates
In many countries, women are having fewer children throughout their reproductive lives than used to be the case. That reduction is the most stark in several countries, including India and South Korea.
The declines in birth rates occurring today are largely caused by people choosing not to have any children or as many as their parents did. That kind of population decline can be kept manageable through immigration from other countries, but cultural and political concerns often stop that from happening.
At the same time, many men are becoming less able to father children due to fertility problems. If that situation gets much worse, it could contribute to a steep decline in population.
Neanderthals went extinct
Our species, Homo sapiens, has been around for at least 200,000 years. That’s a long time, but like all animals on Earth we are at risk of becoming extinct.
Consider what happened to the Neanderthals, a close relative of Homo sapiens. They first appeared at least 400,000 years ago. Our modern human ancestors overlapped for a while with the Neanderthals, who gradually declined to become extinct about 40,000 years ago.
Some scientists have found evidence that modern humans were more successful at reproducing our numbers than the Neanderthal people. This occurred when Homo sapiens became more successful at providing food for their families and also having more babies than the Neanderthals.
If humans were to go extinct, it could open up opportunities for other animals to flourish on Earth. On the other hand, it would be sad for humans to go away because we would lose all of the great achievements people have made, including in the arts and science.
In my view, we need to take certain steps to ensure that we have a long future on our own planet. These include controlling climate change and avoiding wars. Also, we need to appreciate the fact that having a wide array of animals and plants makes the planet healthy for all creatures, including our own species.
Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.
Michael A. Little does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Imagine finding out your friends hosted a dinner party and didn’t invite you, or that you were passed over for a job you were excited about. These moments hurt, and people often describe rejection in the language of physical pain.
While rejection can be emotionally painful, it can also teach us something.
I am a social psychology researcher, and research my colleagues and I have conducted shows that rejection can serve as a learning signal – shaping how people navigate relationships and decide whom to attempt to connect with in the future.
But why does being excluded hurt so much? From an evolutionary standpoint, our brains likely evolved to treat social rejection as a threat. For our ancestors, losing social bonds meant losing access to protection, resources, and cooperation – making social connection and belonging a fundamental human need. In other words, rejection hurts to alert you that your welfare is in danger.
Early neuroscience studies seemed to support this idea. When people were left out of a simple virtual ball-tossing game, their brain activity mirrored the response to physical pain, showing activation of a brain region called the anterior cingulate cortex.
Later studies suggested a different explanation: Perhaps it wasn’t just the pain of rejection that triggered this brain activity, but also the surprise of it. In this view, the brain responded differently to negative feedback and unexpected feedback. What might your brain do with this unexpected feedback?
Social lives aren’t defined by isolated moments of rejection. You learn through interactions: You get to know people, read their intentions, revise your assumptions and try to make sense of mixed signals. People might turn you down for all sorts of reasons – some understandable, others harder to accept. You then reflect on what these experiences mean, adjustyour behavior, and if you cross paths with them again, you get another chance to decide how you want to engage.
This is where our research takes a next step: We examine how people learn from social rejection and acceptance over time and how they use these past experiences to build future connections, deciding on whom to invest in building relationships with and whom to let go.
Rejection as an experience to learn from
My colleagues and I designed a dynamic experiment that mimics the structure of real social decisions. Using behavioral tests, brain imaging and computational modeling, we studied how people learn from repeated social feedback.
Our college-aged participants played a multi-round economic game while undergoing brain scans. First, they created personal profiles for themselves answering questions about times they were honest and trustworthy, and were told that other players would read these profiles to get to know them better. These other players, who assumed the role of “Deciders,” would then rank participants – “Responders” – in the order they wanted to play with them.
In each round, Responders were either accepted or rejected by Deciders. This depended on two things: how highly they had been ranked and how many slots the computer had allowed for that round. In reality, Responders weren’t paired with real people; the Deciders’ rankings and number of slots were generated by the computer.
Participants could receive a high rank but still get rejected if there were not enough slots. That scenario is like not receiving an invitation to a wedding due to a very tight budget – the outcome is disappointing but understandable because you know you were excluded due to circumstances and that your friend still values you. Or participants could receive a poor rank but still get accepted if there were a lot of slots. This would be similar to being picked last for a team – still getting a chance to play despite knowing you were not as desired.
This unique design allowed us to tease apart how people learn from two types of feedback. When you’re accepted, your brain notes that feeling included results in a rewarding experience. Your brain also calculates relational value, which indicates how much you think others value you. In the case of our study, relational value was indicated by how highly Responders were ranked by the Decider.
If accepted by a Decider, Responders would receive a pot of money that would triple. Responders would then get to decide whether to give half of the tripled amount back to the Decider or keep all to themselves, putting trust and reciprocity to test.
We found that Responders were more likely to choose Deciders who had accepted them and rated them highly, learning from both kinds of feedback. With neuroimaging, we identified that these learning mechanisms were distinctly tracked by different regions in the brain.
Brain areas that researchers previously foundto be active in social rejection studies, like the anterior cingulate cortex, were also activated when participants received feedback about how much they were valued. Interestingly, this activity didn’t just reflect pain or surprise; it reflected a recalibration of their perceived social worth, as this brain activity occurred when participants changed their beliefs about how others rank them.
Together, these findings suggest that the brain is doing more than reacting to rejection or reward – it’s in fact learning from it. Each social interaction helps people update internal models of who values them and who doesn’t, shaping future decisions about whom to trust, approach or avoid.
When it comes to social relationships, the two learning systems we studied here – how people respond to rewards and how they track relational value – serve an important role in interpreting social interactions and adjusting behavior. To maintain healthy relationships, you need to disentangle social rewards from how much you think others value you.
You sometimes need to recognize that your friend still values you even if they might disappoint you, like missing a birthday party for a valid reason. Without this kind of understanding, relationships can become unstable.
In fact, some mental health conditions reflect problems in these very processes. For example, borderline personality disorder is often marked by volatile relationships and intense reactions to both kindness and perceived slights.
By unpacking how people learn from acceptance and rejection, our study offers a foundation to better understand both healthy social behavior and the struggle to connect.
Begüm Babür does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Paddy Hill spent more than 16 years in prison for murders he did not commit. One of the so-called Birmingham Six who were wrongfully convicted for the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974, he was proof that exoneration and financial compensation do not fix a miscarriage of justice.
When I met him in July 2023, more than 30 years after his release from prison, his ordeal continued to haunt him. He was in his late 70s, looking frail and far from the “12 and a half stone” man he was in Parkhurst Prison. He had very little appetite and was in poor health. The little sleep he was able snatch was marred by screaming nightmares.
Neither of us knew it at the time, but this was to be his final interview. He died aged 80, on December 30 2024. I sat down to talk with Hill in his living room. Struggling to control his emotions, he told me: “Sometimes I sit in the bedroom … and I’m crying my eyes out like a child and I don’t know what the fuck happened … I’ve been so fucking screwed up.”
The ITV docudrama Mr Bates vs the Post Office thrust wrongful convictions into mainstream consciousness in January 2024 – a quarter of a century after the Post Office began prosecuting sub-postmasters and mistresses for fraud, theft, and false accounting and 15 years after Rebecca Thomson’s Computer Weekly article exposing the Horizon IT system as the potential culprit.
Now the public could finally see the human impact of miscarriages of justice on these upstanding – and, more importantly, innocent – members of their communities. Public outrage followed.
But despite the mass quashing of hundreds of convictions, and amid promises of speedy financial compensation, progress has been pitiful. While collecting a National Television Award in September 2024, former sub-postmistress Jo Hamilton confirmed that out of the “555 group”, those involved in the litigation which exposed the Horizon scandal, “more than 300 haven’t been paid yet, including Sir Alan Bates”.
Sadly, this timescale is far from unusual. In July 2023, Andrew Malkinson finally had his 2003 rape conviction overturned after several unsuccessful appeals, including unsuccessful applications in 2012 and 2020 to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), the independent body which investigates potential miscarriages of justice.
Crucially, the CCRC did not commission the DNA testing that finally exonerated him and did not review police files which would have shown that Greater Manchester Police had withheld crucial evidence at his trial.
Malkinson spent 17 years in prison maintaining his innocence. Perversely, he could have been released sooner had he falsely confessed. He was eventually exonerated thanks to the help of the charity Appeal, which commissioned those crucial DNA tests and unearthed the disclosure failures.
The CCRC has since acknowledged in an independent review that it “failed Mr Malkinson” with chairperson Helen Pitcher OBE (whose recent resignation was welcomed by the Ministry of Justice) eventually expressing “sincere regret and an unreserved apology on behalf of the commission”. All of this happened 12 months after Malkinson called on the CCRC to apologise to him. Malkinson said it was “shameful” that the CCRC has kept private the names of those responsible for his ordeal and delayed the publishing of the report highlighting its mishandling of his case.
The true number of miscarriages of justice is unknown. In the UK, the CCRC referral rate averages 2% including appeals of sentence. In the US, estimates of wrongful conviction and imprisonment range from 6% to 15.4%.
The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.
Inevitably, some innocent people will have their appeals denied and will remain convicted for the rest of their lives. The trauma of remaining legally guilty of a crime you did not commit cannot be overstated.
But persistent psychological ill-effects can be seen even in those who have been formally exonerated, including long-term effects on their employment and relationships.
I’ve been examining cases like this as part of a research project into the experiences of people who suffer grave miscarriages of justice. Working with Dr Mandy Winterton at Edinburgh Napier University, I interviewed several men who have been imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.
As academics with psychology and sociology backgrounds, we were predominantly interested in how victims were affected by such injustices. Previous research has documented the litany of mental health and social effects on those who have been wrongfully convicted and exonerated, and the flaws in the criminal justice system that are to blame. But little attention has been paid to individual experiences. While there were clear commonalities in the men’s stories, they all had unique perspectives.
Of the people we spoke to, Hill and a man called Jimmy Boyle spoke to us on the record and specifically requested that they be named. I have given the other men featured here pseudonyms to protect their anonymity.
Paddy Hill
Hill’s story is particularly harrowing. On November 21 1974, shortly after 8pm, bombs exploded in two pubs in Birmingham, England, killing 21 people and injuring around 200 others. They were attributed to the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), which had detonated many bombs in the West Midlands in the previous year.
Hill and his friends were arrested at Heysham Docks as they were boarding the ferry to Belfast to attend the funeral of an old friend who had been a member of the IRA. Hill said that they were initially interviewed at Morecambe police station in Lancashire, and the West Midlands Police took over their questioning the next day.
Hill and his co-accused were, says Hill, tortured by the West Midlands serious crime squad. They were subjected to anti-Irish verbal abuse, hours-long beatings over several days, mock executions, were burned with cigarettes, and deprived of sleep, food and drink. Unable to withstand this, four of the six men eventually signed false confessions, condemning them all to life imprisonment in 1975 for the murders. The six men brought a civil action against the West Midlands Police which was thrown out in 1980 by Lord Denning.
These shocking revelations eventually reached the public consciousness thanks to investigative journalist and former Labour MP Chris Mullin, who uncovered evidence of police wrongdoing and corruption. His work informed the group’s court of appeal hearing in 1987. However, the convictions were upheld by Lord Chief Justice Lane. It was only at their second appeal in 1991, after Mullin had uncovered more evidence of their innocence, that they were finally exonerated.
Despite other lines of enquiry which could have led to the real bombers – including a confession and several named suspects – the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decided in 2023 that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute, denying justice to the families of those killed and injured.
The impact on Hill’s family was enormous. With such public vitriol for the Birmingham Six, his wife and children had to move house regularly and change their names to avoid being recognised. He told me:
Everywhere they went, sooner or later somebody found out who they were and then they’d pick on them. And sometimes my kids were going to school and they couldn’t even remember what fucking name they were supposed to be using, they were that confused.
Hill’s marriage ended while he was in prison. “I told her to divorce me. I said: ‘Meet someone, you want to get married, don’t worry about me.’ And that was it.”
He later remarried, but his relationship with his children was irretrievably destroyed. “Along the way I lost my own kids, because I came out of jail and I didn’t feel nothing for my kids. I still don’t … I’ve spent more time here with you than I have done in the last 20 fucking years with my kids.”
Though he was referred to psychologists for support, he told me none were able to help him. Over and above the pains of imprisonment, the wrongfully convicted are betrayed by the very people that we are led to believe are there to protect us. The justice system has wrought on them the worst injustice, and many will suffer from enduring anger and mistrust of authorities.
When we met, Hill was still consumed by his anger and felt badly let down: “Over the years I realised I was never going to get any professional help from the government, even though we have it in writing that they have a duty of care towards us – but they’ve never done nothing to help us … If they did, they would acknowledge what they’ve done wrong.”
Up until his death, Hill had spent much of the past 30 years helping other survivors of miscarriages of justice. Initially intending to spend his first 12 months of freedom campaigning, he “got involved with the families, and it was then I realised how bad the families had it … That’s what kept me going, coming out and campaigning.”
He established the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation (Mojo), a Glasgow-based charity dedicated to supporting the wrongfully convicted. It provides advocacy for clients in prison, aftercare and reintegration services, and dedicated psychological support offered pro-bono by a clinical psychologist.
But the demand far exceeds Mojo’s ability to help, and it may take several months for a case to be assessed. Euan McIlvride, the organisation’s legal officer, told me it typically receives “250 applications a year, and we will probably support only ten of those because the rest of them don’t meet the requirements for our support … We have finite resources.”
For Hill, keeping busy provided some relief from thinking about his ordeal.
…When you aren’t doing something, all you’re going to do is sit there and think … about things you don’t fucking want to think about. I don’t know what happens to me when I go to sleep … [My wife] hears me screaming … kicking and punching everything … I’ll be watching television and all of a sudden … BANG! It’s like a non-stop video going through your head all the time.
Chained to a radiator
The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Pace), which came to effect in 1986, aimed to reduce miscarriages of justice by balancing the powers of the police and the public. Pace provides safeguards for suspects during questioning, puts a limit on how long suspects can be questioned for, and insists that interviews be recorded.
This makes it easier to detect when protocols have not been followed or there may have been mistreatment or intimidation.
It doesn’t prevent such wrongdoing, however.
I spoke with one man, who I am calling Mark, who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1988. He told me there were over one hundred breaches of Pace in his case, including being handcuffed to a hot radiator, being denied food and water, and being denied a solicitor.
One of his co-accused, a vulnerable adult, had also falsely confessed to the crime. Mark lost his first appeal in 1990 but his case went to the CCRC when it was established in 1997. The CCRC brought in another police force to investigate. He said:
When I saw [their] report … I nearly fell off my chair and nearly choked on my coffee … Everything I had said all those years ago … the handcuffing to the radiators, they proved it. All the breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act … that we were interviewed off the record … Making up notes and stuff like that. I couldn’t believe it. I knew we were going home.
He subsequently pursued a civil action against the police which was settled out of court, with the force insisting the settlement did not mean it was admitting liability.
Mark also suffered a marital breakdown, after he and his wife lost their baby daughter while he was on remand:
It ripped the guts out of my marriage, you know. My wife was only 17-18, same age as me … She had a husband inside and she lost a child. And you’ve got to look at the economical impact and the mental impact it had on her … She was just as much a victim as what I was.
He started taking drugs in prison: “I didn’t care if I lived or died because I had lost everything, as far as I was concerned.”
But Mark turned himself around, got off drugs and availed himself of all the education he had access to, including law and human rights, to build the strongest possible case for his appeal. With the aid of a human rights lawyer the CCRC referred his conviction in 1998, which was then quashed by the Court of Appeal in 1999. He had spent 11 years in prison as a convicted murderer.
‘The innocence test’
After his exoneration, Mark was successful in securing over £600,000 compensation for his ordeal, though he had over £37,000 deducted for “saved living expenses”. A House of Lords ruling in 2007 deemed that those receiving compensation for a miscarriage of justice can have the amount reduced to account for “savings” made while in prison – for costs such as food, housing and other bills that they would have had to pay had they not been wrongfully incarcerated.
Considering the difficulties people face accessing any financial compensation for their wrongful imprisonment, this adds further insult to injury. The rule has since been scrapped following the high-profile Malkinson case – but deductions made prior to this are not being reimbursed.
Mark was given no financial counselling or support, and he rapidly spent the money – more than he had ever had in his life – while trying to block out his pain:
By the time six months had gone, I’d spent the hundred grand [interim payment] on wine, women, drugs … ’cause I couldn’t cope with what was going on … That was my way of blotting out all the things I saw in prison.
The money also caused a rift in his family – something echoed by others I have spoken to. After the death of his mother, his family “went their own ways”.
Nowadays, only a small proportion of those exonerated will ever receive financial compensation due to the requirements of the so-called “innocence test”.
The Criminal Justice Act 1988 made it difficult for applicants to receive compensation because there had to be a newly discovered fact – not available at the time of their original trial – that they could use to make the case that they had suffered a miscarriage of justice.
The definition of what constitutes a miscarriage of justice has become more restrictive over time, meaning an applicant now must provide evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, of their innocence. In the absence of a key witness admitting to falsifying their statement or DNA evidence proving innocence, this is unlikely.
Like Hill, Mark struggled to adjust after his exoneration and release, and found support to be woefully lacking:
I had nobody to talk to, no money, no job, no house. I didn’t have any prospects. I phoned up my solicitor … I remember saying: ‘Why did you get me out?’ It was difficult to adjust … I slept with a hammer … under my pillow – I was very paranoid … All they did was give me tablets and told me to get on with my life. No counselling. Nothing. They didn’t know what to do with people like me.
Mark still suffers with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, and has never been able to work a normal job. He continues to campaign for the wrongfully convicted and to increase awareness of miscarriages of justice. He credits this work with giving him a sense of purpose.
Jimmy Boyle – not innocent enough?
I also spoke to James Boyle, who was acquitted at retrial of historical sexual offences after he had spent five years in prison. Boyle, from Rutherglen, who likes to be known as Jimmy, has always maintained these offences never happened.
From the outset, Boyle found processes quite at odds from how we are told they are supposed to be. He said: “Things that you should have: for example, presumption of innocence – nonsense, it doesn’t exist. None of these rights exist in reality.” He claims that lines of evidence undermining the allegations against him were not investigated. Further, he encountered professionals in the criminal justice system who he says were incompetent and even “malicious” and “criminal”.
To add further insult, he was later told that he was not considered exonerated because he did not provide evidence proving his innocence (he failed the “innocence test”). As a result, the General Teaching Council for Scotland did not reinstate him and he was unable to return to his teaching career which he had found enormously fulfilling.
Like others I have spoken to, Boyle, now in his 60s, hasn’t been able to work since his release:
There was so much involved, and fighting with the Teaching Council – you know, it was full time. It really was full time when you’re dealing with these agencies … I do plenty [at Mojo] – I’ve spoken at a number of events … But I had to continue fighting my own fight.
Martin: total lack of victim support
Miscarriages of justice have a huge effect on a person’s mental health. But my research found the impact begins long before a conviction – with effects such as anxiety, trauma and depression resulting from the wrongful allegation.
Martin (not his real name) detailed the difficulties he experienced from his initial wrongful allegation of rape – including isolation, lack of advice, and a lack of appropriate mental health support. He said:
I kept [the rape allegations] to myself and it was horrific, because I didn’t know what was going to happen … Once I was charged … I went to my GP because I was severely depressed. I could barely function. [Counselling] was actually making things worse rather than better … I had looked online … There’s victim support and there’s witness support, but if you’ve been accused there is absolutely nothing.
It took over three years from the initial allegation to court proceedings, during which time two other allegations of rape and indecent assault were made and charges were brought. Martin kept the allegations from his employers and friends:
You don’t mention it because if you mention it, you’re opening the box and then that becomes a big thing – and God help how you’re going to feel at the end of that conversation.
Convicted of rape and indecent assault (the second and third charges), he was sentenced to four years in prison, but successfully appealed on the basis that the Moorov doctrine was misapplied.
Moorov is a principle of Scottish law which allows evidence of one crime to corroborate evidence of another. As the charges against him were considered to corroborate one another, having been acquitted of the key (first) charge he should have been acquitted of all. Instead, he spent about a year in prison – yet he considers himself fortunate.
The guy [Andrew Malkinson] that won his appeal the other day spent 17 years in prison. I only spent one. And although I shouldn’t have spent any, it could have been a hell of a lot worse. There are a lot of people that haven’t been able to clear their names, there are a lot of people that have spent a long time in prison. I spent one year and managed to clear my name, so I should be thankful for what little happiness I’ve managed to get out of it.
Martin was fortunate in that he’d had a good education and had taken detailed notes during his trial, which assisted his appeal. He also helped other prisoners who were struggling to complete required forms for themselves, and managed to get a job in the prison kitchen.
Since his release, he has pursued a law degree, eager to use his experience for positive change in the justice system. “I think it’s given me a new perspective really … You know what, life’s too short – let’s just get on with it.”
What needs to be done?
People wrongly accused of crimes are in dire need of support from the moment the initial allegation is made, to help them navigate the complex legal processes and challenging psychological effects of being wrongly accused.
Currently there is woefully inadequate mental health support at all stages, from initial allegation to post-release.
Of course, there are many guilty people in prison who protest their innocence – but support should not be denied to those who maintain their innocence.
Reforms are needed to make it easier for an innocent person to appeal their conviction. The CCRC has suffered a decline in funding, from £9.24 million in 2004 to £6 million in 2022. Over this period, the workload has more than doubled while the Ministry of Justice has reduced CCRC commissioners’ terms of employment from full-time salaried positions to one-day-a-week contracts, making the workload unsustainable.
People may also face significant barriers in accessing evidence that would exonerate them such as police files, without which they have little hope of a successful appeal. This was evident in the Malkinson case, where the charity Appeal accessed the police files the CCRC had refused to look at.
The lack of accountability and consequences for those who purposely harm innocent people causes further anger and distress to the wrongfully accused and convicted. Yet those affected rarely even receive an apology. This needs to change.
Finally, there needs to be greater public awareness of wrongful convictions and allegations, their causes and consequences, and an understanding of their devastating and long-term effects. As Hill told me the year before he died:
People think you come out and they give you a few quid … [then you] walk off into the sunset and live happily ever after. If only. I would love to go to bed at night like an ordinary fucking person … without waking up so angry and tense.
To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. Subscribe to our newsletter.
This work was supported by the BA/Leverhulme Trust grant SRG1819190884. Many thanks to Dr Mandy Winterton, co-Investigator on this research, and to the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation (MOJO) for supporting us by facilitating access to clients.
Faye Skelton is affiliated with the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation having joined the Board of Directors in April 2025.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Victoria Mapplebeck, Professor in Digital Arts, Royal Holloway University of London
Ten years ago I was at a preview screening at the British Film Institute (BFI) of short films shot and set in London. My smartphone-filmed short, 160 Characters, was part of the programme and told the story of me raising my son Jim alone.
I was excited to have my film included, but by the end of the night I was a little less euphoric. I was one of only a handful of women directors screening work that night and almost every film in the programme was set on a council estate, featuring one-dimensional characters who were either mad, bad or sad.
At the post-screening drinks, I met some of the male directors who’d written and directed those films. Several of them had put between £20,000 and £40,000 of their own money into their productions, hoping their short would be the calling card to their first feature. Having a “day job” was not a concept they seemed to have come across.
Flash forward a decade and I’m at a Reclaim The Frame preview screening of Daisy May Hudson’s feature drama Lollipop, watching her receive a standing ovation from an audience who – like me – were bowled over by the authenticity and power of her storytelling .
Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
Lollipop is a BBC Films-funded feature drama which tells the story of Molly (Posy Sterling), recently out of a prison after serving a four-month sentence. She comes out to find she has lost her council housing and custody of her kids. Molly finds herself in the mother of all catch-22s: she can’t get housing because she doesn’t have her kids living with her, but she can’t get them back without a roof over her head.
On the surface, this film could read like another council estate melodrama. But Lollipop is the polar opposite of middle class fantasies of working class life. When Hudson was writing it she drew on her own experience of homelessness, explored in her debut feature documentary, Half Way (2015).
In Half Way, Hudson, her mum and her kid sister find themselves stuck in “half way” hostels in an endless battle with council bureaucrats who meet their escalating housing crisis with a continual chorus of “computer says no”.
There’s a great scene in which Hudson’s sister complains that the film is too heavy and that she’s sick of talking about their “trauma”. She jokes: “I was thinking we need to liven this documentary up, it’s really dull and miserable and boring, we just talk about doom and gloom stuff.” She goes on to mimic Hudson’s line of questions about how they’re all “feeling”.
Hudson’s decision to keep that scene in gave us a much needed reminder of how many documentary directors fall into the trap of “poverty porn” in which the money shot is the tear rolling down your protagonist’s cheek.
The trailer for Lollipop.
Watching Lollipop with an audience of mainly women, there were a lot of tears but also lots of laughter. Hudson continues to see the importance of humour in her stories as a way of enriching and empowering her characters. She explains in the film’s production notes: “Although Lollipop is grounded in real-life, I never want to see women as victims on screen, because we’re so full of life, there’s so much about us.”
In Hudson’s entirely female cast, Molly and her best mate Amina (Idil Ahmed) are fierce single mums who transform the challenges they face into laugh-out-loud moments of comedy. The film is about the power of their friendship, their love for their kids and their sense of humour.
When it came to casting, Hudson wanted to work with women actors – professionals and first timers – who could relate to what the characters were going through. In the film’s production notes, Hudson explains:
I come from a lived experience background, and it was really important to me that I worked with women with lived experience … women who felt full and rounded, not perfect. Every woman you see in the film is someone trying to do their best. We’re humans. We’re messy, and our beauty is in our messiness.
Hudson’s work is part of a new wave of film and TV drama and comedy written and directed by women who are empowered rather than disempowered by their messiness.
Cash Carraway’s Rain Dogs (2023), Sophie Willan’s Alma’s Not Normal (2020), Michelle de Swarte’s Spent (2024) and Charlotte Regan’s debut feature drama, Scrapper (2023) are all part of an emerging genre of stories in which we finally see working class characters who are well written and relatable. Every one of these directors has mined the highs and lows of their own lives to create these funny, flawed, complex and ultimately believable characters.
The trailer for Rain Dogs.
Rain Dogs*, for instance,* follows the roller-coaster journey of Costello (Daisy May Cooper), a single mum battling to find a permanent home for her and her nine-year-old daughter. Carraway has said of her series:
We don’t see interesting single mothers in TV. We don’t really see that many interesting people living in poverty. If we do, it’s always politicised. I wanted to make it entertaining.
Hudson echoes these sentiments. Speaking to me over the phone, she explains:
Lollipop isn’t issue-led. I don’t want to shout from the rooftops and talk about everything that’s wrong with the world. Yes, the context is these things that I care strongly about. But ultimately, I want audiences to come away, feeling: Wow, isn’t love a magical thing?“
Hudson’s mantra in both life and film is to: “Turn your pain into power and into medicine.” Her women characters have an alchemy and agency we rarely see in the black and white council estate films that became such a staple of UK independent films in the 80s and 90s. Hudson’s women aren’t victims or martyrs, the magic of Lollipop is that she has created fascinating real characters – and captured them in glorious technicolour.
Victoria Mapplebeck 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.
When I started horse riding lessons at the age of eight, I was told that if a horse had its ears forward that was a good sign, and if horse had its ears back it wasn’t happy. Those riding lessons sparked a fascination with equine behaviour that is still with me and inspires my research.
Yet when I carried out my new study into horse facial expressions I was still surprised at how complex equine communication can be.
Horses are a social species with wild and feral populations living in complex societies. They form relatively stable herds or “bands”, typically made up of a stallion protecting his group of mares. The ranges of these bands overlap, and the need to share space and resources means that effective communication is essential for horses.
Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox.Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.
We also know that facial expressions are an important method of communication for horses. In a 2016 study, equine cognition researcher Jen Wathan and her colleagues demonstrated this when they showed a group of horses images of another horse.
The horse in the images was displaying one of three different facial expressions: aggression, positive attention and relaxation. Horses were more likely to approach the images of the horse showing positive attention and relaxation. They tended to avoid the horse showing aggression. This shows that horses can use the expression of another horse to infer that animal’s intent.
Equine facial communication is therefore, understandably, of significant interest to those working with and around horses. Go to any stables, as I did when I was young, and you will hear talk of which signals to look out for. You will quickly learn that the ears are important. However, in recent years, scientists have become interested in the more subtle cues that are often overlooked.
Research into horse facial expressions began in 2014 with identifying indicators of pain to try and improve horse welfare. More recently, there have been a number of studies that have looked at facial expressions outside of pain contexts. These have, however, been restricted to a small number of usually human-created, contexts.
For example, in 2024 animal behaviour researchers Romane Phelipon and colleagues examined the facial expressions of horses when they were being led towards a bucket of feed and allowed to eat. They were also shown the bucket of feed and then prevented from eating it.
In the positive situation, horses had a lower neck position, their ears forward, and their upper lip extended forwards. In the more frustrating situation, horses held their neck higher, with their ears backward or to the side.
My team wanted to extend what we know about equine facial behaviour into contexts that don’t involve humans, and to identify the expressions that horses use when communicating with each other.
To do this we used something called the equine facial action coding system (EquiFACS). This involves two types of code: action units, which correspond to the contraction of particular facial muscles; and action descriptors, which correspond to more general facial movements.
There are already similar codes for a variety of primate and domestic species, including cats and dogs. This makes them useful for making comparisons between species and for studying the evolution of facial behaviour.
We observed groups of domestic horses out at pasture. Whenever they interacted with one another we would hit record on our video camera and film the facial expressions they made. This gave us a bank of 805 expressions, which were coded using EquiFACS.
We categorised the expressions based on the behaviour they were associated with, such as a kick threat or friendly contact. Then we used network analysis techniques to assess how the individual action units and action descriptors work together to create the overall facial expression. Network analysis is a statistical method usually used to study social networks, but which also works well for understanding how the different areas of the face work together.
This created a catalogue that identified 22 discrete facial expressions. These included expressions from a range of aggressive, friendly, playful and alert interactions. Some movements are used across several contexts, for instance rotated and flattened ears which can indicate aggression or playfulness.
When making a threat, horses have their ears rotated backwards and flattened downwards. They often lower their head, raise the inner corner of their brow, and/or flare their nostrils.
Most interesting are facial expressions during play, which are highly dynamic. They involve a range of different facial movements, often in quick succession. Movements include depressed lower lips, raised chins, parted lips, wide-open mouths, rotated and flattened ears, increased visibility of eye whites, and noses pushed forward.
We also identified similarities between the facial expressions horses make during play and the play faces used by primates and carnivores. Primates and carnivores often use an open-mouthed expression to indicate that an interaction is playful. This can help prevent misunderstandings about the intent of an interaction, and is particularly useful during rough-and-tumble play. The fact that this expression is also used by horses suggests that it evolved much further back than scientists believed.
Anyone who needs a way to assess a horse’s subjective experience can benefit from our catalogue, from researchers through to those working with horses. I certainly wish I had had it over the many years I spent riding, and later working, at my local riding school.
Our results also highlight the importance of looking beyond our primate cousins if we are to gain a comprehensive understanding of facial expressions and their evolutionary origins.
Kate Lewis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stephen Clear, Lecturer in Constitutional and Administrative Law, and Public Procurement, Bangor University
Since returning to office, Donald Trump has often called the US legal system into question. He has criticised judges as activists, challenged the role of the courts and insisted some firms do free legal work in support of his administration’s causes to make up for working for some of his political opponents.
Meanwhile, Vice-President J.D. Vance has advised US Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts that he ought to be “checking the excesses” of the lower courts.
And Stephen Miller, deputy White House chief of staff, said: “We are living under a judicial tyranny,” after the US Court of International Trade ruled the president didn’t have the power to impose international trade tariffs. Meanwhile, judges are asking for more security to protect them from threats.
Trump’s federal investigations and volley of executive orders (presidential directives that don’t require legislative approval by Congress) have also put enormous pressure on law firms. And a recent report shows that both trust in law firms’ independence, and even the rule of law itself, is perceived as under threat in the US. But what does this mean, and why is it important?
Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox.Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.
The president has taken action against law firms in two prominent ways:
First, by federal investigation. Specifically, letters to a group of 20 law firms from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. These demanded information about their diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) policies, based on the proposition that any sort of treatment of underrepresented groups that appeared preferential to them in policy, or practice, was unequal treatment for other groups, and, consequently, discriminatory.
Second, the president has passed numerous executive orders introducing punitive measures on specific law firms that previously represented clients opposing his administration, or employed attorneys involved in past investigations against him. His administration has also revoked government contracts and suspended security clearance from buildings. In practice, the orders would prevent attorneys from accessing from where they work, such as courthouses and federal agencies.
In response, some prominent law firms have sought to mitigate the fallout with the Trump administration by entering into agreements with it. These have included pledging US$1 billion (£730,000,000) in pro bono (free) legal services supporting causes aligned with Trump’s agenda.
For example, support for veterans, representing police officers, and antisemitism prevention. Noteworthy is that law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison have now agreed to discontinue certain DEI policies, in addition to committing US$40 million (£29.4 million) in pro bono work for the president’s causes. In response the Trump administration has now lifted restrictions against them.
Judges say they are under threat.
More broadly, it has been reported that 70% of the US Justice Department civil rights division’s attorneys are leaving their posts. The mass exodus is believed to be part of attempts to reshape the division into one focused on enforcing executive orders.
The consequences of these developments are that the president’s actions have led to a significant realignment in the legal professions. Some US attorneys have reported that law firms are now more hesitant to engage in pro bono work that could be viewed as opposing the administration’s policies.
By contrast, some lawyers are now trying to establish independent firms aimed at defending civil servants and challenging federal overreach, ensuring at least some, albeit less resourced, support for underrepresented groups.
Trump criticizes judges and legal activists.
Other lawyers have sought legal action against the orders as unconstitutional interference. Some of these have led to success. For example, Perkins Coie challenged theirs and got it struck down. The concern here centred around their representation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In arriving at the decision, the district judge ruled the president’s actions to be an “overt attempt to suppress and punish certain viewpoints”.
Why this matters
These developments call into question the balance between governmental influence and the independence of lawyers in upholding the rule of law. Lawyers must be impartial in representing their clients in order to effectively represent their interests, and allow the judiciary to fulfil their duty of checks and balances on the government’s decisions.
When unfettered power is wielded by the government, and the law is undermined, scope for monitoring the constitutionality of decision making is compromised.
The rule of law is a foundational principle of western democracies. It means that everyone is subject to the law, including governments. Laws must be applied equally, fairly and consistently, and no one is above them.
In essence, laws govern the nation, not arbitrary decisions by individuals in power. In that sense, following the rule of law helps prevent tyranny, protect people’s rights and liberties, and ensures a stable and predictable society.
In order to deliver these objectives, an independent legal sector is needed. Trump’s actions are a threat to achieving this cornerstone US constitutional principle. Some have gone as far as to suggest that by entering into agreements with Trump, law firms have become subsidiaries of his administration.
A recent study on trust in the rule of law found that Americans’ trust in lawyers was already undermined, even before the second Trump administration.
The results, based on public attitudes in 2024, compared public perceptions in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Norway, the UK and the US. Norway and the UK ranked highest in respect of trust in the rule of law (81% and 74% respectively), and Spain and Italy were least trusted (49% and 43%).
The results for the US are interesting. Around 71% of American respondents stated that they had a high level of trust in the rule of law. Yet the country came third from the bottom under the metric “you feel like you are in good hands in US courts”.
The reasons for this are implied in the responses to the other questions in the survey. The US performed second worst (just behind Spain) in respect of belief that judges could be biased. The US also performed worst of all in the category where the public were asked if lawyers were impartial (just 41% agreed).
In interpreting these results it is important to note that the survey was conducted in 2024, prior to Trump’s second term. But anti-elite and anti-judge rhetoric pointing to arguments for more presidential power and less judicial oversight had already been prominent in the first Trump term, and the 2024 campaign.
The results expose the already fragile nature of trust in the legal sector in the US, and underline how this could be ramped up further after the announcements in recent weeks.
Stephen Clear 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.
Fitness enthusiasts have debated the question for decades: is it better to do cardio before or after lifting weights? Until recently, the answer has largely been down to preference – with some enjoying a jog to warm up before hitting the weights, while others believe lifting first is better for burning fat.
But a new study may have finally answered this long disputed question.
According to the study, the order of your workout does significantly affect how much fat you lose. Participants who performed weight training before cardio lost significantly more fat and became more physically active throughout the day compared to those who did cardio first.
The researchers recruited 45 young men aged 18-30 years who were classified as obese. The researchers split participants into three groups for 12 weeks. One group was a control group. This meant they stuck to their usual lifestyle habits and didn’t make any changes to their exercise regime.
Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox.Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK’s latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences.
The other two groups exercised for 60 minutes three times weekly. Participants were also given sports watches to objectively track daily movement. This helped the researchers avoid reliance on self-reporting, which can often be inaccurate.
Both exercise groups followed identical training programmes, differing only in exercise sequence. Strength training involved actual weights, with participants performing exercises such as the bench press, deadlift, bicep curl and squat. The cardio sessions involved 30 minutes of stationary cycling.
Participants in both groups experienced improvements in their cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength and body composition – specifically, they lost fat mass while gaining lean muscle mass. Interestingly, cardiovascular fitness improvements were similar regardless of sequence – echoing recent findings that exercise order has limited impact on cardiovascular adaptations.
But the real differences emerged when it came to fat loss and muscle performance. Participants who lifted weights first experienced significantly greater reductions in overall body fat and visceral fat – the type of fat most strongly linked to cardiovascular disease risk.
They also increased their daily step count by approximately 3,500 steps compared to just 1,600 steps for the cardio-first group. Additionally, the weights-first approach enhanced muscular endurance and explosive strength.
Why exercise sequence matters
The reason behind these findings is tied to how your body uses energy.
Resistance training depletes muscle glycogen stores – the sugar that’s stored in the muscles which acts as your body’s quick-access fuel. Imagine glycogen as petrol in your car’s fuel tank. When you lift weights first, you effectively drain this fuel tank, forcing your body to switch energy sources.
With glycogen stores already low, when you transition to cardio, your body must rely more heavily on fat reserves for energy. It’s akin to a hybrid car switching to battery power once the petrol runs low. This metabolic shift helps explain the greater fat loss seen in the weights-first group.
This recent study’s findings align with broader research. A comprehensive systematic review published in 2022 found resistance training alone can significantly reduce body fat and visceral fat, the type linked to chronic diseases. Muscles are metabolically active tissues, continuously burning calories even at rest, which amplifies these effects.
Conversely, performing cardio first might compromise your strength training effectiveness. Cardio uses up glycogen stores, leaving muscles partially depleted before you even lift a weight. It also induces fatigue and may reduce your muscles’ ability to produce explosive power and strength.
A recent systematic review on concurrent training (the practice of combining both resistance and aerobic exercise within the same program) supports this – highlighting that explosive strength gains might diminish if aerobic and strength training occur in the same session, especially if cardio is performed first.
These findings align with other research on concurrent training. A systematic review and meta-analysis examining exercise sequence effects found that resistance-first protocols produced significantly superior strength improvements compared to endurance-first training.
The American Heart Association’s 2023 statement on resistance training confirmed resistance exercise significantly improves lean body mass and reduces fat, especially when combined with other exercise types. However, resistance training alone was found less effective in improving cardiovascular health. This underscores the importance of including cardio in your exercise routine.
However, it is worth noting the study’s limitations. As it only involved obese young men, this means we don’t know how the results will apply to women, older adults or those with different body compositions. A 2024 review suggests adaptations may differ by sex, indicating the need for further research involving diverse populations.
The 12-week duration also may not capture long-term changes. Results also specifically only apply to concurrent training – performing both exercises in the same session.
Moreover, the study did not account for nutritional intake, sleep patterns or stress levels, all of which can significantly influence body composition outcomes. Future research should incorporate these factors to offer even more comprehensive guidance.
Workout sequence
Whether you prefer to do cardio before or after lifting weights, the message is clear: both will improve overall health. The only difference is that weight training before cardio provides advantages for fat loss, abdominal fat reduction and increased daily physical activity.
Interestingly, resistance training boosts confidence and energy levels, naturally encouraging more movement throughout the day, further aiding fat loss.
If cardiovascular fitness is your primary goal, the sequence matters less, as both ways equally boost aerobic fitness. However, if fat loss and optimising daily activity are your main objectives, evidence strongly supports placing resistance training first.
Jack McNamara 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.
Australian journalist Lauren Tomasi was in the middle of a live cross, covering the protests against the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy in Los Angeles, California. As Tomasi spoke to the camera, microphone in hand, an LAPD officer in the background appeared to target her directly, hitting her in the leg with a rubber bullet.
Earlier, reports emerged that British photojournalist Nick Stern was undergoing emergency surgery after also being hit by the same “non-lethal” ammunition.
The situation in Los Angeles is extremely volatile. After nonviolent protests against raids and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began in the suburb of Paramount, US President Donald Trump issued a memo describing them as “a form of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States”. He then deployed the National Guard.
‘Can’t you just shoot them?’
As much of the coverage has noted, this is not the first time the National Guard has been deployed to quell protests in the US.
In 1970, members of the National Guard shot and killed four students protesting the war in Vietnam at Kent State University. In 1992, the National Guard was deployed during protests in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four police officers (three of whom were white) in the killing of a Black man, Rodney King.
Trump has long speculated about violently deploying the National Guard and even the military against his own people.
During his first administration, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, former Secretary of Defence Mark Esper alleged that Trump asked him, “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?”
Trump has also long sought to other those opposed to his radical agenda to reshape the United States and its role in the world. He’s classified them as “un-American” and, therefore, deserving of contempt and, when he deems it necessary, violent oppression.
During last year’s election campaign, he promised to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”. Even the Washington Post characterised this description of Trump’s “political enemies” as “echoing Hitler, Mussolini”.
In addition, Trump has long peddled baseless conspiracies about “sanctuary cities”, such as Los Angeles. He has characterised them as lawless havens for his political enemies and places that have been “invaded” by immigrants. As anyone who has ever visited these places knows, that is not true.
It is no surprise that in the same places Trump characterises as “disgracing our country”, there has been staunch opposition to his agenda and ideology.
That opposition has coalesced in recent weeks around the activities of ICE agents, in particular. These agents, wearing masks to conceal their identities, have been arbitrarily detaining people, including US citizens and children, and disappearing people off the streets. They have also arrested caregivers, leaving children alone.
As Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic during the first iteration of Trump in America, “the cruelty is the point”.
The Trump administration’s mass deportation program is deliberately cruel and provocative. It was always only a matter of time before protests broke out.
In a democracy, nonviolent protest by hundreds or perhaps a few thousand people in a city of ten million is not a crisis. But it has always suited Trump and the movement that supports him to manufacture crises.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a key architect of the mass deportations program and a man described by a former adviser as “Waffen SS”, called the protests “an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States”. Trump himself also described protesters as “violent, insurrectionist mobs”.
Nowhere does the presidential memo deploying the National Guard name the specific location of the protests. This, and the extreme language coming out of the administration, suggests it is laying the groundwork for further escalation.
The administration could be leaving space to deploy the National Guard in other places and invoke the Insurrection Act.
Incidents involving the deployment of the National Guard are rare, though politically cataclysmic. It is rarer still for the National Guard to be deployed against the wishes of a democratically elected leader of a state, as Trump has done in California.
A broader assault on democracy
This deployment comes at a time of crisis for US democracy more broadly. Trump’s longstanding attacks against independent media – what he describes as “fake news” – are escalating. There is a reason that during the current protests, a law enforcement officer appeared so comfortable targeting a journalist, on camera.
The Trump administration is also actively targeting independent institutions such as Harvard and Columbia universities. It is also targeting and undermining judges and reducing the power of independent courts to enforce the rule of law.
Under Trump, the federal government and its state-based allies are targeting and undermining the rights of minority groups – policing the bodies of trans people, targeting reproductive rights, and beginning the process of undoing the Civil Rights Act.
Trump is, for the moment, unconstrained. Asked overnight what the bar is for deploying the Marines against protesters, Trump responded: “the bar is what I think it is”.
We should treat Trump and his openly authoritarian administration as a failure, not just of our party system or our legal system, but of our Constitution and its ability to meaningfully constrain a destructive and system-threatening force in our political life.
While the situation in Los Angeles is unpredictable, it must be understood in the broader context of the active, violent threat the Trump administration poses to the US. As we watch, American democracy teeters on the brink.
Emma Shortis is Director of International and Security Affairs at The Australia Institute, an independent think tank.
Australian journalist Lauren Tomasi was in the middle of a live cross, covering the protests against the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy in Los Angeles, California. As Tomasi spoke to the camera, microphone in hand, an LAPD officer in the background appeared to target her directly, hitting her in the leg with a rubber bullet.
Earlier, reports emerged that British photojournalist Nick Stern was undergoing emergency surgery after also being hit by the same “non-lethal” ammunition.
The situation in Los Angeles is extremely volatile. After nonviolent protests against raids and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began in the suburb of Paramount, US President Donald Trump issued a memo describing them as “a form of rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States”. He then deployed the National Guard.
‘Can’t you just shoot them?’
As much of the coverage has noted, this is not the first time the National Guard has been deployed to quell protests in the US.
In 1970, members of the National Guard shot and killed four students protesting the war in Vietnam at Kent State University. In 1992, the National Guard was deployed during protests in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four police officers (three of whom were white) in the killing of a Black man, Rodney King.
Trump has long speculated about violently deploying the National Guard and even the military against his own people.
During his first administration, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, former Secretary of Defence Mark Esper alleged that Trump asked him, “Can’t you just shoot them, just shoot them in the legs or something?”
Trump has also long sought to other those opposed to his radical agenda to reshape the United States and its role in the world. He’s classified them as “un-American” and, therefore, deserving of contempt and, when he deems it necessary, violent oppression.
During last year’s election campaign, he promised to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”. Even the Washington Post characterised this description of Trump’s “political enemies” as “echoing Hitler, Mussolini”.
In addition, Trump has long peddled baseless conspiracies about “sanctuary cities”, such as Los Angeles. He has characterised them as lawless havens for his political enemies and places that have been “invaded” by immigrants. As anyone who has ever visited these places knows, that is not true.
It is no surprise that in the same places Trump characterises as “disgracing our country”, there has been staunch opposition to his agenda and ideology.
That opposition has coalesced in recent weeks around the activities of ICE agents, in particular. These agents, wearing masks to conceal their identities, have been arbitrarily detaining people, including US citizens and children, and disappearing people off the streets. They have also arrested caregivers, leaving children alone.
As Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic during the first iteration of Trump in America, “the cruelty is the point”.
The Trump administration’s mass deportation program is deliberately cruel and provocative. It was always only a matter of time before protests broke out.
In a democracy, nonviolent protest by hundreds or perhaps a few thousand people in a city of ten million is not a crisis. But it has always suited Trump and the movement that supports him to manufacture crises.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a key architect of the mass deportations program and a man described by a former adviser as “Waffen SS”, called the protests “an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States”. Trump himself also described protesters as “violent, insurrectionist mobs”.
Nowhere does the presidential memo deploying the National Guard name the specific location of the protests. This, and the extreme language coming out of the administration, suggests it is laying the groundwork for further escalation.
The administration could be leaving space to deploy the National Guard in other places and invoke the Insurrection Act.
Incidents involving the deployment of the National Guard are rare, though politically cataclysmic. It is rarer still for the National Guard to be deployed against the wishes of a democratically elected leader of a state, as Trump has done in California.
A broader assault on democracy
This deployment comes at a time of crisis for US democracy more broadly. Trump’s longstanding attacks against independent media – what he describes as “fake news” – are escalating. There is a reason that during the current protests, a law enforcement officer appeared so comfortable targeting a journalist, on camera.
The Trump administration is also actively targeting independent institutions such as Harvard and Columbia universities. It is also targeting and undermining judges and reducing the power of independent courts to enforce the rule of law.
Under Trump, the federal government and its state-based allies are targeting and undermining the rights of minority groups – policing the bodies of trans people, targeting reproductive rights, and beginning the process of undoing the Civil Rights Act.
Trump is, for the moment, unconstrained. Asked overnight what the bar is for deploying the Marines against protesters, Trump responded: “the bar is what I think it is”.
We should treat Trump and his openly authoritarian administration as a failure, not just of our party system or our legal system, but of our Constitution and its ability to meaningfully constrain a destructive and system-threatening force in our political life.
While the situation in Los Angeles is unpredictable, it must be understood in the broader context of the active, violent threat the Trump administration poses to the US. As we watch, American democracy teeters on the brink.
Emma Shortis is Director of International and Security Affairs at The Australia Institute, an independent think tank.
A no-holds-barred and very public blow-up between the world’s richest man and the president of the United States has had social media agog in recent days, with each making serious accusations against the other.
And while tech billionaire Elon Musk appears to have cooled the spat somewhat – deleting some of his more incendiary social media posts about Donald Trump – the president still appears to be in no mood to make up, warning Musk of “very serious consequences” if he backs Democrats at the mid-term elections in 2026.
Tensions erupted over Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB). The OBBB proposes extensive tax cuts which could add roughly US$3 trillion (A$4.62 trillion) to the US national debt.
After stepping down from his role as advisor to Trump, Musk criticised the OBBB as “disgusting abomination” that would “burden America [sic] citizens with crushing unsustainable debt”. Trump returned fire, suggesting “Elon was ‘wearing thin’, I asked him to leave […] and he just went CRAZY!”.
In a dramatic escalation, Musk responded by calling for Trump’s impeachment. Musk also tweeted allegations that Trump was implicated in the Epstein files related to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He has since deleted those tweets.
Why has the much-hyped “bromance” between Musk and Trump suddenly ended? And what was the basis of their alliance in the first place?
Musk in politics
Like many billionaires, Musk had previously been hesitant to get involved in frontline politics. He says he voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, but claimed in 2021 “I would prefer to stay out of politics”.
In early 2024, Musk was still claiming to be politically non-aligned, suggesting he would not donate to either presidential campaign.
This apparent neutrality ended following the attempted assassination of Trump at a July 2024 campaign rally, with Musk immediately endorsing Trump.
In reality, Musk’s conversion to the MAGA movement long predated the assassination attempt. Musk’s hyperactive Twitter/X account shows a steady radicalisation.
Across 2020-2024, Musk engaged with accounts sharing MAGA and far-right conspiracy theories. These include the antisemitic Great Replacement Theory, and the related South African white genocide conspiracy. Musk’s posts also show the obsession with opposing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies characteristic of the MAGA movement.
After endorsing Trump, Musk spent US$288 million (A$444 million) supporting Trump’s election and appeared at campaign events around the country.
Musk’s support for Trump was both ideological and pragmatic.
From tax cuts to immigration restrictions to opposing DEI, there were clearly many ideological commonalities between Musk and Trump.
There were also clear practical benefits for both men. Trump gained the financial backing of the world’s wealthiest man. Musk gained not only unparalleled access to the US president, but also a role leading the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
DOGE: success and failure
Early reporting on the second Trump presidency noted the omnipresence of Musk, who at one point moved into Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to be close to the president.
However, observers were sceptical about the potential effectiveness of DOGE, and Musk’s claim it would save the government US$2 trillion (A$3.02 trillion).
In the early months of the Trump administration, Musk cut government programs and employees at a remarkable rate. The USAID program was particularly hard hit, as were the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
As the spending cuts picked up pace, Musk began to attract more controversy. Critics questioned the apparent power wielded by the unelected billionaire. Musk’s ties to the far right were also in the spotlight after he appeared to perform two “Roman salutes”, which many observers believed to be a Nazi salute.
Trump clips Musk’s wings
Musk’s apparent rampage through government did not last long. As Trump’s executive appointees assumed control of their departments, Musk and DOGE experienced increasing resistance. After a series of fractious cabinet meetings, Trump reportedly reduced the power of DOGE in March.
Political attention was also clearly affecting Musk’s businesses. The negative publicity has significantly damaged the Tesla brand, leading to declining sales around the world and repeated falls in Telsa’s share price.
On May 1, Musk announced he would be leaving DOGE, claiming the department had saved the government US$180 billion (A$277 billion) in spending. This number is likely an exaggeration, but still falls well short of his original target.
Musk has learned a harsh lesson in politics – that the complexities of government resist simple reform and cannot be easily rolled back in the way a CEO might slim down a company.
For Trump, his manoeuvring of Musk appears to be another smart political move. As the public face of DOGE, Musk bore the negative rap for early government cuts and chaos. Having used his money and reputation, Trump dispensed with Musk as he has with so many advisers and appointees before.
The falling out
Musk departed his role in a muted White House ceremony, where Trump thanked him for his service and presented him with a ceremonial “golden key” to the White House.
However, behind the public show of civility, tension was brewing over Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
Trump and Musk had originally claimed that the US$2 trillion (A$3.02 trillion) in DOGE savings could be used to fund a substantial tax cut. With the efficiency savings not eventuating, Musk worried the OBBB would significantly increase US public debt.
Unable to convince Trump or other Republican legislators, Musk took to X, launching a “Kill the Bill” campaign that ultimately led to his incendiary showdown with Trump.
For his part, Trump has belittled Musk, suggesting Musk only opposed the OBBB because it cut subsidies for electric vehicles.
Though the subsidy cuts will affect Tesla, Musk has previously supported eliminating subsidies. Musk’s anger at the OBBB is more likely driven by the realisation he has been played by Trump.
What now?
Trump has used and discarded many other powerful figures in his chaotic political career. Musk has more power than most, and might be able to strike back at Trump.
Yet, with his public reputation and brands already tarnished, Musk would be ill-advised to pick further fights with Trump and his adoring MAGA movement.
Accordingly, Musk has indicated over the weekend he is open to a détente. Tesla investors will no doubt be relieved if Musk makes good on his pledge to step back from politics and return to his businesses.
More concerning are the prospects for democracy. With wealth and power continuing to concentrate in a handful of billionaires, voters appear reduced to the role of viewers forced to watch the reality TV drama unfold.
Though Trump appears to have won this round of billionaire battle royale, whatever happens next, democracy is the real loser.
Henry Maher 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.
Living forever has become the wellness and marketing trend of the 2020s. But cheating death – or at least delaying it – will come at a price.
What was once the domain of scientists and the uber rich is increasingly becoming a consumer product. Those pushing the idea, spearheaded by tech billionaire Bryan Johnson’s “Don’t Die” movement, believe death isn’t inevitable, but is a solvable problem.
But while the marketing is reaching the masses, this is still very much a luxury product. Immortality is being sold as exclusive, aspirational and symbolic. It’s not just about living longer – it’s about signalling status, controlling biology and being your “best future self”.
Tapping into long-held fears
What’s known as “terror management theory” puts forward the idea that humans and other animals have an instinctive drive for self-preservation. But humans are not only self-aware, they are also able to anticipate future outcomes – including the inevitability of death.
The messaging behind the push to extend life taps into this internal tension between knowledge of our own mortality and the self-preservation instinct. And to be fair, it is not a new phenomenon.
Cryonics – the preservation of bodies and brains at extremely low temperatures with the hope medical advancements will allow for their revival at some point in the future – was first popularised in Robert Ettinger’s 1962 book The Prospect of Immortality.
What’s truly new is how death is being marketed – not as fate, but as a flaw. Longevity isn’t just about living longer; it’s about turning mortality into a design problem, something to delay, manage and eventually solve.
“Biohacking” sells the idea that with the right data, tools and discipline, you can upgrade your biology – and become your best, most future-proof self.
The brands behind the living forever movement sell control, optimisation and elite identity. Ageing becomes a personal failure. Anti-ageing is self-discipline. Consumers are cast as CEOs of their own health – tracking sleep, fixing their gut and taking supplements.
But the real pitch is to consumers: buy back time, one premium subscription at a time. Johnson’s company Blueprint offers diagnostics, supplements and exercise routines bundled into monthly plans starting at $333 and climbing to over $1,600.
Longevity products promise more than health. They promise time, control and even immortality. But the quest to live forever, or at least a lot longer, raises moral and ethical questions about who benefits, and what kind of world is being created.
Without thoughtful oversight, these technologies risk becoming tools of exclusion, not progress. Because if time becomes a product, not everyone will get to check out at the same counter.
Amy Errmann 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.
The enamel that forms the outer layer of our teeth might seem like an unlikely place to find clues about evolution. But it tells us more than you’d think about the relationships between our fossil ancestors and relatives.
In our new study, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, we highlight a different aspect of enamel. In fact, we highlight its absence.
Specifically, we show that tiny, shallow pits in fossil teeth may not be signs of malnutrition or disease. Instead, they may carry surprising evolutionary significance.
You might be wondering why this matters. Well, for people like me who try to figure out how humans evolved and how all our ancestors and relatives were related to each other, teeth are very important. And having a new marker to look out for on fossil teeth could give us a new tool to help fit together our family tree.
Uniform, circular and shallow
These pits were first identified in the South African species Paranthropus robustus, a close relative of our own genus Homo. They are highly consistent in shape and size: uniform, circular and shallow.
Initially, we thought the pits might be unique to P. robustus. But our latest research shows this kind of pitting also occurs in other Paranthropus species in eastern Africa. We even found it in some Australopithecus individuals, a genus that may have given rise to both Homo and Paranthropus.
The enamel pits have commonly been assumed to be defects resulting from stresses such as illness or malnutrition during childhood. However, their remarkable consistency across species, time and geography suggests these enamel pits may be something more interesting.
The pitting is subtle, regularly spaced, and often clustered in specific regions of the tooth crown. It appears without any other signs of damage or abnormality.
Two million years of evolution
We looked at fossil teeth from hominins (humans and our closest extinct relatives) from the Omo Valley in Ethiopia, where we can see traces of more than two million years of human evolution, as well as comparisons with sites in southern Africa (Drimolen, Swartkrans and Kromdraai).
The Omo collection includes teeth attributed to Paranthropus, Australopithecus and Homo, the three most recent and well-known hominin genera. This allowed us to track the telltale pitting across different branches of our evolutionary tree.
What we found was unexpected. The uniform pitting appears regularly in both eastern and southern Africa Paranthropus, and also in the earliest eastern African Australopithecus teeth dating back around 3 million years. But among southern Africa Australopithecus and our own genus, Homo, the uniform pitting was notably absent.
A defect … or just a trait?
If the uniform pitting were caused by stress or disease, we might expect it to correlate with tooth size and enamel thickness, and to affect both front and back teeth. But it doesn’t.
What’s more, stress-related defects typically form horizontal bands. They usually affect all teeth developing at the time of the stress, but this is not what we see with this pitting.
The uniform, even nature of the pitting suggests a genetic origin rather than environmental factors such as malnutrition or disease. Towle et al. / Journal of Human Evolution
We think this pitting probably has a developmental and genetic origin. It may have emerged as a byproduct of changes in how enamel was formed in these species. It might even have some unknown functional purpose.
In any case, we suggest these uniform, circular pits should be viewed as a trait rather than a defect.
A modern comparison
Further support for the idea of a genetic origin comes from comparisons with a rare condition in humans today called amelogenesis imperfecta, which affects enamel formation.
About one in 1,000 people today have amelogenesis imperfecta. By contrast, the uniform pitting we have seen appears in up to half of Paranthropus individuals.
Although it likely has a genetic basis, we argue the even pitting is too common to be considered a harmful disorder. What’s more, it persisted at similar frequencies for millions of years.
A new evolutionary marker
If this uniform pitting really does have a genetic origin, we may be able to use it to trace evolutionary relationships.
We already use subtle tooth features such as enamel thickness, cusp shape, and wear patterns to help identify species. The uniform pitting may be an additional diagnostic tool.
For example, our findings support the idea that Paranthropus is a “monophyletic group”, meaning all its species descend from a (relatively) recent common ancestor, rather than evolving seperatly from different Australopithecus taxa.
And we did not find this pitting in the southern Africa species Australopithecus africanus, despite a large sample of more than 500 teeth. However, it does appear in the earliest Omo Australopithecus specimens.
So perhaps the pitting could also help pinpoint from where Paranthropus branched off on its own evolutionary path.
An intriguing case
One especially intriguing case is Homo floresiensis, the so-called “hobbit” species from Indonesia. Based on published images, their teeth appear to show similar pitting.
If confirmed, this could suggest an evolutionary history more closely tied to earlier Australopithecus species than to Homo. However, H. floresiensis also shows potential skeletal and dental pathologies, so more research is needed before drawing such conclusions.
More research is also needed to fully understand the processes behind the uniform pitting before it can be used routinely in taxonomic work. But our research shows it is likely a heritable characteristic, one not found in any living primates studied to date, nor in our own genus Homo (rare cases of amelogenesis imperfecta aside).
As such, it offers an exciting new tool for exploring evolutionary relationships among fossil hominins.
Ian Towle 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.
Dolphins are social animals and live in groups. But it’s hard to see long distances underwater. So, they use the power of sound to stay in contact with each other.
Sound travels much farther underwater than through the air. When dolphins jump, the slap of the landing makes a loud noise, and would be heard some distance away.
Some species, such as spinner dolphins, use jumping to communicate their location to other group members, especially at night. This helps them keep track of each other.
As an aside, spinner dolphins are very skilled jumpers. As the name suggests, they spin up to seven times in the air before landing back in the water!
Spinner dolphins are the acrobats of the sea.
The need for speed
Have you ever tried to walk underwater? You will have felt how hard it is. That’s because water is more dense than air, which creates a “drag”, or resistance.
Dolphins have streamlined bodies to reduce drag, but they still feel it. So, if they want to travel quickly – for example, if they are trying to escape a predator or hunt fish – they sometimes jump.
While in the air, they travel faster than they would through water, and also save energy.
To gather food
Some dolphins weigh less than 50 kilograms, such as the Hector’s dolphin. Others weigh several tonnes, such as an orca.
Either way, when a dolphin crashes back into the water, you can be sure it makes quite a noisy splash.
Some dolphin species, such as dusky dolphins, use this noise to herd fish at the surface to make them easier to capture.
Shaking off hitchhikers
Fish called remoras can attach themselves to dolphins using a sucker on their head. This is good for the fish, because it can keep them safe and they have plenty to eat, such as small parasites and old bits of dolphin skin.
While the remoras don’t hurt the dolphin, they probably slow it down. So dolphins may try to get rid of the little hitchhikers by jumping to dislodge them.
Sometimes, that social behaviour can end in a “fight”. Dolphin experts say two dolphins jumping around together might be actually trying to hit each other!
Dolphins also love to frolic – not just with each other but with other marine mammals such as whales and sea lions, with turtles – or even just a piece of seaweed! So they might jump as some sort of “game”.
As you can see, dolphins may jump for a range of reasons – sometimes just because it’s really fun!
Katharina J. Peters 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.
Many parents will be familiar with this situation: your child has a good or even best friend, but you don’t like them.
Perhaps the friend is bossy, has poor manners or jumps on your furniture. Maybe you don’t like the way your child behaves when they are with this friend.
For older children, your dislike might relate to the friend’s language, attitude towards school, or risk-taking behaviours. Maybe the friend is hot and cold and elicits more drama than Mean Girls.
This provides a rush of adrenaline, which can spur parents to take actions such as criticising the friend or even attempting to ban the friendship.
However, this approach can do more harm than good, particularly for adolescents who are hardwired to push back on their parents.
What can you do for younger kids?
With younger children, clear boundaries can be set at the outset of a playdate. For example, “my bedroom is off limits for playing” or “we don’t jump on the couch”.
If kids are using mean or rude language around each other, you can say “we don’t use that word in this house, be kind to each other”.
Playdates can be moved outside, which can be particularly helpful if a child shows loud, destructive or rude behaviour. And if you can help it, organise fewer plays with that child.
But parents may also want to reflect on why this child rubs them the wrong way. Is the reaction warranted, or does it comes from your own biases and opinions? Your child’s friends do not have to be the friends you would choose.
Change your approach for older kids
To become successful adults, teens need to move through developmental milestones of becoming autonomous and self-reliant. Intervening in their friendships interferes with this vital process of developing independence and identity, which ultimately disempowers them.
In the 1960s, US psychologist Diana Baumrind published famous research on parenting. She found an authoritarian style – where the parent exerts complete control and does not listen to the child’s needs – results in a child with less confidence and independence than one brought up in a household that has rules but is also responsive to their needs.
Adopting an authoritarian approach to friends or potential partners also risks the “Romeo and Juliet” effect, whereby disapproval makes the child more attracted to that person.
So, for teenagers and their friends, the approach should be more nuanced. The primary goal is to encourage the child to see the parent as a person to come to when they have problems. If parents are tempted to be critical, they could ask themself: is it in the best interests of your child to be controlled?
Fostering an open dialogue about friends and relationships can allow parents to have influence in a subtle and developmentally appropriate way.
For younger children, you could use a quiet moment to ask questions like “what can you say to Charlotte if you don’t want to play her game anymore?” or “what’s a good way to deal with it if she is being too bossy?”
For older children, ideally wait until your teen wants to connect, rather than launching into questions. Ask gentle, non-judgmental questions about their friendship, like “what do you like to do together?” or “tell me about what you have in common”.
If they seem upset or uncomfortable in some way, resist the urge to dismiss or solve the problem. Simply listening is the key to helping the child work it out, so they feel supported but not judged.
And remember, not all friendships last. As children move through school and grow, most will naturally make new friends and move on from old ones.
Clearly, one exception to adopting a teen-led approach is when safety is at risk. If they are being bullied or abused in any form – even if the child is opposed – parents should step in and speak to the school or other relevant authorities.
Rachael Murrihy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Meru Sheel, Associate Professor, Infectious Diseases, Immunisation and Emergencies (IDIE) Group, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney
Measles has been rising globally in recent years. There were an estimated 10.3 million cases worldwide in 2023, a 20% increase from 2022.
Outbreaks are being reported all over the world including in the United States, Europe and the Western Pacific region (which includes Australia). For example, Vietnam has reportedly seen thousands of cases in 2024 and 2025.
In Australia, 77 cases of measles have been recorded in the first five months of 2025, compared with 57 cases in all of 2024.
Measles cases in Australia are almost all related to international travel. They occur in travellers returning from overseas, or are contracted locally after mixing with an infected traveller or their contacts.
Measles most commonly affects children and is preventable with vaccination, given in Australia in two doses at 12 and 18 months old. But in light of current outbreaks globally, is there a case for reviewing the timing of measles vaccinations?
Some measles basics
Measles is caused by a virus belonging to the genus Morbillivirus. Symptoms include a fever, cough, runny nose and a rash. While it presents as a mild illness in most cases, measles can lead to severe disease requiring hospitalisation, and even death. Large outbreaks can overwhelm health systems.
Measles can have serious health consequences, such as in the brain and the immune system, years after the infection.
Measles spreads from person to person via small respiratory droplets that can remain suspended in the air for two hours. It’s highly contagious – one person with measles can spread the infection to 12–18 people who aren’t immune.
Newborn babies are generally protected against measles thanks to maternal antibodies. Maternal antibodies get passed from the mother to the baby via the placenta and in breast milk, and provide protection against infections including measles.
The WHO advises everyone should receive two doses of measles vaccination. In places where there’s a lot of measles circulating, children are generally recommended to have the first dose at around nine months old. This is because it’s expected maternal antibodies would have declined significantly in most infants by that age, leaving them vulnerable to infection.
Research has also shown a measles vaccine given at less than 8.5 months of age can result in an antibody response which declines more quickly. This might be due to interference with maternal antibodies, but researchers are still trying to understand the reasons for this.
A second dose of the vaccine is usually given 6–9 months later. A second dose is important because about 10–15% of children don’t develop antibodies after the first vaccine.
In settings where measles transmission is under better control, a first dose is recommended at 12 months of age. Vaccination at 12 months compared with nine months is considered to generate a stronger, longer-lasting immune response.
In Australia, children are routinely given the measles-mumps- rubella (MMR) vaccine at 12 months and the measles-mumps-rubella-varicella (MMRV, with “varicella” being chickenpox) vaccine at 18 months.
Babies at higher risk of catching the disease can also be given an additional early dose. In Australia, this is recommended for infants as young as six months when there’s an outbreak or if they’re travelling overseas to a high-risk setting.
A new study looking at measles antibodies in babies
A recent review looked at measles antibody data from babies under nine months old living in low- and middle-income countries. The review combined the results from 20 studies, including more than 8,000 babies. The researchers found that while 81% of newborns had maternal antibodies to measles, only 30% of babies aged four months had maternal antibodies.
This study suggests maternal antibodies to measles decline much earlier than previously thought. It raises the question of whether the first dose of measles vaccine is given too late to maximise infants’ protection, especially when there’s a lot of measles around.
Should we bring the measles vaccine forward in Australia?
All of the data in this study comes from low- and middle-income countries, and might not reflect the situation in Australia where we have much higher vaccine coverage for measles, and very few cases.
Although this is lower than the optimal 95%, the overall risk of measles surging in Australia is relatively low.
Nonetheless, there may be a case for broadening the age at which an early extra dose of the measles vaccine can be given to children at higher risk. In New Zealand, infants as young as four months can receive a measles vaccine before travelling to an endemic country.
But the current routine immunisation schedule in Australia is unlikely to change.
Adding an extra dose to the schedule would be costly and logistically difficult. Lowering the age for the first dose may have some advantages in certain settings, and doesn’t pose any safety concerns, but further evidence would be required to support this change. In particular, research is needed to ensure it wouldn’t negatively affect the longer-term protection that vaccination offers from measles.
Making sure you’re protected
In the meantime, ensuring high levels of measles vaccine coverage with two doses is a global priority.
People born after 1966 are recommended to have two doses of measles vaccine. This is because those born before the mid-1960s likely caught measles as children (when the vaccine was not yet available) and would therefore have natural immunity.
If you’re unsure about your vaccination status, you can check this through the Australian Immunisation Register. If you don’t have a documented record, ask your doctor for advice.
Meru Sheel receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Anita Heywood 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.
On October 7 2023, more than 1,000 Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel and went on a killing spree, murdering 1,200 men, women and children and abducting another 250 people to take back to Gaza. It was the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
That day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the country, “Israel is at war”. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) immediately began a military campaign to secure the release of the hostages and defeat Hamas. Since that day, more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children.
Israel has maintained its response is justified under international law, as every nation has “an inherent right to defend itself”, as Netanyahu stated in early 2024.
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations[…]
At the start of the war, many nations agreed Israel had a right to defend itself, but how it did so mattered. This would ensure its actions were consistent with international humanitarian law.
However, 20 months after the October 7 attacks, fundamental legal issues have arisen around whether this self-defence justification still holds.
Can Israel exercise self-defence ad infinitum? Or is it now waging a war of aggression against Palestine?
Self-defence in the law
Self-defence has a long history in international law.
The modern principles of self-defence were outlined in diplomatic exchanges over an 1837 incident involving an American ship, The Caroline, after it was destroyed by British forces in Canada. Both sides agreed that an exercise of self-defence would have required the British to demonstrate their conduct was not “unreasonable or excessive”.
The concept of self-defence was also extensively relied on by the Allies in the second world war in response to German and Japanese aggression.
Self-defence was originally framed in the law as a right to respond to a state-based attack. However, this scope has broadened in recent decades to encompass attacks from non-state actors, such as al-Qaeda following the September 11 2001 terror attacks.
Israel is a legitimate, recognised state in the global community and a member of the United Nations. Its right to self-defence will always remain intact when it faces attacks from its neighbours or non-state actors, such as Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
However, the right of self-defence is not unlimited. It is constrained by the principles of necessity and proportionality.
The necessity test was met in the current war due to the extreme violence of the Hamas attack on October 7 and the taking of hostages. These were actions that could not be ignored and demanded a response, due to the threat Israel continued to face.
The proportionality test was also met, initially. Israel’s military operation after the attack was strategic in nature, focused on the return of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas to eliminate the immediate threat the group posed.
The legal question now is whether Israel is still legitimately exercising self-defence in response to the October 7 attacks.
This is a live issue, especially given comments by Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on May 30 that Hamas would be “annihilated” unless a proposed ceasefire deal was accepted.
These comments and Israel’s ongoing conduct throughout the war raise the question of whether proportionality is still being met.
A test of proportionality
The importance of proportionality in self-defence has been endorsed in recent years by the International Court of Justice.
Under international law, proportionality remains relevant throughout a conflict, not just in the initial response to an attack.
While the law allows a war to continue until an aggressor surrenders, it does not legitimise the complete destruction of the territory where an aggressor is fighting.
The principle of proportionality also provides protections for civilians. Military actions are to be directed at the foreign forces who launched the attack, not civilians.
While Israel has targeted Hamas fighters in its attacks, including those who orchestrated the October 7 attacks, these actions have caused significant collateral deaths of Palestinian civilians.
Therefore, taken overall, the ongoing, 20-month military assault against Hamas, with its high numbers of civilian casualties, credible reports of famine and devastation of Gazan towns and cities, suggests Israel’s exercise of self-defence has become disproportionate.
The principle of proportionality is also part of international humanitarian law. However, Israel’s actions on this front are a separate legal issue that has been the subject of investigation by the International Criminal Court.
My aim here is to solely assess the legal question of proportionality in self-defence and international law.
However, rescuing nationals as an exercise of self-defence is legally controversial. Israel set a precedent in 1976 when the military rescued 103 Jewish hostages from Entebbe, Uganda, after their aircraft had been hijacked.
In current international law, there are very few other examples in which this interpretation of self-defence has been adopted – and no international consensus on its use.
In Gaza, the size, scale and duration of Israel’s war goes far beyond a hostage rescue operation. Its aim is also to eliminate Hamas.
Given this, rescuing hostages as an act of self-defence is arguably not a suitable justification for Israel’s ongoing military operations.
An act of aggression?
If Israel can no longer rely on self-defence to justify its Gaza military campaign, how would its actions be characterised under international law?
Israel could claim it is undertaking a security operation as an occupying power.
While the International Court of Justice said in an advisory opinion last year that Israel was engaged in an illegal occupation of Gaza, the court expressly made clear it was not addressing the circumstances that had evolved since October 7.
Israel is indeed continuing to act as an occupying power, even though it has not physically reoccupied all of Gaza. This is irrelevant given the effective control it exercises over the territory.
However, the scale of the IDF’s operations constitute an armed conflict and well exceed the limited military operations to restore security as an occupying power.
Absent any other legitimate basis for Israel’s current conduct in Gaza, there is a strong argument that what is occurring is an act of aggression. The UN Charter and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court prohibit acts of aggression not otherwise justified under international law.
These include invasions or attacks by the armed forces of a state, military occupations, bombardments and blockades. All of this has occurred – and continues to occur – in Gaza.
However, this process of re-shoring is complex and requires years of investment and planning – far too slow for the world of ultra-fast fashion, where brands are used to reacting in weeks, not years.
Many clothing companies started to move production out of China during Trump’s first term. They relocated to countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia when the initial China-specific tariffs hit.
This trend accelerated with the newer “reciprocal” tariffs. Instead of re-shoring production, many fashion brands are simply sourcing from whichever country offers the lowest total cost after tariffs. The result? The ultra-fast fashion machine adapted quickly and became even more exploitative.
From Guangzhou to your wardrobe in days
Platforms such as Shein and Temu built their success by offering trend-driven clothing at shockingly low prices. A $5 dress or $3 top might seem like a bargain, but those prices hide a lot.
Much of Shein’s production takes place in the so-called “Shein village” in Guangzhou, China, where workers often sew for 12–14 hours a day under poor conditions to keep pace with the demand for new items.
When the US cracked down on Chinese imports, the intention was to make American-made goods more competitive. This included raising the tariff on Chinese goods as high as 145% (since paused), and closing the “de minimis” loophole, which had allowed imports under US$800 to enter tariff-free.
But these tariffs did not halt ultra-fast fashion. They just rerouted production to countries with lower tariffs and even lower labour costs. The Philippines, with a comparatively low tariff rate of 17%, emerged as a surprising alternative. However, the country can’t provide the industrial scale and infrastructure to match what China can offer.
Australia still allows most low-value imports to enter tax-free, and platforms such as Shein and Temu have taken full advantage. Australian consumers are among the most frequent Shein and Temu buyers per capita globally.
Just 3% of clothing is made in Australia and most labels rely on offshore manufacturing. This makes Australia an ideal target market for ultra-fast fashion imports. We have high purchasing power, lenient import rules and strong demand for low-cost style, especially due to the cost-of-living crisis.
The hidden costs of cheap clothes
The environmental impact of fast fashion is well known. However, amid the chaos of Trump’s tariff announcements, far less attention has been paid to how these policies – together with the retreat from climate commitments – worsen environmental harms, including those linked to fast fashion.
The irony is that the tariffs meant to protect American workers have, in some cases, worsened conditions for workers elsewhere. Meanwhile, consumers in Australia now benefit from faster delivery of even cheaper goods as Temu, Shein and others have improved their shipping capabilities to Australia.
Factory workers bear the brunt of cost-cutting. In the race to stay competitive, many manufacturers reduce wages and overlook hazardous working conditions.
Will ethical fashion ever compete?
Fixing these problems will require a global rethink of how fashion operates.
Governments have a role in regulating disclosures about supply chains and enforcing labour standards.
Brands need to take responsibility for the conditions in their factories, whether directly owned or outsourced. Transparency is essential.
Alternatives to fast fashion are gaining traction. Clothing rentals are emerging as a promising business model that help build a more circular fashion economy. Charity-run op shops have long been a sustainable source of second-hand clothing.
Australia’s new Seamless scheme seeks to make fashion brands responsible for the full life of the clothes they sell. The aim is to help people buy, wear and recycle clothes in a more sustainable way.
Consumers also matter. If we continue to expect clothes to cost less than a cup of coffee, change will be slow. Recognising that a $5 t-shirt has hidden costs, borne by people on the factory floor and the environment, is a first step.
Some ethical brands are already showing a better way and offer clothes made under fairer conditions and with sustainable materials. These clothes are not as cheap or fast, but they represent a more conscious alternative especially for consumers concerned about synthetic fibres, toxic chemicals and environmental harm.
Trump reshuffled the deck, but did not change the game
Trump’s trade rules aim to re-balance global trade in favour of American industry, yet have cost companies more than US$34 billion in lost sales and higher costs. This cost will eventually fall on US consumers. In ultra-fast fashion, it mostly exposed how fragile and exploitative the system already was.
Today, brands such as Shein and Temu are thriving in Australia. But unless we address the systemic inequalities in fashion production and rethink the incentives that drive this market, the true cost of cheap clothing will continue to be paid by those least able to afford it.
Mona Mashhadi Rajabi receives funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFAANZ), and a Business Research Grant from the University of Technology Sydney.
Lisa Lake previously received funding from NSW Department of Education Innovation and Collaboration grant to establish the Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Fashion + Textiles.
Martina Linnenluecke receives funding from The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the Australian Research Council. Her work is also supported by a Strategic Research Accelerator Grant from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
Yun Shen 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.
New Zealand has just been hit by the first big cold snap of 2025 and, like every year, many New Zealanders will be reaching for an extra jumper, slippers and maybe a blanket to try and keep warm.
In the 2018 Census, households were asked about the state of their homes. According to Stats NZ, 318,891 homes in New Zealand (21.5%) were affected by dampness and 252,855 (16.9%) had visible mould larger than A4 size at least some of the time.
Even when homes are built to code, there can still be issues and health risks. A lot of New Zealand’s housing is not fit for purpose – particularly at this time of the year.
While improving heating and standards is a homeowner choice, for landlords it is increasingly a requirement. Over recent years landlords have faced increasing costs to achieve legal heating, ventilation and insulation requirements within 90 days of a new or renewed tenancy.
For everyone else, there are ways to make homes more efficient to heat and comfortable to live in. Here are four ways to keep heat in your home this winter – some simple and affordable, while others are more of an investment.
Insulation is your friend
Firstly, insulation is our friend in winter. Double glazing is excellent but expensive (between NZ$450/m2 and $1500/m2) and subject to restrictions in heritage buildings. There are other options.
Where possible, home owners should be looking at ways to add to thermal efficiency by increasing insulation.
Walls can be retrofitted with cavity fillers. If your budget can stretch to it, rigid insulation board is also effective. Under the floor and in the roof spaces are favourites for these upgrades. They are relatively cheap improvements to make and generally pay for themselves.
Target draughts
Secondly, a warm and dry home requires finding and eliminating draughts.
For many years, building scientists have sought to achieve airtight homes. An airtight home substantially reduces heat loss in winter.
Temporary and permanent improvements can be made by buying or making some draught excluders and door sweeps for doorways. But specialist products such as adhesive-backed foam tape or V-strip weatherstripping around door and window frames are also very effective.
Even just using masking tape during winter to seal the gaps in unused windows can help keep warmth in the home.
Windows and a compass
Third, use your window orientation strategically. Invest in heavier curtains (or blinds) that insulate windows. Then use a compass (you probably have a compass app on your phone) to work out which way is north.
North-facing windows catch the sun during the day, and contribute to thermal gain in a house. South-facing windows are in shadow all day and tend to act as a heat sink, losing energy throughout the day.
During the day, ensure curtains and blinds are open on the north side and closed on the south side. As soon as night falls, close the curtains to retain maximum heat. Try to keep unused rooms closed off and stick to the naturally warmer spaces.
Move heat around
Fourth, use ceiling fans, heat pumps, and dehumidifiers to maximise the available heat in your house.
Heat will stratify into layers in your house. It is always going to be warmer near the ceiling of each room. Usually, the loft space is the warmest of all through maximum thermal gain during the day.
Using a ducted heat pump can recycle that heat to the living spaces. Similarly, if you set the ceiling fan to move air around the room you will make the most of what you have. Ideally, run the ceiling fan backwards (clockwise) if it has that option, to create an updraught rather than a downdraught to aid circulation.
Dehumidifiers are extremely useful in increasing the feeling of warmth in a house. During operation, they release some latent heat while condensing water. Dry air is easier to heat, making your heating more efficient.
Your home can make you sick
Cold damp homes can have significant health impacts, including respiratory issues, rheumatic fever and skin infections – particularly for children and vulnerable people.
Targeting heat loss and dampness can help improve conditions. Will it ensure every home is warm and toasty? No. But these steps can make their homes just a little bit warmer – and healthier – this winter.
John Tookey 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.
Smoke and tear gas surround a protester in Los Angeles on June 7, 2025, amid confrontations between immigration rights advocates and law enforcement personnel.Taurat Hossain/Anadolu via Getty Images
Responding to street protests in Los Angeles against federal immigration enforcement raids, President Donald Trump ordered 2,000 soldiers from the California National Guard into the city on June 7, 2025, to protect agents carrying out the raids. Trump also authorized the Pentagon to dispatch regular U.S. troops “as necessary” to support the California National Guard.
The president’s orders did not specify rules of engagement about when and how force could be used. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who did not request the National Guard and asserted it was not needed, criticized the president’s decision as “inflammatory” and warned it “will only escalate tensions.”
I am a historian who has written several books about the Vietnam War, one of the most divisive episodes in our nation’s past. My recent book, “Kent State: An American Tragedy,” examines a historic clash on May 4, 1970, between anti-war protesters and National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio.
The confrontation escalated into violence: troops opened fire on the demonstrators, killing four students and wounding nine others, including one who was paralyzed for life.
In my view, dispatching California National Guard troops against civilian protesters in Los Angeles chillingly echoes decisions and actions that led to the tragic Kent State shooting. Some active-duty units, as well as National Guard troops, are better prepared today than in 1970 to respond to riots and violent protests – but the vast majority of their training and their primary mission remains to fight, to kill, and to win wars.
Protests in Los Angeles began after federal agencies conducted immigration raids across the city on June 6, 2025. Local police responded with pepper spray, rubber bullets and tear gas.
Federalizing the Guard
The National Guard is a force of state militias under the command of governors. It can be federalized by the president during times of national emergency, or for deployment on combat missions overseas. Guardsmen train for one weekend per month and two weeks every summer.
Presidents rarely deploy National Guard troops without state governors’ consent. The main modern exceptions occurred in the 1950s and 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement, when Southern governors defied federal court orders to desegregate schools in Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama. In each case, the federal government sent troops to protect Black students from crowds of white protesters.
The 1807 Insurrection Act grants presidents authority to use active-duty troops or National Guard forces to restore order within the United States. President Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act. Instead, he relied on Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, a narrower federal statute that allows the president to mobilize the National Guard in situations including “rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
ICE officers and national guards confront protesters outside of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles on June 8, 2025. Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images
The standoff at Kent State
The war in Vietnam had grown increasingly unpopular by early 1970, but protests intensified on April 30 when President Richard Nixon authorized expanding the conflict into Cambodia. At Kent State, after a noontime anti-war rally on campus on May 1, alcohol-fueled students harassed passing motorists in town and smashed storefront windows that night. On May 2, anti-war protesters set fire to the building where military officers trained Kent State students enrolled in the armed forces’ Reserve Officer Training Corps program.
In response, Republican Governor Jim Rhodes dispatched National Guard troops, against the advice of university and many local officials, who understood the mood in the town of Kent and on campus far better than Rhodes did. County prosecutor Ron Kane had vehemently warned Rhodes that deploying the National Guard could spark conflict and lead to fatalities.
Nonetheless, Rhodes – who was trailing in an impending Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat – struck the pose of a take-charge leader who wasn’t going to be pushed around by a long-haired rabble. “We’re going to put a stop to this!” he shouted, pounding the table at a press conference in Kent on May 3.
Hundreds of National Guard troops were deployed across town and on campus. University officials announced that further rallies were banned. Nonetheless, on May 4, some 2,000 to 3,000 students gathered on the campus Commons for another anti-war rally. They were met by 96 National Guardsmen, led by eight officers.
There was confrontation in the air as student anger over Nixon’s expansion of the war blended with resentment over the Guard’s presence. Protesters chanted antiwar slogans, shouted epithets at the Guardsmen and made obscene gestures.
Archival footage from CBS News of the clash between campus anti-war protesters and Ohio National Guard troops at Kent State University on May 4, 1970.
‘Fire in the air!’
The Guardsmen sent to Kent State had no training in de-escalating tension or minimizing the use of force. Nonetheless, their commanding officer that day, Ohio Army National Guard Assistant Adjutant General Robert Canterbury, decided to use them to break up what the Department of Justice later deemed a legal assembly.
In my view, it was a reckless judgment that inflamed an already volatile situation. Students started showering the greatly outnumbered Guardsmen with rocks and other objects. In violation of Ohio Army National Guard regulations, Canterbury neglected to warn the students that he had ordered Guardsmens’ rifles loaded with live ammunition.
As tension mounted, Canterbury failed to adequately supervise his increasingly fearful troops – a cardinal responsibility of the commanding officer on the scene. This fundamental failure of leadership increased confusion and resulted in a breakdown of fire control discipline – officers’ responsibility to maintain tight control over their troops’ discharge of weapons.
When protesters neared the Guardsmen, platoon sergeant Mathew McManus shouted “Fire in the air!” in a desperate attempt to prevent bloodshed. McManus intended for troops to shoot above the students’ heads to warn them off. But some Guardsmen, wearing gas masks that made it hard to hear amid the noise and confusion, only heard or reacted to the first word of McManus’ order, and fired at the students.
The troops had not been trained to fire warning shots, which was contrary to National Guard regulations. And McManus had no authority to issue an order to fire if officers were nearby, as they were.
Many National Guardsmen who were at Kent State on May 4 later questioned why they had been deployed there. “Loaded rifles and fixed bayonets are pretty harsh solutions for students exercising free speech on an American campus,” one of them told an oral history interviewer. Another plaintively asked me in a 2023 interview, “Why would you put soldiers trained to kill on a university campus to serve a police function?”
Doug Guthrie, a student at Kent State in 1970, looks back 54 years later at the events of May 4.
A fighting force
National Guard equipment and training have improved significantly in the decades since Kent State. But Guardsmen are still military troops who are fundamentally trained to fight, not to control crowds.
In 2020, then-National Guard Bureau Chief General Joseph Lengyel told reporters that “the civil unrest mission is one of the most difficult and dangerous missions … in our domestic portfolio.”
In my view, the tragedy of Kent State shows how critical it is for authorities to be thoughtful in responding to protests, and extremely cautious in deploying military troops to deal with them. The application of force is inherently unpredictable, often uncontrollable, and can lead to fatal mistakes and lasting human suffering. And while protests sometimes break rules, they may not be disruptive or harmful enough to merit responding with force.
Aggressive displays of force, in fact, can heighten tensions and worsen situations. Conversely, research shows that if protesters perceive authorities are acting with restraint and treating them with respect, they are more likely to remain nonviolent. The shooting at Kent State demonstrated that using military force in these situations is an option fraught with grave risks.
This is an updated version of an article originally published Aug. 27, 2024.
Brian VanDeMark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
However, this process of re-shoring is complex and requires years of investment and planning – far too slow for the world of ultra-fast fashion, where brands are used to reacting in weeks, not years.
Many clothing companies started to move production out of China during Trump’s first term. They relocated to countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia when the initial China-specific tariffs hit.
This trend accelerated with the newer “reciprocal” tariffs. Instead of re-shoring production, many fashion brands are simply sourcing from whichever country offers the lowest total cost after tariffs. The result? The ultra-fast fashion machine adapted quickly and became even more exploitative.
From Guangzhou to your wardrobe in days
Platforms such as Shein and Temu built their success by offering trend-driven clothing at shockingly low prices. A $5 dress or $3 top might seem like a bargain, but those prices hide a lot.
Much of Shein’s production takes place in the so-called “Shein village” in Guangzhou, China, where workers often sew for 12–14 hours a day under poor conditions to keep pace with the demand for new items.
When the US cracked down on Chinese imports, the intention was to make American-made goods more competitive. This included raising the tariff on Chinese goods as high as 145% (since paused), and closing the “de minimis” loophole, which had allowed imports under US$800 to enter tariff-free.
But these tariffs did not halt ultra-fast fashion. They just rerouted production to countries with lower tariffs and even lower labour costs. The Philippines, with a comparatively low tariff rate of 17%, emerged as a surprising alternative. However, the country can’t provide the industrial scale and infrastructure to match what China can offer.
Australia still allows most low-value imports to enter tax-free, and platforms such as Shein and Temu have taken full advantage. Australian consumers are among the most frequent Shein and Temu buyers per capita globally.
Just 3% of clothing is made in Australia and most labels rely on offshore manufacturing. This makes Australia an ideal target market for ultra-fast fashion imports. We have high purchasing power, lenient import rules and strong demand for low-cost style, especially due to the cost-of-living crisis.
The hidden costs of cheap clothes
The environmental impact of fast fashion is well known. However, amid the chaos of Trump’s tariff announcements, far less attention has been paid to how these policies – together with the retreat from climate commitments – worsen environmental harms, including those linked to fast fashion.
The irony is that the tariffs meant to protect American workers have, in some cases, worsened conditions for workers elsewhere. Meanwhile, consumers in Australia now benefit from faster delivery of even cheaper goods as Temu, Shein and others have improved their shipping capabilities to Australia.
Factory workers bear the brunt of cost-cutting. In the race to stay competitive, many manufacturers reduce wages and overlook hazardous working conditions.
Will ethical fashion ever compete?
Fixing these problems will require a global rethink of how fashion operates.
Governments have a role in regulating disclosures about supply chains and enforcing labour standards.
Brands need to take responsibility for the conditions in their factories, whether directly owned or outsourced. Transparency is essential.
Alternatives to fast fashion are gaining traction. Clothing rentals are emerging as a promising business model that help build a more circular fashion economy. Charity-run op shops have long been a sustainable source of second-hand clothing.
Australia’s new Seamless scheme seeks to make fashion brands responsible for the full life of the clothes they sell. The aim is to help people buy, wear and recycle clothes in a more sustainable way.
Consumers also matter. If we continue to expect clothes to cost less than a cup of coffee, change will be slow. Recognising that a $5 t-shirt has hidden costs, borne by people on the factory floor and the environment, is a first step.
Some ethical brands are already showing a better way and offer clothes made under fairer conditions and with sustainable materials. These clothes are not as cheap or fast, but they represent a more conscious alternative especially for consumers concerned about synthetic fibres, toxic chemicals and environmental harm.
Trump reshuffled the deck, but did not change the game
Trump’s trade rules aim to re-balance global trade in favour of American industry, yet have cost companies more than US$34 billion in lost sales and higher costs. This cost will eventually fall on US consumers. In ultra-fast fashion, it mostly exposed how fragile and exploitative the system already was.
Today, brands such as Shein and Temu are thriving in Australia. But unless we address the systemic inequalities in fashion production and rethink the incentives that drive this market, the true cost of cheap clothing will continue to be paid by those least able to afford it.
Mona Mashhadi Rajabi receives funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFAANZ), and a Business Research Grant from the University of Technology Sydney.
Lisa Lake previously received funding from NSW Department of Education Innovation and Collaboration grant to establish the Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Fashion + Textiles.
Martina Linnenluecke receives funding from The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and the Australian Research Council. Her work is also supported by a Strategic Research Accelerator Grant from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
Yun Shen 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.
Dolphins are social animals and live in groups. But it’s hard to see long distances underwater. So, they use the power of sound to stay in contact with each other.
Sound travels much farther underwater than through the air. When dolphins jump, the slap of the landing makes a loud noise, and would be heard some distance away.
Some species, such as spinner dolphins, use jumping to communicate their location to other group members, especially at night. This helps them keep track of each other.
As an aside, spinner dolphins are very skilled jumpers. As the name suggests, they spin up to seven times in the air before landing back in the water!
Spinner dolphins are the acrobats of the sea.
The need for speed
Have you ever tried to walk underwater? You will have felt how hard it is. That’s because water is more dense than air, which creates a “drag”, or resistance.
Dolphins have streamlined bodies to reduce drag, but they still feel it. So, if they want to travel quickly – for example, if they are trying to escape a predator or hunt fish – they sometimes jump.
While in the air, they travel faster than they would through water, and also save energy.
To gather food
Some dolphins weigh less than 50 kilograms, such as the Hector’s dolphin. Others weigh several tonnes, such as an orca.
Either way, when a dolphin crashes back into the water, you can be sure it makes quite a noisy splash.
Some dolphin species, such as dusky dolphins, use this noise to herd fish at the surface to make them easier to capture.
Shaking off hitchhikers
Fish called remoras can attach themselves to dolphins using a sucker on their head. This is good for the fish, because it can keep them safe and they have plenty to eat, such as small parasites and old bits of dolphin skin.
While the remoras don’t hurt the dolphin, they probably slow it down. So dolphins may try to get rid of the little hitchhikers by jumping to dislodge them.
Sometimes, that social behaviour can end in a “fight”. Dolphin experts say two dolphins jumping around together might be actually trying to hit each other!
Dolphins also love to frolic – not just with each other but with other marine mammals such as whales and sea lions, with turtles – or even just a piece of seaweed! So they might jump as some sort of “game”.
As you can see, dolphins may jump for a range of reasons – sometimes just because it’s really fun!
Katharina J. Peters 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.
The enamel that forms the outer layer of our teeth might seem like an unlikely place to find clues about evolution. But it tells us more than you’d think about the relationships between our fossil ancestors and relatives.
In our new study, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, we highlight a different aspect of enamel. In fact, we highlight its absence.
Specifically, we show that tiny, shallow pits in fossil teeth may not be signs of malnutrition or disease. Instead, they may carry surprising evolutionary significance.
You might be wondering why this matters. Well, for people like me who try to figure out how humans evolved and how all our ancestors and relatives were related to each other, teeth are very important. And having a new marker to look out for on fossil teeth could give us a new tool to help fit together our family tree.
Uniform, circular and shallow
These pits were first identified in the South African species Paranthropus robustus, a close relative of our own genus Homo. They are highly consistent in shape and size: uniform, circular and shallow.
Initially, we thought the pits might be unique to P. robustus. But our latest research shows this kind of pitting also occurs in other Paranthropus species in eastern Africa. We even found it in some Australopithecus individuals, a genus that may have given rise to both Homo and Paranthropus.
The enamel pits have commonly been assumed to be defects resulting from stresses such as illness or malnutrition during childhood. However, their remarkable consistency across species, time and geography suggests these enamel pits may be something more interesting.
The pitting is subtle, regularly spaced, and often clustered in specific regions of the tooth crown. It appears without any other signs of damage or abnormality.
Two million years of evolution
We looked at fossil teeth from hominins (humans and our closest extinct relatives) from the Omo Valley in Ethiopia, where we can see traces of more than two million years of human evolution, as well as comparisons with sites in southern Africa (Drimolen, Swartkrans and Kromdraai).
The Omo collection includes teeth attributed to Paranthropus, Australopithecus and Homo, the three most recent and well-known hominin genera. This allowed us to track the telltale pitting across different branches of our evolutionary tree.
What we found was unexpected. The uniform pitting appears regularly in both eastern and southern Africa Paranthropus, and also in the earliest eastern African Australopithecus teeth dating back around 3 million years. But among southern Africa Australopithecus and our own genus, Homo, the uniform pitting was notably absent.
A defect … or just a trait?
If the uniform pitting were caused by stress or disease, we might expect it to correlate with tooth size and enamel thickness, and to affect both front and back teeth. But it doesn’t.
What’s more, stress-related defects typically form horizontal bands. They usually affect all teeth developing at the time of the stress, but this is not what we see with this pitting.
The uniform, even nature of the pitting suggests a genetic origin rather than environmental factors such as malnutrition or disease. Towle et al. / Journal of Human Evolution
We think this pitting probably has a developmental and genetic origin. It may have emerged as a byproduct of changes in how enamel was formed in these species. It might even have some unknown functional purpose.
In any case, we suggest these uniform, circular pits should be viewed as a trait rather than a defect.
A modern comparison
Further support for the idea of a genetic origin comes from comparisons with a rare condition in humans today called amelogenesis imperfecta, which affects enamel formation.
About one in 1,000 people today have amelogenesis imperfecta. By contrast, the uniform pitting we have seen appears in up to half of Paranthropus individuals.
Although it likely has a genetic basis, we argue the even pitting is too common to be considered a harmful disorder. What’s more, it persisted at similar frequencies for millions of years.
A new evolutionary marker
If this uniform pitting really does have a genetic origin, we may be able to use it to trace evolutionary relationships.
We already use subtle tooth features such as enamel thickness, cusp shape, and wear patterns to help identify species. The uniform pitting may be an additional diagnostic tool.
For example, our findings support the idea that Paranthropus is a “monophyletic group”, meaning all its species descend from a (relatively) recent common ancestor, rather than evolving seperatly from different Australopithecus taxa.
And we did not find this pitting in the southern Africa species Australopithecus africanus, despite a large sample of more than 500 teeth. However, it does appear in the earliest Omo Australopithecus specimens.
So perhaps the pitting could also help pinpoint from where Paranthropus branched off on its own evolutionary path.
An intriguing case
One especially intriguing case is Homo floresiensis, the so-called “hobbit” species from Indonesia. Based on published images, their teeth appear to show similar pitting.
If confirmed, this could suggest an evolutionary history more closely tied to earlier Australopithecus species than to Homo. However, H. floresiensis also shows potential skeletal and dental pathologies, so more research is needed before drawing such conclusions.
More research is also needed to fully understand the processes behind the uniform pitting before it can be used routinely in taxonomic work. But our research shows it is likely a heritable characteristic, one not found in any living primates studied to date, nor in our own genus Homo (rare cases of amelogenesis imperfecta aside).
As such, it offers an exciting new tool for exploring evolutionary relationships among fossil hominins.
Ian Towle 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.
Many parents will be familiar with this situation: your child has a good or even best friend, but you don’t like them.
Perhaps the friend is bossy, has poor manners or jumps on your furniture. Maybe you don’t like the way your child behaves when they are with this friend.
For older children, your dislike might relate to the friend’s language, attitude towards school, or risk-taking behaviours. Maybe the friend is hot and cold and elicits more drama than Mean Girls.
This provides a rush of adrenaline, which can spur parents to take actions such as criticising the friend or even attempting to ban the friendship.
However, this approach can do more harm than good, particularly for adolescents who are hardwired to push back on their parents.
What can you do for younger kids?
With younger children, clear boundaries can be set at the outset of a playdate. For example, “my bedroom is off limits for playing” or “we don’t jump on the couch”.
If kids are using mean or rude language around each other, you can say “we don’t use that word in this house, be kind to each other”.
Playdates can be moved outside, which can be particularly helpful if a child shows loud, destructive or rude behaviour. And if you can help it, organise fewer plays with that child.
But parents may also want to reflect on why this child rubs them the wrong way. Is the reaction warranted, or does it comes from your own biases and opinions? Your child’s friends do not have to be the friends you would choose.
Change your approach for older kids
To become successful adults, teens need to move through developmental milestones of becoming autonomous and self-reliant. Intervening in their friendships interferes with this vital process of developing independence and identity, which ultimately disempowers them.
In the 1960s, US psychologist Diana Baumrind published famous research on parenting. She found an authoritarian style – where the parent exerts complete control and does not listen to the child’s needs – results in a child with less confidence and independence than one brought up in a household that has rules but is also responsive to their needs.
Adopting an authoritarian approach to friends or potential partners also risks the “Romeo and Juliet” effect, whereby disapproval makes the child more attracted to that person.
So, for teenagers and their friends, the approach should be more nuanced. The primary goal is to encourage the child to see the parent as a person to come to when they have problems. If parents are tempted to be critical, they could ask themself: is it in the best interests of your child to be controlled?
Fostering an open dialogue about friends and relationships can allow parents to have influence in a subtle and developmentally appropriate way.
For younger children, you could use a quiet moment to ask questions like “what can you say to Charlotte if you don’t want to play her game anymore?” or “what’s a good way to deal with it if she is being too bossy?”
For older children, ideally wait until your teen wants to connect, rather than launching into questions. Ask gentle, non-judgmental questions about their friendship, like “what do you like to do together?” or “tell me about what you have in common”.
If they seem upset or uncomfortable in some way, resist the urge to dismiss or solve the problem. Simply listening is the key to helping the child work it out, so they feel supported but not judged.
And remember, not all friendships last. As children move through school and grow, most will naturally make new friends and move on from old ones.
Clearly, one exception to adopting a teen-led approach is when safety is at risk. If they are being bullied or abused in any form – even if the child is opposed – parents should step in and speak to the school or other relevant authorities.
Rachael Murrihy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meru Sheel, Associate Professor, Infectious Diseases, Immunisation and Emergencies (IDIE) Group, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney
Measles has been rising globally in recent years. There were an estimated 10.3 million cases worldwide in 2023, a 20% increase from 2022.
Outbreaks are being reported all over the world including in the United States, Europe and the Western Pacific region (which includes Australia). For example, Vietnam has reportedly seen thousands of cases in 2024 and 2025.
In Australia, 77 cases of measles have been recorded in the first five months of 2025, compared with 57 cases in all of 2024.
Measles cases in Australia are almost all related to international travel. They occur in travellers returning from overseas, or are contracted locally after mixing with an infected traveller or their contacts.
Measles most commonly affects children and is preventable with vaccination, given in Australia in two doses at 12 and 18 months old. But in light of current outbreaks globally, is there a case for reviewing the timing of measles vaccinations?
Some measles basics
Measles is caused by a virus belonging to the genus Morbillivirus. Symptoms include a fever, cough, runny nose and a rash. While it presents as a mild illness in most cases, measles can lead to severe disease requiring hospitalisation, and even death. Large outbreaks can overwhelm health systems.
Measles can have serious health consequences, such as in the brain and the immune system, years after the infection.
Measles spreads from person to person via small respiratory droplets that can remain suspended in the air for two hours. It’s highly contagious – one person with measles can spread the infection to 12–18 people who aren’t immune.
Newborn babies are generally protected against measles thanks to maternal antibodies. Maternal antibodies get passed from the mother to the baby via the placenta and in breast milk, and provide protection against infections including measles.
The WHO advises everyone should receive two doses of measles vaccination. In places where there’s a lot of measles circulating, children are generally recommended to have the first dose at around nine months old. This is because it’s expected maternal antibodies would have declined significantly in most infants by that age, leaving them vulnerable to infection.
Research has also shown a measles vaccine given at less than 8.5 months of age can result in an antibody response which declines more quickly. This might be due to interference with maternal antibodies, but researchers are still trying to understand the reasons for this.
A second dose of the vaccine is usually given 6–9 months later. A second dose is important because about 10–15% of children don’t develop antibodies after the first vaccine.
In settings where measles transmission is under better control, a first dose is recommended at 12 months of age. Vaccination at 12 months compared with nine months is considered to generate a stronger, longer-lasting immune response.
In Australia, children are routinely given the measles-mumps- rubella (MMR) vaccine at 12 months and the measles-mumps-rubella-varicella (MMRV, with “varicella” being chickenpox) vaccine at 18 months.
Babies at higher risk of catching the disease can also be given an additional early dose. In Australia, this is recommended for infants as young as six months when there’s an outbreak or if they’re travelling overseas to a high-risk setting.
A new study looking at measles antibodies in babies
A recent review looked at measles antibody data from babies under nine months old living in low- and middle-income countries. The review combined the results from 20 studies, including more than 8,000 babies. The researchers found that while 81% of newborns had maternal antibodies to measles, only 30% of babies aged four months had maternal antibodies.
This study suggests maternal antibodies to measles decline much earlier than previously thought. It raises the question of whether the first dose of measles vaccine is given too late to maximise infants’ protection, especially when there’s a lot of measles around.
Should we bring the measles vaccine forward in Australia?
All of the data in this study comes from low- and middle-income countries, and might not reflect the situation in Australia where we have much higher vaccine coverage for measles, and very few cases.
Although this is lower than the optimal 95%, the overall risk of measles surging in Australia is relatively low.
Nonetheless, there may be a case for broadening the age at which an early extra dose of the measles vaccine can be given to children at higher risk. In New Zealand, infants as young as four months can receive a measles vaccine before travelling to an endemic country.
But the current routine immunisation schedule in Australia is unlikely to change.
Adding an extra dose to the schedule would be costly and logistically difficult. Lowering the age for the first dose may have some advantages in certain settings, and doesn’t pose any safety concerns, but further evidence would be required to support this change. In particular, research is needed to ensure it wouldn’t negatively affect the longer-term protection that vaccination offers from measles.
Making sure you’re protected
In the meantime, ensuring high levels of measles vaccine coverage with two doses is a global priority.
People born after 1966 are recommended to have two doses of measles vaccine. This is because those born before the mid-1960s likely caught measles as children (when the vaccine was not yet available) and would therefore have natural immunity.
If you’re unsure about your vaccination status, you can check this through the Australian Immunisation Register. If you don’t have a documented record, ask your doctor for advice.
Meru Sheel receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Anita Heywood 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.
