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Category: Analysis Assessment

  • MIL-Evening Report: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death is a defining moment, but it will not end the war

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Parmeter, Research scholar, Middle East studies, Australian National University

    The death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, one of the masterminds behind the group’s horrific October 7 2023 attack on southern Israel, is no doubt a consequential moment in Israel’s year-long war against Hamas.

    But is it a turning point?

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sinwar’s killing – long a major objective of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – would signal the “beginning of the end” of the war. But he made clear the war is not over.

    In fact, Benny Gantz, a former defence minister and member of the war cabinet, said the IDF would continue to operate in Gaza “for years to come”.

    So, what exactly will be the impact of Sinwar’s death?

    Does this change anything?

    Sinwar’s death does change at least one aspect of the war. He was an iconic figure, for better or worse, for Palestinians. He was seen as someone who was taking the fight to Israel.

    With Sinwar still alive and Hamas hitting back at Israel’s war in Gaza, the group was actually increasing in popularity.

    Opinion polling in late May showed support for Hamas among Palestinians in the Occupied Territories had reached 40%, a six-point increase from three months earlier. Support for the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, was about half that.

    Sinwar’s demise changes the face of Hamas. It could be a major turning point if Hamas is unable to replace him with a leader as strong as he was.

    One of the names being discussed is Khaled Mashal, the former head of Hamas’ political office who still remains influential in the organisation.

    This moment offers an opportunity for a new Hamas leader to seek a ceasefire with Israel and an end to the horrific conditions in which Gazans are living. But there’s still the question of whether Sinwar’s death achieves Israel’s war objectives.

    What would constitute a victory for Netanyahu?

    The main issue is that Netanyahu’s war aims have not yet been achieved:

    • the elimination of Hamas as a fighting force and a danger to Israel

    • the freeing of the roughly 100 Israeli hostages still believed to be held in Gaza, as many as half of whom may now be dead

    • the re-establishment of deterrence with Hezbollah in Lebanon to allow the 60,000 Israelis who have been evacuated from northern Israel to return home.

    Although the killing of Sinwar is a major step towards restricting Hamas’ ability to maintain its war against the IDF in Gaza, Israeli soldiers still face some very significant problems there.

    Over the past year, Hamas has morphed from an organised fighting force into guerrilla mode, which makes its fighters much more difficult to eliminate completely.

    The classic methodology for dealing with a guerrilla force is “clear, hold and build”. This means you clear an area of the enemy, put troops in to hold the area, and then build an environment in which the enemy can’t re-establish itself.

    Israel can certainly do the “clearing” and “holding”, but has not been able to build an environment in which Hamas can no longer operate.

    Israeli journalists who have been embedded with Israeli forces have made the point that Hamas operatives are returning to areas that were previously cleared by the IDF, in part due to the group’s extensive tunnel network.

    Other complications for Netanyahu

    Another issue for Netanyahu is that right-wing members of his cabinet have threatened to resign from his governing coalition if he agrees to a ceasefire before Hamas is destroyed as a fighting force. They believe Hamas could use a ceasefire to regroup and re-establish itself as a serious threat to Israel.

    At the same time, Netanyahu is also facing increasing pressure over the fate of the hostages. If there isn’t a ceasefire and negotiations to release them, their families and supporters will continue the large demonstrations they have been staging in Israel in recent months. They are desperate to get back any hostages who may still be alive and the remains of those who have died.

    Netanyahu is also still weighing Israel’s promised retaliation against Iran for its missile attack against the Jewish state in early October.

    If Israel does launch a major strike, what does Iran do in response? Iran’s problem is that it had always relied on a strong Hezbollah in Lebanon to be able to respond to Israel militarily on its behalf. And now it seems to have lost that as Hezbollah has been significantly weakened in recent weeks.

    The US sees a potential off-ramp

    Another aspect, of course, is where the United States stands on this. The US has made clear it sees Sinwar’s death as being an off-ramp for Israel in Gaza – it can claim a major strategic victory and essentially agree to a ceasefire.

    In recent weeks, the US has also given Israel an ultimatum, saying if there isn’t an improvement in the amount of humanitarian aid going into Gaza by the end of November, it will cut off some military aid to Israel.

    The Democrats want the war to end as soon as possible, because while it’s on the front pages of US newspapers, it divides the party and could encourage some voters not to come out and vote in the presidential election.

    So it’s very important for the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, that there be a ceasefire as soon as possible. She said as much in her remarks today:

    Hamas is decimated and its leadership is eliminated. This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza.

    The problem, however, is that Netanyahu has shown in the past he is prepared to go against US wishes whenever it suits him. And a ceasefire does not suit his purposes at this point.

    Given Republican nominee Donald Trump’s steadfast support for Netanyahu, the Israeli leader would also be more than happy to see him return to the White House.

    What’s most likely to happen

    Taking all of these factors into account, Netanyahu is likely to prioritise keeping his government together.

    As such, he will be more guided by its very right-wing members – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir – than by the US or the families of the hostages.

    AFter Sinwar’s death, Smotrich said the IDF “must increase intense military pressure in the Strip”, while Ben Gvir called on Israel to “continue with all our strength until absolute victory”.

    So at this stage, it seems likely the war will continue until Netanyahu can say Hamas has been destroyed as a fighting force. That is what his cabinet is demanding to achieve the government’s war aims.

    Ian Parmeter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s death is a defining moment, but it will not end the war – https://theconversation.com/hamas-leader-yahya-sinwars-death-is-a-defining-moment-but-it-will-not-end-the-war-241666

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Could a recent ruling change the game for scam victims? Here’s why the banks will be watching closely

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jeannie Marie Paterson, Professor of Law, The University of Melbourne

    Meteoritka/Shutterstock

    In Australia, it’s scam victims who foot the bill for the overwhelming majority of the money lost to scams each year.

    A 2023 review by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) found banks detected and stopped only a small proportion of scams. The total amount banks paid in compensation paled in comparison to total losses.

    So, it was a strong statement this week when it was revealed the Australian Financial Conduct Authority (AFCA) had ordered a bank – HSBC – to compensate a customer who lost more than $47,000 through a sophisticated bank impersonation or “spoofing” scam.

    This decision was significant. An AFCA determination is binding on the relevant bank or other financial institution, which has no direct right of appeal. It could have implications for the way similar cases are treated in future.

    The ruling comes amid a broader push for sector-wide reforms to give banks more responsibility for detecting, deterring and responding to scams, as opposed to simply telling customers to be “more careful”.

    Here’s what you should know about this landmark ruling, and what it might mean for consumers.



    Read more:
    Australia’s new scam prevention draft is welcome – but it needs to be broader in scope

    A highly sophisticated ‘spoofing’ scam

    You might be familiar with “push payment” scams that trick the victim into paying money to a dummy account. These include the “mum I’ve lost my phone” scam and some romance scams.

    The recent case concerned an equally noxious “bank impersonation” or “spoofing” scam. The complainant – referred to as “Mr T” – was tricked into giving the scammer access to his HSBC account, from which an unauthorised payment was made.

    The victim was duped into providing passcodes to access his online banking account.
    tsingha25/Shutterstock

    The scammer sent Mr T a text message, purportedly asking him to investigate an attempted Amazon transaction.

    In an effort to respond to the (fake) unauthorised Amazon purchase, Mr T revealed security passcodes to the scammer, enabling them to transfer $47,178.54 from his account and disappear with it.

    The fact Mr T was dealing with scammers was far from obvious – scammers had information about him one might reasonably expect only a bank would know, such as his bank username.

    On top of this, the scam text message appeared in a thread of other legitimate text messages that had previously been sent by the real HSBC.

    AFCA’s ruling

    HSBC argued to AFCA that having to pay compensation should be ruled out under the ePayments Code, a voluntary code of practice administered by ASIC.

    Under this code, a bank is not required to compensate a customer for an unauthorised payment if that customer has disclosed their passcode. The bank argued the complainant had voluntarily disclosed these codes to the scammer, meaning the bank didn’t need to pay.

    AFCA disagreed. It noted the very way the scam had worked was by creating a sense of urgency and crisis. AFCA considered that the complainant had been manipulated into disclosing the passcodes and had not acted voluntarily.

    AFCA awarded compensation covering the vast majority of the disputed transaction amount, lost interest charged to a home loan account, and $5,000 towards Mr T’s legal costs.

    It also ordered the bank to pay compensation of $1,000 for poor customer service in dealing with the matter, including communication delays.

    Other cases may be more complex

    In this case, the determination was relatively straightforward. It found Mr T had not voluntarily disclosed his account information, so was not excluded from being compensated under the ePayments Code.

    However, many payment scams fall outside the ePayments Code because they involve the customer directly sending money to the scammer (as opposed to the scammer accessing the customer’s account). That means there is no code to direct compensation.

    Still, AFCA’s jurisdiction is broader than merely applying a code. In considering compensation for scam losses, AFCA must consider what is “fair in all the circumstances”. This means taking into account:

    • legal principles
    • applicable industry codes
    • good industry practice
    • previous AFCA decisions.

    Relevant factors might well include whether the bank was proactive in responding to known scams, as well as the challenges for individual customers in identifying scams.

    Broader reforms are on the way

    At the heart of this determination by AFCA is a recognition that, increasingly, detecting sophisticated scams can be next to impossible for customers, which can mean they don’t act voluntarily in making payments to scammers.

    Similar reasoning has informed a range of recent reform initiatives that put more responsibility for detecting and responding to scams on the banks, rather than their customers.

    In 2023, Australia’s banking sector committed to a new “Scam-Safe Accord”. This is a commitment to implement new measures to protect customers, including a confirmation of payee service, delays for new payments, and biometric identity checks for new accounts.

    Tech platforms – including social media giants – would have to take more proactive steps against scams under proposed new legislation.
    Primakov/Shutterstock

    Changes on the horizon could be more ambitious and significant.

    The proposed Scams Prevention Framework legislation would require Australian banks, telcos and digital platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent, detect, report, disrupt and respond to scams.

    It would also include a compulsory external dispute resolution process, like AFCA’s, for consumers seeking compensation for when any of these institutions fail to comply.

    Addressing scams is not just an Australian issue. In the United Kingdom, newly introduced rules make paying and receiving banks responsible for compensating customers, for scam losses up to £85,000 (A$165,136), unless the customer is grossly negligent.

    Jeannie Marie Paterson has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council and conducted research for ASIC and AFCA. She is currently working on a project on AFCA determinations with Dr Nicola Howell and Evgenia Bourova. The scams research has been assisted by Andrew Lim.

    Nicola Howell has previously conducted funded research for ASIC and is currently working on a project on AFCA determinations with Professor Jeannie Paterson and Evgenia Bourova. Nicola is affiliated with the Consumers’ Federation of Australia, as a member of the CFA Executive.

    – ref. Could a recent ruling change the game for scam victims? Here’s why the banks will be watching closely – https://theconversation.com/could-a-recent-ruling-change-the-game-for-scam-victims-heres-why-the-banks-will-be-watching-closely-241558

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How extreme weather and costs of housing and insurance trap some households in a vicious cycle

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jens O. Zinn, T.R. Ashworth Associate Professor in Sociology, The University of Melbourne

    Climate change is increasing the risk of extreme weather events for Australian households. Floods and bushfires are becoming more likely and severe. As a result, household insurance costs are soaring – tripling in some cases. High-risk areas might even become uninsurable.

    The national housing crisis is pushing low-income households in particular to seek affordable housing in areas at risk of flooding. There they can become trapped in a vicious cycle. Unable to pay soaring insurance premiums in these areas, they also can’t afford housing elsewhere.

    The regulation of housing in Australia traditionally relies on well-informed buyers being responsible for managing the risks. But our new study found home buyers are often not aware of the long-term risks.

    Only after they’ve bought the home do they start thinking about these risks. When faced with unexpected high insurance costs, many opt to take the risk of being underinsured or even uninsured. This leaves them highly vulnerable.

    The National Strategy for Disaster Resilience promotes a shared-responsibility concept. However, we found the main responsibility still lies with households. And they are not equipped to cope with the increasing complexity, impacts and costs of extreme weather events.

    What’s wrong with the current approach?

    The uncertain knowledge about future extreme weather events is challenging the traditional prioritising of individual responsibility. It’s becoming even harder for households to make informed decisions based on past experiences.

    Government efforts to regulate increasing flooding events might not be effective when households do not want to relocate or cannot afford housing elsewhere.

    Governments are also under pressure to jump in to compensate households for the costs of extreme weather damage.

    Our research found a number of issues prevent efficient regulation:

    • stakeholders such as the insurance industry and home lenders face legal hurdles to sharing data and giving financial advice for housing in high-risk areas

    • well-intended measures such as buybacks and planned relocations can fail when they do not relate to people’s experiences and life situation, such as limited financial resources and deep connections to a place and community

    • households’ motivation to insure themselves might decrease if they can expect government to provide compensation as a de facto last insurer.

    Who is responsible for what?

    In Australia, responsibility for managing extreme weather events is roughly divided among three main stakeholders: the three levels of government, businesses and households.

    Within the three levels of government, states and territories bear the main responsibility for managing extreme weather events. They do so through disaster risk management plans and policies, hazard prevention and land-use planning.

    Yet housing is still built in flood-prone regions. It happens where commercial interests conflict with regional planning, and governments are under pressure to deliver housing for growing populations.

    After extreme weather hits, house and contents insurance cover is key for a household to recover. But insurance costs are based on the risk of events such as flooding. As these risks rise, premiums may also increase and become unaffordable. The Climate Council estimates one out of 25 properties will even become uninsurable by 2030.

    When housing is built in at-risk areas, under the current system home buyers are largely responsible for informing themselves about the risks of floods, bushfires and other natural disasters. Our research suggests many are struggling to estimate what insurance is likely to cost them.

    To prepare for these costs before they invest in a home, they must assess their own risk, know the value of their house and contents and calculate the costs of rebuilding after a disaster. They must also take into account increasing costs for builders and materials after an extreme weather event.

    Climate change is making these already complex calculations even more difficult.

    Our study is based on interviews with 26 insurance, legal, financial, policy and urban planning experts. Despite the National Strategy for Disaster Resilience’s concept of shared responsibility, we found most of the burden still falls on households.

    Yet households often lack the knowledge to assess the risks. The data and information are either unavailable, or hard to access and understand.

    These difficulties, coupled with the complex language of insurance contracts, contribute to high numbers of underinsured and uninsured households.

    The Australian government responded in 2022 by setting up a cyclone reinsurance pool. Its aim is to keep premiums for households and businesses affordable.

    There are also government buyback programs or relocation plans to move people out of high-risk regions. As noted above, though, these don’t always suit households when offered away from their communities or full costs aren’t adequately covered.

    Governments must take on more responsibility

    According to the experts we interviewed, households are no longer able to carry the main responsibilities for managing the risks of climate change. Government must take on more responsibility.

    At the local level, councils need to better educate their staff on climate change risks. They should ban housing development in at-risk areas.

    Better information and data sharing among stakeholders such as insurers and governments will also be crucial. Such data and information also need to be made more accessible and easier for households to understand.

    In a climate change world, increasing extreme weather events result in new complexities. Households are not able to assess these new risks and complexities to make well-informed decisions.

    Australia needs stronger sharing of responsibilities between different stakeholders such as insurers, governments and households. This includes changes to laws on information and data sharing between insurers, governments and households, bans on building in high-risk areas, and better advice about the costs of buying in high-risk regions.

    Jens Zinn received funding from the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg/Institute for Advanced Study, Delmenhorst/Germany (10/2023-05/2024).

    Julia Plass has received funding for the data collection in the study mentioned in the article from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

    – ref. How extreme weather and costs of housing and insurance trap some households in a vicious cycle – https://theconversation.com/how-extreme-weather-and-costs-of-housing-and-insurance-trap-some-households-in-a-vicious-cycle-241572

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: 1 in 5 Australians admit they don’t wash their hands every time they use the toilet

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Carson, Senior Research Fellow, School of Medicine, The University of Western Australia

    Do you wash your hands every time you use the toilet? How about before you handle food? Be honest.

    Australia’s Food Safety Information Council has released its latest report card on the country’s hand washing habits. It found 19% of Australians don’t wash their hands every time they use the toilet. Close to half (42%) admit they don’t always wash hands before handling food.

    So who’s doing well when it comes to hand hygiene, who’s not – and why does it matter?

    What did the report find?

    The new report surveyed hand washing practices of 1,229 people. Results were consistent with what we’ve learned from similar surveys.

    Once again, women do better than men at washing their hands after using the toilet, although only slightly (80% of men say they do every time, versus 83% of women). Just 55% of men wash their hands before touching food, compared to 62% of women.

    Age also seemed to make a difference. Under 34 years old, 69% of people washed their hands every time they used the toilet. Over age 65, that jumped to 86%.

    Although some of these differences aren’t completely unexpected – such as the gap between men’s and women’s hand washing habits – the reasons remain unclear.

    People over 65 were much more likely than younger people to wash their hands after using the toilet.
    Mélissa Jeanty/Unsplash

    Why don’t people wash their hands?

    Public health messaging often focuses on how to wash hands well. But there’s less research that follows up on how widely people actually adopt these practices. And to understand why – if they are skipping the soap and water – those messages might not be getting through effectively.

    One study that looked at this question in India asked school children about barriers to hand washing. The vast majority (91%) had low “illness threat perception”. In other words, they simply didn’t perceive a risk of getting sick form not washing their hands after going to the toilet.

    Interestingly, the inability to see germs with their own eyes was one of the biggest barriers, cited by 46% of the children. But 72% said they would wash their hands if their friends did.

    It’s tempting to speculate these reasons may also apply to other age groups, but we simply haven’t done enough research to know. People’s reasons for hand washing, or not, likely vary across their lifetime and with their circumstances.

    What are the risks?

    Urine and faeces contain millions of germs, especially faeces, which has more than 100 billion germs per gram.

    When you use the toilet and touch surfaces in the bathroom, you will pick up germs. People who skip the hand washing step on the way out take those germs with them when they leave, depositing them on each surface they touch afterwards.

    You may not get sick yourself, but you’re increasing the spread of bacteria. This can increase the risk of infection and illness for other people, including those with compromised immune systems such as older people and those undergoing common forms of treatment for cancer.

    Hand washing before cooking and eating is also important. The risk here goes both ways. If you have disease-causing germs on your hands (maybe because you didn’t wash them after the toilet) you may transfer them to the food where they can multiply and even produce toxins. People who eat the food may then get sick, often involving vomiting and diarrhoea.

    Washing hands before eating and preparing food can stop germs spreading from the food to hands, and vice versa.
    CDC/Unsplash

    In the other direction, some foods naturally carry germs before cooking – such as salmonella and campylobacter bacteria in raw poultry. If you don’t wash your hands after handling these foods you may transfer them to other surfaces and risk spreading infection.

    How should I wash my hands?

    Follow these three simple tips for hand washing correctly:

    1. wet your hands and rub them together well to build up a good lather with soap for at least 20 seconds and don’t forget to wash between your fingers and under your nails. You might have to use a nail brush

    2. rinse well under running water to remove the bugs from your hands

    3. dry your hands thoroughly on a clean towel for at least 20 seconds. Touching surfaces with moist hands encourages bugs to spread from the surface to your hands.

    What about hand sanitiser?

    If no running water is available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitiser. These rapidly inactivate a wide range of germs, rendering them non-infectious. Hand sanitisers are effective against a wide range of bacteria and viruses that can cause many common gastrointesintal and respiratory infections.

    However if your hands are soiled with organic matter – such as blood, faeces, meat, sand or soil – they won’t be effective. In that case you should clean your hands with soap and water.

    The bottom line

    Hand washing is a bit like wearing a seat belt — you do that every time you get in a car, not just on the days you “plan” to be involved in an accident. The bottom line is hand washing is a simple, quick intervention that benefits you and those around you — but only if you do it.

    Christine Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. 1 in 5 Australians admit they don’t wash their hands every time they use the toilet – https://theconversation.com/1-in-5-australians-admit-they-dont-wash-their-hands-every-time-they-use-the-toilet-241481

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Australia donates 49 Abrams tanks to Ukraine

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

    Defence Department Supplied Photo

    The Albanese government is giving 49 M1A1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, despite earlier this year apparently playing down the prospect of the donation.

    The latest Australian package is worth A$245 million. It brings the total Australian military aid to Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 to A$1.3 billion, and overall Australian support to A$1.5 billion.

    When asked about a possible gift of the tanks in February, Defence Minister Richard Marles said it was “not on the agenda”.

    Government sources say donating the tanks required US approval since Australia had purchased them from Washington, so there had been a process to go through.

    Minister for Defence Industry and Capability Delivery Pat Conroy, who is on his way to the NATO defence ministers meeting in Brussels, announced the decision in London. In Brussels, Conroy will meet with the Ukraine defence minister.

    Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea form the “Indo-Pacific Four” group of non-NATO countries attending the meeting.

    The 49 tanks are near the end of their life, so a small number will have to be repaired before they are delivered. Alternatively, they could be used as spare parts if Ukraine wants them delivered more quickly. Ukraine will decide which option to pursue.

    The Australian army is retaining a handful of the M1A1 Abrams to help the transition to the M1A2 fleet of tanks.

    Conroy said: “We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukraine in their fight against Russia’s illegal invasion. These tanks will deliver more firepower and mobility to the Ukrainian armed forces, and complement the support provided by our partners for Ukraine”.

    Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Australia donates 49 Abrams tanks to Ukraine – https://theconversation.com/australia-donates-49-abrams-tanks-to-ukraine-241485

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why do humans have near-equal numbers of male and female babies, unlike many other animals? A new genetic study looks for clues

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Graves, Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University

    Ibragimova / Shutterstock

    We know that boys and girls are produced in much the same frequency. But how – and why – is this 1:1 ratio achieved?

    A new paper searches huge human data sets for gene variants that throw the 1:1 sex ratio off balance, and test the biological and theoretical rules of sex ratio.

    What produces the 1:1 sex ratio?

    Early scientists credited divine providence with ensuring that “every male should have its female”.

    Of course, we now know that sex chromosomes are the real determiners of sex. Females have two X chromosomes; males have a single X and a male-specific Y.

    The Y carries a male-determining gene called SRY, which kickstarts the differentiation of a ridge of cells into a testis. The embryonic testis makes male hormones which direct the embryo to develop as a boy. Without SRY, an alternative pathway is activated that makes an ovary, and the embryo develops as a girl.

    The 1:1 ratio results from the way the X and Y chromosomes are doled out in sperm and eggs. Our cells all have two sets of chromosomes that constitute our genome, one set from each parent. A special type of cell division makes sperm and eggs with just a single set of chromosomes, so that a fertilised egg once again has two sets (one set from the sperm and the other from the egg).

    So sperm all get a single copy of each chromosome – and just one sex chromosome, either an X or a Y. XX females make eggs with a single chromosome set, all of which carry an X.

    When a sperm fertilises an egg, the sex chromosome the sperm carries determines the sex of the baby. Embryos that receive one X from the mother and another X from the father are destined to be XX girls, and embryos that receive a Y-bearing sperm will develop as XY boys.

    So the 1:1 XY ratio in sperm should produce a 1:1 ratio of XX girls and XY boys.

    Sex ratio variation

    But there are lots of exceptions to a 1:1 ratio in the animal kingdom. There are genetic mutations that subvert the orderly segregation of the X and Y, or that preferentially kill male or female embryos.

    Why should the sex ratio be stuck at 1:1 anyway? After all, a few males can fertilise the eggs of many females.

    Indeed, for many animals, unequal sex ratios are the norm. For instance, the mouse-sized marsupial Antechinus stuartii produces only 32% males, even when assessed at birth (so it’s not that male babies die more often).

    Many birds have sex ratios far from 1:1, and some show very specific adaptations that make ecological sense. For instance, the second kookaburra chick to hatch, facing a lower chance of survival, is usually a female, the sex most likely to survive.

    And there are systems of non-standard sex chromosomes. Polar mammals and strange rodents, for instance, are famous for systems in which a mutant X chromosome quashes SRY to form fertile XY females, or a mutated version of SRY doesn’t work. In these species, females predominate, which makes sense for mammals that have to get all their breeding done in a short summer.

    Insects take the cake. An extreme case is a kind of mite that produces a ratio of 15 females to 1 male. In many fruit fly species, 95% of sperm carry the X chromosome, so the progeny are largely female.

    Why a 1:1 sex ratio in humans? Fisher’s principle

    So if sex ratio is so malleable, why have humans (and most mammals) gone for a 1:1 ratio? The great British statistician Ronald Fisher proposed that the ratio is self-correcting and will tend to 1:1 unless there are evolutionary forces that select for distortions.

    The argument is simple. Given every baby must have a mother and a father, if there is a deficiency in one sex, the parents of the rarer sex will have more grandchildren than parents of the more common sex.

    For instance, if males are the rarer sex, parents who by chance produce more sons than daughters will leave more grandchildren than those that produce more daughters than sons. As a result, son-producing genes will get a boost until parity is reached.

    So do we see measurable and heritable departures from 1:1 in the family sex ratio of human sons to daughters? What about Fisher’s principle – is there any evidence that strong evolutionary effects are constraining the human population sex ratio to be 1:1?

    In the new research published this week, researchers Siliang Song and Jianzhi Zhang from the University of Michigan conducted an exhaustive examination of huge human data sets from the United Kingdom and found the answer is an emphatic no. They did identify two genetic variants that affected sex ratio, but these seemed not to be passed on through families.

    So why do humans obey the 1:1 rule? Is it just statistical artefact, because any one family has relatively so few children that even large departures from a 1:1 ratio get evened out across many families?

    Some families have the gene variants to produce more sons than daughters, but other families produce more daughters than sons. Song and Zhang’s analysis suggests this high variability is part of the problem for demonstrating any systematic bias.

    Another possibility is that humans face special evolutionary constraints. Perhaps the human tendency for monogamy places additional evolutionary pressure on humans to adhere to Fisher’s principle in a way that does not apply to other animal species.

    Whatever the answer, this paper by Song and Zhang raises many intriguing questions, and will be a stimulus to further research on the longstanding and fascinating question of parity in the human sex ratio.

    Jenny Graves receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    Arthur Georges receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    – ref. Why do humans have near-equal numbers of male and female babies, unlike many other animals? A new genetic study looks for clues – https://theconversation.com/why-do-humans-have-near-equal-numbers-of-male-and-female-babies-unlike-many-other-animals-a-new-genetic-study-looks-for-clues-241360

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Pokies? Lotto? Sports betting? Which forms of problem gambling affect Australians the most?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Russell, Principal Research Fellow, CQUniversity Australia

    ArliftAtoz2205/Shutterstock

    Gambling, especially sports and race betting, is a hot political issue at the moment.

    This is largely due to the recommendations from a 2023 report from a nonpartisan federal government committee, chaired by the late Peta Murphy, called You Win Some, You Lose More.

    This report recommended “the Australian government, with the cooperation of the states and territories, implement a comprehensive ban on all forms of advertising for online gambling”.

    This has led to lots of debate and controversy.

    Recently, Peter V’landys, head of the NRL and Racing NSW, claimed lotteries were more harmful than race and sports betting combined, citing independent statistics.

    Let’s explore the relative harm of different types of gambling and see if this claim holds up.

    Australians love a punt

    Gambling is widespread in Australia, with more than half of adults engaging in at least one form each year.

    According to the latest national data, lotteries are the most common type (40% of Australians buy a ticket annually), followed by race betting (17%), pokies (16%), scratchies (15.7%) and sports betting (9.6%).

    However, the popularity of a gambling form doesn’t necessarily reflect its harm. Different gambling activities have distinct characteristics.

    Two key factors mean that some gambling forms are more harmful than others: the speed of gambling and bet size.

    Pokies allow for frequent, small bets, with spins every three seconds. Race and sports betting can involve much larger sums and betting that is relatively fast, but still slower than pokie spins.

    Sports betting, in particular, is getting faster with in-play betting and microbetting.

    Poker machines, or ‘pokies’ are the biggest single source of gambling losses in Australia.

    Lotteries, on the other hand, are much slower-paced.

    People typically spend a small amount on tickets and wait for a draw to find out if they’ve won.

    Although it’s possible to spend a lot on tickets, people tend not to, unlike with faster gambling forms.

    The average spend on pokies among the 16% who play them is around $4,782 per year, compared to an average spend on lotteries of $377 per year. These are averages. Most won’t spend these amounts but some will spend far more, which raises the average amount.

    V’landys’ claim about lotteries being more harmful than race and sports betting was based on “independent statistics”.

    He said that of 100 people seeking help from a gambling hotline, 70 had issues with pokies, 15 with lotteries, eight with race betting, four with sports betting, and three with casinos.

    We were unable to verify these figures – if anyone has the data, we’d love to see the research to assess them.

    However, we do have publicly available data.

    What the data say

    The NSW GambleAware website’s 2020-21 report shows that of 2,886 people seeking help, 73.3% identified pokies as their primary form of gambling, while only 13 people (less than 1%) listed lotteries. Race betting accounted for 13.1%, and sports betting for 7.9%.

    These patterns were consistent with previous years.

    People who experience problems also usually take part in more than one form of gambling, as the NSW report showed.

    When these secondary gambling activities were considered, sports betting was cited by 35.5%, race betting by 33.5%, pokies by 19.5%, and lotteries by 13.7%.

    What we discovered

    The best evidence on gambling problems and harm comes from large-scale prevalence studies, typically commissioned by governments and conducted by independent researchers.

    These studies offer high-quality insights into how each gambling form contributes to problems.

    While one prevalence study is great, our team recently combined data from seven national and state-based prevalence studies. This resulted in a very high-quality dataset that we can use to study this question.

    In our analysis, we used statistical techniques to show how strongly each gambling form is associated with problems.

    These techniques give us regression coefficients, which are just numbers that tell us how strong the association is. A higher number means a stronger association between that form and gambling problems.

    The most problematic form was pokies (coefficient = 0.147), followed by casino games (0.136), sports betting (0.068) and race betting (0.038).

    Lotteries, with a coefficient of 0.001, were the least problematic and were not statistically significant even in our large sample.

    As you might guess from such a low number, there’s very little relationship between lotteries and gambling problems.

    What about prevalence?

    Prevalence matters too – while pokies were most strongly associated with problems, the number of people participating in each gambling form is also important.

    Let’s consider an analogy – a car that gives out a lot of exhaust fumes. That car is harmful, but if virtually no one owns one, then it’s not going to account for much pollution.

    The same idea applies for gambling forms. If a gambling form is very harmful but very few people do it, it doesn’t account for many problems in the population.

    It works the other way, too – if there is a very clean type of car that many people drive, they also won’t add up to much pollution.

    Similarly, if we have gambling forms that have very little association with problems, it won’t add up to many problems in the population, even if lots of people take part.

    The regression coefficients tell us how problematic each gambling form is. Prevalance tells us how many people do it.

    When we combine these two bits of information, we can work out the degree of problems in the community that come from each form.

    When we did this, pokies were responsible for 52-57% of gambling problems in the community.

    Sports and race betting each contributed 9-11%, with a combined total of around 20%.

    Lotteries accounted for just 0.1-1% of problems.

    Even if we include scratchies as part of lotteries, this only adds another 2-5% of problems, still far below sports and race betting.

    The real issue

    What’s the takeaway?

    Lotteries are widely played but are not typically associated with much harm.

    Sports and race betting, despite having fewer participants, are more harmful due to their faster pace and the potential for large, frequent bets.

    Lotteries involve slower betting and lower spending, making them much less risky.

    If we aim to reduce gambling harm in our community, the focus should be on pokies, which are widespread in pubs and clubs outside WA, casino games and race and sports betting.

    These forms have features that make them far more harmful than slower-paced gambling like lotteries.

    Alex Russell receives funding from Gambling Research Australia, the Department of Social Services, the NSW Responsible Gambling Fund, the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission, the New Zealand Ministry of Health, the South Australian Government, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the Northern Territory Department of Industry, Tourism and Trade, the Alberta Gambling Research Institute and Arts Queensland. He previously provided statistical advice on projects to inform a casino group about gambling and gambling problems amongst their employees, and what could be done to reduce this.

    He is a board member for the Australian Loneliness Research Foundation.

    Matthew Browne has received funding from the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission, the NSW Office of Responsible Gambling, the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, Gambling Research Australia, the Alberta Gambling Research Institute, the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General, the Commonwealth Department of Social Services, the Office of Responsible Gambling, and the South Australian Independent Gambling Authority for various research studies on gambling behaviour, youth gambling, and the social costs of gambling, and gambling-related harm.

    Matthew Rockloff receives funding from Matthew Rockloff has received funding from the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission, the NSW Office of Responsible Gambling, the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, Gambling Research Australia, the Alberta Gambling Research Institute, the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General, the Commonwealth Department of Social Services, the Office of Responsible Gambling, and the South Australian Independent Gambling Authority for various research studies on gambling behaviour, youth gambling, and the social costs of gambling, and gambling-related harm.

    – ref. Pokies? Lotto? Sports betting? Which forms of problem gambling affect Australians the most? – https://theconversation.com/pokies-lotto-sports-betting-which-forms-of-problem-gambling-affect-australians-the-most-240665

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Victorian students will get ‘anti-Tate’ lessons – but much more is needed to tackle gendered violence in schools

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephanie Wescott, Lecturer in Humanities and Social Sciences, Monash University

    Monkey Business Images/ Shutterstock

    The Victorian government has announced new teaching resources to tackle the influence of “manosphere” figures, such as Andrew Tate, in the state’s schools.

    This follows ongoing reports of disturbing events involving sexist abuse by students in both independent and government schools in Victoria and around the country.

    But while this week’s announcement is a welcome and necessary step, we need a more comprehensive plan to eliminate gender-based violence in our schools.

    What is the ‘manosphere’?

    The “manosphere” is an overlapping collection of extreme men’s communities on social media that are anti-women and against women’s empowerment. This includes Tate, the “misogynist influencer” who is facing trial in Romania on charges of human trafficking and rape (which he denies).

    Our recent research found women teachers are increasingly exposed to sexism, misogyny and sexual harassment as the result of boys’ exposure to “manfluencer” ideas and behaviours. These problems are further compounded by the infiltration of far-right sentiments into schools, which has been linked to far-right online forums.

    At the same time, women teachers report they are not being supported by school leadership.



    Read more:
    We research online ‘misogynist radicalisation’. Here’s what parents of boys should know

    What’s in the Victorian resources?

    The new teaching resources were developed by education academics Helen Cahill and Debbie Ollis, in consultation with teachers, students and parents.

    They aim to give students skills to counter the influence of “Tate-types”, and to navigate issues such as consent, sextortion, pornography and gender-based bullying.

    They will be part of respectful relationships education, which is mandatory in Victorian government schools (following a recommendation of the 2015 Royal Commission into Family Violence).

    Problems with respecful relationship education

    There have been implementation issues with respectful relationships education.

    A 2022 review (of which one of us, Naomi Pfitzner, was an author) found problems with the funding, quality of resources and training supplied to schools, and with schools’ levels of commitment

    Previous research also suggests teachers may be hesitant to engage with controversial or tricky topics. There is a risk some issues are being left out of classroom discussions.

    Crucially, respectful relationships is not mandatory in all Victorian schools — independent and faith-based schools in Victoria need to opt in.

    In other Australian states and territories, respectful relationships education is not compulsory in any school system.

    We need more information

    Education departments around the country collect various forms of data about school life, such as learning and attendance. But we don’t have accurate national data on the prevalence of gender-based violence in schools.

    Without the full picture of how widespread gender-based violence is in Australian schools, it is difficult to resource and design an appropriate response.

    Gender-based violence in schools is inextricably connected to the endemic levels of violence against women in Australia.

    We cannot separate a broader culture that enables gendered slurs, misogyny and gender inequity — known enablers of gender-based violence — from attitudes towards women and girls in schools.

    We need more information about the experiences of female students and staff in Australian schools.
    Monkey Business Images/ Shutterstock

    What now?

    Women have been raising the alarm about sexual harassment of female teachers for decades. But on top of already slow or inadequate responses, the problem has become more complex.

    The proliferation of online misogynist content requires a new, tailored approach.

    Our current project with Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety is examining how online misogyny in the manosphere influences young boys and men in Australia. We will then create resources to support teachers and help make schools safer for all young people.

    It is shameful many girls’ first experience of gendered violence happens as students at school. And teachers deserve a safe workplace free from misogyny and sexism.

    Stephanie Wescott receives funding from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS).

    Alexandra Phelan receives funding from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS).

    Naomi Pfitzner has received funding from the Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, the Victorian and Queensland governments and the Australian government. She was an author of the review into Respectful Relationships Education in Australia mentioned in this article.

    Sarah McCook receives funding from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS).

    Steven Roberts receives funding from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), the Australian government and the Australian Research Council. He is a Board Director at Respect Victoria, but this article is written wholly independently from that role.

    – ref. Victorian students will get ‘anti-Tate’ lessons – but much more is needed to tackle gendered violence in schools – https://theconversation.com/victorian-students-will-get-anti-tate-lessons-but-much-more-is-needed-to-tackle-gendered-violence-in-schools-241473

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: With reports Kamala might join Joe Rogan for a chat, the US election is showing the power of podcasting

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lea Redfern, Lecturer, Discipline of Media and Communications, University of Sydney

    Call Her Daddy/YouTube

    It was big news in the podcasting world when US Vice-President Kamala Harris recently sat down with Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy for an extended interview. This was not just because it was one of the few times Harris has opened herself up to direct media scrutiny, but also because it signalled podcasting’s coming of age.

    Now there are fresh reports she could sit down with Joe Rogan for his top-rated show. Former president Donald Trump has also said he’ll record with Rogan before election day.

    High-stakes interviews are no longer solely the domain of legacy media. Politicians, like celebrities with a story to tell or a film to sell, can pop onto a podcast with a hopefully sympathetic host to reach vast and potentially new audiences. (That said, Harris also did interviews with CBS News, 60 Minutes, The View and CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert the same week.)

    So for the VP and Democratic presidential candidate, is this about finding new audiences or answering to a different, perhaps softer style of interview?

    Call her who?

    If you haven’t heard of Call Her Daddy, note the show’s emphasis is on sex and female empowerment. Cooper’s listeners are 70% women and 76% of them are aged under 35. It is often compared to the Joe Rogan Experience, a comparison Cooper hates. Cooper has also been called the Oprah Winfrey of her generation, which may say something about her interviewing skills or her market value.

    The comparisons to Rogan are hard to avoid. Call Her Daddy has been running since 2018. In 2020, Cooper split with her co-host and took the program to Spotify, also home to the Joe Rogan Experience. There, Call Her Daddy rose to be the second most-listened-to podcast globally, behind Rogan, with an average of 5 million weekly listeners. Spotify gave Cooper US$60 million to Rogan’s rumoured $250 million. This particular gender pay gap was recently reduced when Cooper took the podcast to SiriusXM for $125 million.

    A Harris appearance on Rogan’s podcast could give her a larger audience than Cooper’s and parallel access to young male listeners.

    ‘Here’s the thing …’

    Soft or smart?

    Harris’ decision to be interviewed on a podcast aimed at young women brought criticism from those who saw it as the “soft option”, as well as those who don’t rate young women or approve of talk of sex.

    The same commentators seem to have overlooked that for the last year, Trump has been wooing the “manosphere” and has called in to friendly bro-casts such as This Past Weekend with Theo Von. In other podcasts like Full Send, Trump has had scope for friendly freewheeling banter on topics from Ice Spice to golf.

    Cooper says she also invited the former president onto her show to discuss women’s rights.

    In the journalistic tradition of podcasts since Serial, Cooper revealed her process and opened her interview with Harris by sharing the reasoning behind her line of questioning. “Let’s be real, I’m probably not the one to be having the fracking conversation,” she deadpanned.

    Harris said she went on the podcast “to be real, you know, and to talk about the things that people really care about”. There were moments of genuine emotion, such as anger and compassion at the death of a young woman, Amber Thurman, in Georgia in the wake of the US’s newly restrictive abortion laws. Yet at times Harris still sounded rehearsed, in the manner of people in the public eye required to repeatedly answer similar questions and give similar speeches.

    The risk to a politician is that the authenticity and intimacy for which podcasting is known could just as well work against them – a lack of “realness” becomes amplified through headphones, straight into the listeners’ ears.

    While Harris’ cadence sounded like familiar speechifying near the end, perhaps her anecdotes were new to sections of Cooper’s audience. For all the claims that a focus on the concerns of women made for a “soft interview”, it was also a timely reminder of the centrality of reproductive freedom to women’s lives and the election.

    The risks of the interview were more Cooper’s, who hinted at the prospect of losing listeners by interviewing a politician while wanting Call Her Daddy to be “a place where everyone feels comfortable tuning in”. This is a pertinent concern for her as much of the program’s initial popularity was built on Barstool, a media company known for its conservative leanings.

    A different listener

    The question remains: is appearing on extremely popular podcasts with young audiences a good political strategy for Harris? The positives of appearing on Call Her Daddy were clear, given Cooper’s main audience of young women is generally more politically engaged and motivated to vote than young men.

    Rogan’s audience is 81% male with 34% aged 18–35. Making a connection with young men could prove trickier for Harris within the “bro-ey”, jokey framework of the Joe Rogan Experience than it was with Cooper.

    A lot will depend on Harris’ interaction with the host, but Rogan is not known for hostile interviewing and Harris is experienced in connecting with people from a range of backgrounds. And her recent spot on shock jock Howard Stern’s radio show gave her a chance to share her love of car racing.

    In a tight election, which could come down to swing voters in six or seven states, such skills, showcased in the podcasting space, could impact the election. The potential gains seem worth any risks.

    Lea Redfern does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. With reports Kamala might join Joe Rogan for a chat, the US election is showing the power of podcasting – https://theconversation.com/with-reports-kamala-might-join-joe-rogan-for-a-chat-the-us-election-is-showing-the-power-of-podcasting-241462

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Thou Shalt Not Steal: new Stan series is a perversely funny road trip through Central Australia

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly McWilliam, Associate Professor of Communication and Media, University of Southern Queensland

    Stan/Ian Routledge

    Stan Original’s newest series is coming to smaller screens, having premiered its first three episodes in September at the Toronto International Film Festival.

    Thou Shalt Not Steal follows Aboriginal teen Robyn (played by the immensely talented Sherry-Lee Watson). She escapes juvenile detention and embarks on a defiant road trip from Alice Springs to Adelaide to uncover a long-held family secret.

    Fellow outsider Gidge (Will McDonald) comes along for the ride. He has run away from his dodgy preacher dad Robert (Noah Taylor, clearly enjoying his character’s exaggerated grossness, from a perpetually stained singlet to overflowing ashtrays).

    In hot pursuit are two incongruous duos. First come detectives Burke and Wills (Shari Sebbens and Darren Gilshenan). Then Robert teams up with the decidely crooked Maxine (played menacingly by Miranda Otto). Where Robert’s deceits are lazily self-serving, Maxine is an outback madam who poses very real dangers to the young people.

    ‘Some bastards have it coming …’

    Thou shalt never go to Coober Pedy

    Each episode begins with a tongue-in-cheek lesson from Robyn’s past. These range from the eponymous “thou shalt not steal” to “thou shalt never go to Coober Pedy”.

    This deadpan humour cleverly introduces significant issues. There are the inordinate rates of incarceration of Indigenous youth, alcoholism, assault, toxic masculinity, bullying and weaponised religion, among others.

    These themes are particularly pertinent in the Northern Territory, where Thou Shalt Not Steal was both set and shot. Earlier this year the NT city of Alice Springs initiated a youth curfew and the territory has now reportedly lifted its ban on using “spit hoods” on young people.

    This context means some of the laughs in the series are uncomfortable. But comedy is a well-established vehicle for social justice and the show remains focused on the heroes’ journey, albeit within an important socio-political context.

    Over the first six of its eight short episodes, Thou Shalt Not Steal maintains a balance between acerbic comedy and perilous road trip. Its final episodes revel in a series of over-the-top scenarios that nevertheless tie up narrative loose ends in an enjoyable way.

    Indeed the shift to outright absurdity reveals the show’s gentler message: about finding a chosen family.

    Miranda Otto and Noah Taylor’s characters are dangerous for different reasons.
    Stan

    Alice Springs (Mparntwe)

    If the tone and topic of the show – described elsewhere as “End of the F…ing World meets Fargo” – sound familiar, it’s because it draws from director, co-writer and co-creator Dylan Rivers’ earlier multi-award-winning Robbie Hood (2019).

    In that show, the Robin Hood mythology falls to 13-year-old Alice Springs’ local, Robbie (Pedrea Jackson). The same desert-dry humour articulates the charming teen’s well-intentioned misadventures through a variety of legal and familial landscapes.

    Alice Springs (Mparntwe) is not just a recurrent muse for Rivers; it is also where he grew up, as the son of award-winning filmmakers Penelope McDonald and Warwick Thornton. Rivers has noted that, while his family actively supports each other, they are also “competitive”, pushing each other to produce their best work.

    The series is set in Central and Southern Australia in the winter of 1980.
    Stan/Ian Routledge

    Slick and self-aware

    Having worked previously with his parents on multiple productions, Thou Shalt Not Steal is also something of a family affair. Co-created and co-written with cousin Tanith Glynn-Maloney, who also serves as executive producer, Thou Shalt Not Steal was developed during COVID lockdowns. The duo slowly developed the premise and the first two episodes over two years, before securing investment and support.

    The result is a slick, well-made series with terrific attention to detail. The gorgeous landscapes contrast with the dank, grimy spaces occupied by the antagonists. The soundtrack is its own treasure trove, ranging from Slim Dusty to the Yamma Family and the Warumpi Band, and always in perfect alignment to the scenes. The chorus of “almost the end, almost the end!” is a highlight in the last episode.

    Rivers says he tried not to

    […] shy away from being a bit cheesy, being a bit self-aware, and being over the top at times. Hopefully there’s twists and turns that people don’t expect. But it was very consciously, like, let’s have fun.

    Thou Shalt Not Steal is most definitely a fun ride.

    Thou Shalt Not Steal is streaming on Stan from today.

    Kelly McWilliam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Thou Shalt Not Steal: new Stan series is a perversely funny road trip through Central Australia – https://theconversation.com/thou-shalt-not-steal-new-stan-series-is-a-perversely-funny-road-trip-through-central-australia-241353

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: For Deaf people, train travel can be a gamble. But an AI-powered Auslan avatar can help

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Korte, Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, Queensland University of Technology

    Denis Belitsky/Shutterstock

    For Deaf people, train travel can be a gamble. On an average day, nothing goes wrong: they catch their train to their destination and carry on with their business.

    But when something out of the ordinary happens, the situation can quickly get scary, because most updates are only delivered by audio announcements. A Deaf traveller may miss their train because it was moved to a different platform, or watch as their station whizzes by because the train isn’t stopping there today. They may also remain on a train carriage in an emergency after everyone else has evacuated, and have to be rescued by station staff.

    Every single one of these examples has been drawn from the real life experiences of Deaf people in Sydney. But my colleagues and I are working with Sydney Trains and members of the Australian Deaf community to develop an advanced, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered signing avatar which can automatically translate audio announcements into Auslan.

    Our work on the avatar also builds towards the next step: developing AI systems which can “understand” Auslan.

    Journeys don’t always go to plan

    Earlier this year, my colleagues and I ran a pilot study with three Deaf train travellers in Sydney. As well as the stories they shared about what can go wrong during train travel, we learned they use tried and tested strategies for making their journeys go smoothly.

    Their strategies might be familiar to regular commuters. For example, they would plan their journeys with an app, arrive early and look for signage to let them know if anything had changed.

    But they also said they felt they needed to stand near information screens to watch for updates, and ask station staff or other passengers for information when the situation had changed. They also reported being hypervigilant while on the train, watching to make sure they don’t miss their stop.

    But these strategies didn’t always ensure Deaf travellers received important information, including about emergencies. For example, while usually helpful, station staff were sometimes too busy to assist.

    The greatest frustration came in situations where other passengers weren’t willing or able to provide information, leaving our Deaf travellers to just “follow the crowd”. This often meant ending up in the wrong place.

    Developing a signing avatar

    Speech-to-text software might seem like an easy solution to some of these problems. But for many Deaf people, English is not their native language and Auslan can be processed far more easily and quickly.

    Our Deaf travellers told us that, in a perfect world, they would want live interpreters. However, automatic, AI-powered translation using a signing avatar displayed on a platform or train screen which could identify key words in an audio announcement, generate a sentence with correct Auslan grammar, and stitch together the corresponding signs from our vocabulary library was appealing for a number of reasons.

    Avatar by Maria Zelenskaya, QUT. Auslan by Julie Lyons, QUT.

    First, it allows for real-time translation of announcements that use known vocabulary – which is relevant in the trains-and-stations context, where many announcements cover similar topics.

    Second, an avatar and its signing can be customised to the needs of a given situation, such as using information about screen location to ensure the avatar signs in the right direction while pointing out exits or other platforms.

    Third, multiple signers can contribute signs to an avatar’s vocabulary, which can then be smoothly stitched together to make a sentence.

    And importantly, an avatar means no real person has to be the “face” of an organisation’s automatically generated announcements. This is particularly important because the Australian Deaf community is small and close knit, and if something goes wrong with the translation, nobody suffers any reputational damage.

    From a technical point of view, an avatar also allows us to ensure a minimum quality threshold for signing. We’re using motion capture to make sure each sign in our vocabulary library is accurate, and movements are clear.

    It also helps us avoid the “uncanny valley” – an effect where something human-like but subtly wrong is unsettling. We don’t want any of the many-fingered monstrosities you may have seen recently generated by AI.

    AI for everyone

    This work is one step in our broader aim of creating an AI system which can understand Auslan. This AI could be used to help Deaf and hearing station staff converse, or to create “chatbot booths” or app-based assistants that would allow Deaf people to get information on demand in Auslan about their train journeys or other daily tasks.

    Sign languages and Deaf cultures around the world have nuances and complexities that hearing researchers and developers of AI may not be aware of. These nuances and complexities must be embedded in new technologies, and researchers and developers must take a language-first approach to AI data collection and design with – not just for – Deaf people.

    Only then will AI meet Deaf people’s real needs: to ensure their safety and independence in every aspect of daily life.

    Jessica Korte has received funding from Qvest Australia, a technology solutions partner to Sydney Trains.

    – ref. For Deaf people, train travel can be a gamble. But an AI-powered Auslan avatar can help – https://theconversation.com/for-deaf-people-train-travel-can-be-a-gamble-but-an-ai-powered-auslan-avatar-can-help-241016

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: A man lived to old age without knowing he may have had 3 penises

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Meyer, Senior Lecturer, Anatomy and Pathology, James Cook University

    Life science/Shutterstock

    Do you really know what you look like on the inside? Most people do not, and usually it takes surgery or medical imaging to take a look while we are still alive.

    A case study was published last week where researchers made the rare finding of a man with “triphallia”. Most people would say the man had three penises. But anatomists, like myself, who teach health professionals about the structure of the human body, prefer the term penes (plural of penis).

    This finding emerged from the dissection of the body of a 78-year-old man who had donated his body to science. It is a case that has left many anatomists scratching their heads, and ignited discussions about typical human anatomy and anatomical variation.

    I too have an extra organ – an extra spleen – plus other anatomical variations regarding two muscles. It is highly likely you might also have anatomical variations, and not necessarily know.

    Back to this case

    According to the latest study, only one penis was externally visible. But when his body was dissected, there were two extra, smaller penises inside the scrotum.

    The main penis was 77mm long and 24mm wide, with the smaller ones about half the size. However, the images provided in the study don’t seem to match the written descriptions in all places. So the study does need clarification.

    Intriguingly, researchers identified a single urethra – the hollow tube from the bladder that allows urine (and sperm from the testes) to leave the body. This urethra travelled from the bladder through part of one of the smaller penises and along the length of the main penis, leaving out the third penis entirely.

    Was there a misunderstanding in identifying these anatomical structures? Could the second penis simply be a misidentified part of the main one? Is this actually a case of diphallia – two penises? In either case, the man’s anatomy was different to what you’d typically see in anatomy textbooks.

    The study suggests all three penises contained erectile tissue capable of engorgement. But it remains unclear whether they worked independently or together. Unfortunately, the authors did not confirm structures by examining them under the microscope, or report tracing the nerves or blood vessels, to shed more light.

    Not everyone’s anatomy looks like the textbooks.
    kocakayaali/Shutterstock

    There was an earlier case in a baby

    A separate case of someone with three penises, which was documented in 2020, involved a three-month-old infant.

    In this instance, the main penis was in its typical position, but you could see the extra ones on the perineum (between the anus and the scrotum in males).

    Neither of the extra penises had a urethra, making them incapable of functioning typically. Ultimately, these non-functional penises were safely removed.

    Such cases are rare, with only these two examples reported in medical databases.

    So how does this happen? The answer may lie in how embryos develop.

    Early in development

    The penis begins to develop early in the first trimester of a 40-week pregnancy, a time when a woman may not know she’s pregnant.

    During this critical period, the embryo may be exposed to various influences. These include toxins passed through the bloodstream if the mother falls ill, takes certain drugs while pregnant or is exposed to certain chemicals. There are also genetic factors that shape how organs develop.

    By the fifth week of pregnancy, cells migrate to the midline of the embryo, where they help form the precursor to the penis.

    Problems in this migratory process, abnormalities in a developmental gene (called “sonic hedgehog”), or fluctuations in testosterone levels or receptors during early fetal development, could potentially lead to the formation of additional penises.

    The penis develops early in the first trimester of pregnancy.
    Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock

    Humans are varied

    While the appearance of triphallia may be startling, these rare cases highlight a broader point: our anatomy can vary significantly. Just as individuals differ in their external appearances, so too does our internal anatomy.

    For example, there are anatomical variations in blood vessels, organs, muscles, nerves and even bones that may not be readily visible.

    Indeed, incidental findings during my own medical examinations have found I have a supernumerary (or extra) spleen, called a splenunculus, an extra flexor digitorum longus muscle (in my leg), and I’m missing both palmaris longus muscles (in my forearms).

    While my anatomical variations are internal, a common example of a visible external anatomical variation are extra nipples. These can be mistaken for moles and can also result from developmental issues in the early weeks of pregnancy.

    Why is this important?

    Cases like the man said to have three penises are important reminders of the complexities of human anatomy and the many factors that can influence our bodies from the very start of development.

    Exploring these rare findings emphasises the importance of continued research in anatomy and embryology.

    These findings also highlight the importance of a healthy lifestyle for people intending to fall pregnant and who are already. This is so growing embryos can have the best chance of developing typical anatomy.

    Amanda Meyer is affiliated with the Australian and New Zealand Association of Clinical Anatomists, the American Association for Anatomy, and the Global Neuroanatomy Network.

    – ref. A man lived to old age without knowing he may have had 3 penises – https://theconversation.com/a-man-lived-to-old-age-without-knowing-he-may-have-had-3-penises-241475

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How can Australia make housing affordable for essential workers? Here are 4 key lessons from overseas

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicky Morrison, Professor of Planning and Director of Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University

    GettyImages

    Essential workers such as teachers, health workers and community safety staff play a vital role in ensuring our society works well. Yet soaring housing costs in cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are squeezing essential workers out of the communities they serve.

    The issue is reaching crisis point across Australia. Anglicare Australia yesterday released a special edition of its Rental Affordability Snapshot focused on essential workers in full-time work. Housing costs under 30% of household income are considered affordable. In a survey of 45,115 rental listings, it found:

    • 3.7% were affordable for a teacher
    • 2.2% were affordable for an ambulance worker
    • 1.5% were affordable for an aged care worker
    • 1.4% were affordable for a nurse
    • 0.9% were affordable for an early childhood educator
    • 0.8% were affordable for a hospitality worker.

    This trend is creating unsustainable patterns of urban sprawl and long commutes. It erodes workers’ quality of life. It also undermines public service delivery by making it harder to recruit and retain these workers in high-cost areas.

    International experience, particularly in the UK where I have advised on similar policies, shows there are solutions to this crisis. These global lessons fall into four categories.

    Essential workers face long commutes from home when they can’t afford to live in the communities they serve.
    Halfpoint/Shutterstock

    1. Define essential worker housing

    Essential worker housing typically targets front-line public sector workers on low to middle incomes. Yet eligibility should extend to support roles, such as ambulance drivers, porters and medical receptionists, who play a vital part in enabling front-line services. They too struggle to find affordable housing near their workplaces.

    Conditions of eligibility should also include a cap on household earnings.

    The UK experience highlights the importance of providing both rental and ownership options. To keep key worker housing affordable and accessible over time, both types need to be priced appropriately.

    Australian cities could adopt similar approaches, by requiring housing developers and community housing providers to allocate affordable housing for essential workers. Prices would be below market rates for both rentals and home ownership for the long term, and not revert to market rates. This ensures stability for public service workers.

    2. Financial innovations focused on long-term affordability

    Innovative financial models, such as shared equity schemes, have succeeded in the UK. These allow workers to gradually buy into their homes, creating long-term stability.

    Shared equity involves the government or another investor covering some of the cost of buying the home in exchange for an equivalent share in the property. Australia could explore similar schemes to provide immediate relief while ensuring sustained affordability for future essential workers.

    This approach could build on the Commonwealth’s proposed Help to Buy scheme, currently before the Senate, and existing state and territory shared equity programs. These may need refinement to better serve essential workers by, for example, adjusting income thresholds and eligibility criteria to ensure they qualify. These schemes also need to expand to cover all urban areas where housing affordability is most strained.

    3. Leverage planning systems

    Countries like the UK have leveraged their planning systems to deliver affordable housing for key workers. In England, planning authorities use mechanisms such as Section 106 agreements to ensure a portion of new developments is reserved for key worker housing as a condition of planning approval.

    Australian states could adapt this model, setting targets within existing planning frameworks. For example, they could use Voluntary Planning Agreements to prioritise essential worker housing.

    Yet essential worker housing should not displace housing for other people in urgent need. They include people who are homeless, low-income families, people with disabilities, the elderly, those at risk of domestic violence, veterans and youth leaving foster care.

    4. Use public land for housing development

    The use of surplus public land for essential worker housing has proven successful in several cities, including London, Amsterdam and San Francisco.

    Earmarking land owned by the public sector, such as hospital or education sites, is a strategic way to deliver affordable housing near key public sector employers. It also allows staff to travel to work nearby using sustainable transport instead of cars.

    Affordable housing has profound benefits

    Without action, essential workers are likely to be forced into lower-quality, high-cost housing, shared accommodation, or long commutes from more affordable areas. Over time, these patterns of job-housing imbalances and urban sprawl are unsustainable. These issues are the focus of my current research, particularly in Western Sydney.

    The New South Wales government has set up a parliamentary select committee to inquire into options for essential worker housing. It’s bringing much-needed attention to the housing crisis affecting key public sector roles.

    Tackling these issues through targeted housing solutions has many benefits. It can help create more sustainable communities, reduce recruitment and retention difficulties for employers and ease the strain on infrastructure and services.

    The key takeaway from the UK and other countries is the importance of long-term, sustainable solutions that do not shift the focus away from those most in need of housing. Australia has the opportunity to strike this balance. We need to ensure essential workers can afford to live near their workplaces while not sidelining everyone else in need of affordable housing.

    Nicky Morrison does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. How can Australia make housing affordable for essential workers? Here are 4 key lessons from overseas – https://theconversation.com/how-can-australia-make-housing-affordable-for-essential-workers-here-are-4-key-lessons-from-overseas-239934

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Death of an idol: response to Liam Payne’s death highlights the power of childhood and music

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology Sydney

    Former One Direction band member and solo artist Liam Payne has been found dead outside a hotel in Buenos Aires, media reports have confirmed. Payne was just 31 years old – a loved friend and father.

    Alongside his former One Direction band mates Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik, Payne had a huge influence on popular culture in his home country of the United Kingdom and internationally.

    The group formed in 2010 on the British talent show X Factor and stayed together for about five years before officially splitting in 2016. Throughout this time, Payne remained a valuable member of the band and a clear talent in his own right.

    Although each member auditioned seperately, they were eventually hand-picked by Simon Cowell to form a group.

    After the split (and a brief hiatus from music-making), Payne continued to release music periodically as both a songwriter and collaborator. He most recently released the single Teardrops in March, ahead of an anticipated second solo album.

    News of Payne’s death has led to an outpouring of tributes. Like many young people thrust into stardom seemingly overnight, his life wasn’t without controversy. But the response to his death by fans and industry colleagues alike is proof of the impact he had.

    The making of a pop supergroup

    While One Direction may have not been together for as long as other globally successful acts, their influence far exceeded bands that have been together for decades. They released five studio records – and broke many more, including six Guinness World Records. And even though they didn’t make it to their 10th anniversary together, they had still sold some 70 million records by 2020.

    In the years since the split, fans continued to gather, listen and celebrate – with the most recent anniversary (14 years) seeing fan-led events held in Australia and the rest of the world.

    It’s easy to dismiss pop music and its influence, especially in the face of what feel like increasingly dire global circumstances. But pop, like many other forms of entertainment, provides a practical way for people to gain momentary pleasure and comfort.

    It also provides connection with others – and relief from politics and other daily pressures. For example, one of One Direction’s biggest hits, That’s What Makes You Beautiful, sought to empower young people who might otherwise be overwhelmed by negative messaging.

    Within a year of their debut, the group was met with massive crowds of fans almost everywhere they want.

    One Direction has been compared to The Beatles in terms of their influence on young people – and female and queer fans in particular.

    The impact on fans when their idol dies

    The loss of life, especially a young person’s life, is always a tragedy.

    For some young fans, this might be the first person they “know” who has died. While it may not be the same as losing a family member or close friend, the feeling of loss is significant. Young fans will need support. And in 2024, many will find this support through social platforms and online forums.

    I still remember the impact the deaths of stars such as Kurt Cobain and Jeff Buckley had on people like me who were teenagers in the 1990s. These were artists I admired and listened to – and whose art I relied on during times of pleasure and pain.

    A similar pang was felt when artists such as George Michael, Aretha Franklin and David Bowie died, albeit later in my life and theirs.

    The experience of losing a music idol is in many ways a universal one. People whose art we attach to our own life experiences become inseparable from our lives. And when they die, it can feel like those experiences are over too.

    After news of Payne’s death broke, hundreds of fans took to the streets of Palermo in Buenos Aires, where Payne had been visiting. They held a vigil, cried and consoled one another in front of the Casa Sur hotel where Payne had been staying.

    One fan, 25-year-old Yamila Zacarias, probably spoke for many when she said:

    He meant a lot to me because the band came into my life at this time when you’re trying to be a part of something, and being a One Direction fan became that something for me.

    Lifelong fandom and memories

    There’s a stereotype of “fans” as hordes of screaming girls, which can really take away from the depth of fandom.

    Anyone at any stage of life can be a fan of just about anything. And the best thing about fandom is that it can, and often does, allow lots of different types of people an outlet for connection throughout their lives.

    Many fans have left comments on old music videos.
    YouTube/screenshot

    The death of US actress Betty White in 2021, as sad as it was, brought people across generations and walks of life together. And not just those who knew her personally, but those who had connected with each other through their love of her work. It reminded me of my own family, including my Nan and Dad, now gone, and the laughs we’d share as we watched her.

    As more details and tributes to Payne’s life and death emerge, the fans will have each other to lean on. If you yourself know someone who is a fan of Payne or One Direction, even reaching out to just acknowledge that person’s grief and experience is important. It says to them, “what you love is valid, and so are you”.

    If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

    Liz Giuffre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Death of an idol: response to Liam Payne’s death highlights the power of childhood and music – https://theconversation.com/death-of-an-idol-response-to-liam-paynes-death-highlights-the-power-of-childhood-and-music-241554

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Severe thunderstorms are sweeping through southern Australia. But what makes a thunderstorm ‘severe’?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Brown, Research Fellow in Climate Science, The University of Melbourne

    Jamestorm/Shutterstock

    Clusters of severe thunderstorms are expected to strike Australia’s southern regions over Thursday and Friday.

    The Bureau of Meteorology has issued severe weather warnings and forecasts related to these unusually widespread stormy conditions as they move through South Australia today and into Victoria.

    As of October 17th, there’s a risk of severe thunderstorms for parts of central and southern Australia.

    Some areas have already experienced golf ball-sized hail and intense winds.

    While we might not always think of thunderstorms as a threat, severe storms can be surprisingly damaging. The enormous Sydney thunderstorm of 1999 dropped an estimated 500,000 tonnes of hail, causing widespread damage to cars and roofs. At the time, it was the most expensive natural disaster on record, overtaken only by the unprecedented 2022 floods across eastern Australia – which were themselves partly caused by severe thunderstorms in addition to other weather systems.

    When severe thunderstorms bring torrential rain, they can often trigger flash flooding. This is because extreme rain from thunderstorms usually falls over a relatively short time – less than an hour or two in many cases. Lightning can also pose a threat.

    In recent years, severe thunderstorms have also shown they can damage the power grid. In 2016, huge rotating supercell storms brought intense winds and at least seven tornadoes to South Australia, toppling transmission towers and causing a statewide blackout. Smaller thunderstorms caused major outages in Victoria in February this year after taking down six towers.

    But what makes a thunderstorm “severe”?

    The ingredients for a storm

    What triggers thunderstorms? Climate scientists and meteorologists often talk about the ingredients necessary for thunderstorms.

    To make a normal thunderstorm, you need to have a lot of moisture in the air. Then you need vertical instability in the atmosphere, meaning relatively warm moist air near the surface and very cold air above. You also need a mechanism to lift warmer surface air up to a level where the atmospheric instability can be released.

    For a severe thunderstorm, you need all those ingredients and usually one more: vertical wind shear. This means that wind speeds and direction differ with height. For example, you might have strong northerly winds down low, and strong southerly winds up higher.

    Vertical wind shear can make a run-of-the-mill thunderstorm much more intense, in a range of ways. For instance, wind shear can help warm updrafts stay separate from cold downdrafts and rainfall, which can help make the storm last longer.

    If a thunderstorm has large hail, damaging wind gusts or could trigger a tornado or flash flooding, this makes it a severe thunderstorm, according to Bureau of Meteorology classification.

    You might have also heard of supercell storms. These are convective thunderstorms, characterised by strong, rotating updrafts that last for a long time.

    Forecasters can predict the potential for severe thunderstorms several days out by looking for moisture-laden air and winds. But predicting exactly where and when they might pop up is extremely challenging.

    Severe storms can bring lightning, hail, intense winds and rain. Pictured: a previous thunderstorm over Perth’s northern suburbs.
    cephotoclub/Shutterstock

    What’s unusual about these storms?

    The storms this week are unusually widespread, with thunderstorms possible from Kalbarri in central Western Australia down through Esperance, across into South Australia, into Victoria and up through New South Wales and southern Queensland.

    These conditions are due to a large-scale low pressure system moving west to east.

    As this large low pressure system moves east, it brings thunderstorms. This map shows the low pressure system on October 16th.
    Bureau of Meteorology, CC BY-NC-ND

    Ahead of the arrival of this low pressure system, winds from the north are bringing down moisture and instability and priming the system for thunderstorms. When air near the low pressure system begins to rise, energy from the warm, moisture-laden and unstable air can be released. This includes energy release due to condensation of water vapour. These rising air currents can travel several kilometres up into the atmosphere, even reaching the top of the troposphere, 10–15km up.

    Severe thunderstorms in southern Australia are more likely in spring and summer. That’s because there’s plenty of moisture available from the tropics and the warm oceans around Australia, while low pressure systems and cold fronts can still emerge from the cold oceans to our south.

    Thunderstorms, tornadoes and fire

    Severe thunderstorms can also pack a hidden punch. They can trigger tornadoes in extreme cases.

    In August, severe thunderstorms hit northern Victoria and triggered a tornado, a destructive whirling column of air that damaged houses and farms in the high country.

    This surprised many people. It’s generally known that Australia has tropical cyclones in the north, intense tropical storms coming in off the sea, but not as well known to have tornadoes.

    In fact, Australia does get tornadoes – an estimated 30–80 each year. In 2013, a total of 69 known tornadoes caused almost 150 injuries. Many of these tornadoes spin out of supercells.

    In Australia’s hotter months, many fires burn around the country. Thunderstorms can make fires worse by bringing strong, warm northerly winds, often with rapid variations in speed and direction that can increase the rate of spread of a fire.

    Firefighters and first responders dread these conditions. Australia’s most deadly bushfire was Black Saturday in 2009, which killed 173 people. One reason it was so dangerous was its suddenness. Intense northerly winds brought down powerlines and started fires, which were quickly whipped into intense firestorms, including thunderstorms generated in the fire plumes.

    Will climate change bring more severe storms?

    As the world heats up, more water is evaporating off warm sea surfaces and hanging in the air as water vapour. This means there’s more of this ingredient necessary to fuel severe thunderstorms and more intense rain from thunderstorms.

    What we don’t know for certain yet is how prevailing air currents over Australia are changing. This could shift moisture to different regions, or affect other thunderstorm ingredients like vertical wind shear, instability, and lifting mechanisms. If circulation patterns do change, we could see severe storms develop in new areas, or different times of the year.



    Read more:
    We can’t say yet if grid-breaking thunderstorms are getting worse – but we shouldn’t wait to find out

    Andrew Brown receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather.

    Andrew Dowdy receives funding from University of Melbourne, including through the Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes and the Melbourne Energy Institute.

    – ref. Severe thunderstorms are sweeping through southern Australia. But what makes a thunderstorm ‘severe’? – https://theconversation.com/severe-thunderstorms-are-sweeping-through-southern-australia-but-what-makes-a-thunderstorm-severe-241555

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Loss of an idol: response to Liam Payne’s death highlights the power of childhood and music

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology Sydney

    Former One Direction band member and solo artist Liam Payne has been found dead outside a hotel in Buenos Aires, media reports have confirmed. Payne was just 31 years old – a loved friend and father.

    Alongside his former One Direction band mates Niall Horan, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik, Payne had a huge influence on popular culture in his home country of the United Kingdom and internationally.

    The group formed in 2010 on the British talent show X Factor and stayed together for about five years before officially splitting in 2016. Throughout this time, Payne remained a valuable member of the band and a clear talent in his own right.

    Although each member auditioned seperately, they were eventually hand-picked by Simon Cowell to form a group.

    After the split (and a brief hiatus from music-making), Payne continued to release music periodically as both a songwriter and collaborator. He most recently released the single Teardrops in March, ahead of an anticipated second solo album.

    News of Payne’s death has led to an outpouring of tributes. Like many young people thrust into stardom seemingly overnight, his life wasn’t without controversy. But the response to his death by fans and industry colleagues alike is proof of the impact he had.

    The making of a pop supergroup

    While One Direction may have not been together for as long as other globally successful acts, their influence far exceeded bands that have been together for decades. They released five studio records – and broke many more, including six Guinness World Records. And even though they didn’t make it to their 10th anniversary together, they had still sold some 70 million records by 2020.

    In the years since the split, fans continued to gather, listen and celebrate – with the most recent anniversary (14 years) seeing fan-led events held in Australia and the rest of the world.

    It’s easy to dismiss pop music and its influence, especially in the face of what feel like increasingly dire global circumstances. But pop, like many other forms of entertainment, provides a practical way for people to gain momentary pleasure and comfort.

    It also provides connection with others – and relief from politics and other daily pressures. For example, one of One Direction’s biggest hits, That’s What Makes You Beautiful, sought to empower young people who might otherwise be overwhelmed by negative messaging.

    Within a year of their debut, the group was met with massive crowds of fans almost everywhere they want.

    One Direction has been compared to The Beatles in terms of their influence on young people – and female and queer fans in particular.

    The impact on fans when their idol dies

    The loss of life, especially a young person’s life, is always a tragedy.

    For some young fans, this might be the first person they “know” who has died. While it may not be the same as losing a family member or close friend, the feeling of loss is significant. Young fans will need support. And in 2024, many will find this support through social platforms and online forums.

    I still remember the impact the deaths of stars such as Kurt Cobain and Jeff Buckley had on people like me who were teenagers in the 1990s. These were artists I admired and listened to – and whose art I relied on during times of pleasure and pain.

    A similar pang was felt when artists such as George Michael, Aretha Franklin and David Bowie died, albeit later in my life and theirs.

    The experience of losing a music idol is in many ways a universal one. People whose art we attach to our own life experiences become inseparable from our lives. And when they die, it can feel like those experiences are over too.

    After news of Payne’s death broke, hundreds of fans took to the streets of Palermo in Buenos Aires, where Payne had been visiting. They held a vigil, cried and consoled one another in front of the Casa Sur hotel where Payne had been staying.

    One fan, 25-year-old Yamila Zacarias, probably spoke for many when she said:

    He meant a lot to me because the band came into my life at this time when you’re trying to be a part of something, and being a One Direction fan became that something for me.

    Lifelong fandom and memories

    There’s a stereotype of “fans” as hordes of screaming girls, which can really take away from the depth of fandom.

    Anyone at any stage of life can be a fan of just about anything. And the best thing about fandom is that it can, and often does, allow lots of different types of people an outlet for connection throughout their lives.

    Many fans have left comments on old music videos.
    YouTube/screenshot

    The death of US actress Betty White in 2021, as sad as it was, brought people across generations and walks of life together. And not just those who knew her personally, but those who had connected with each other through their love of her work. It reminded me of my own family, including my Nan and Dad, now gone, and the laughs we’d share as we watched her.

    As more details and tributes to Payne’s life and death emerge, the fans will have each other to lean on. If you yourself know someone who is a fan of Payne or One Direction, even reaching out to just acknowledge that person’s grief and experience is important. It says to them, “what you love is valid, and so are you”.

    If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

    Liz Giuffre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Loss of an idol: response to Liam Payne’s death highlights the power of childhood and music – https://theconversation.com/loss-of-an-idol-response-to-liam-paynes-death-highlights-the-power-of-childhood-and-music-241554

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why do I have hay fever? I didn’t have it as a child

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Janet Davies, Respiratory Allergy Stream Co-chair, National Allergy Centre of Excellence; Professor and Head, Allergy Research Group, Queensland University of Technology

    Dragana Gordic/Shutterstock

    Hay fever (or allergic rhinitis) is a long-term inflammatory condition that’s incredibly common. It affects about one-quarter of Australians.

    Symptoms vary but can include sneezing, itchy eyes and a runny or blocked nose. Hay fever can also contribute to sinus and ear infections, snoring, poor sleep and asthma, as well as lower performance at school or work.

    But many people didn’t have hay fever as a child, and only develop symptoms as a teenager or adult.

    Here’s how a combination of genetics, hormones and the environment can lead to people developing hay fever later in life.

    Remind me, what is hay fever?

    Hay fever is caused by the nose, eyes and throat coming into contact with a substance to which a person is allergic, known as an allergen.

    Common sources of outside allergens include airborne grass, weed or tree pollen, and mould spores. Pollen allergens can be carried indoors on clothes, and through open windows and doors.

    Depending on where you live, you may be exposed to a range of pollen types across the pollen season, but grass pollen is the most common trigger of hay fever. In some regions the grass pollen season can extend from spring well into summer and autumn.

    How does hay fever start?

    Hay fever symptoms most commonly start in adolescence or young adulthood. One study found 7% of children aged six had hay fever, but that grew to 44% of adults aged 24.

    Before anyone has hay fever symptoms, their immune system has already been “sensitised” to specific allergens, often allergens of grass pollen. Exposure to these allergens means their immune system has made a particular type of antibody (known as IgE) against them.

    During repeated or prolonged exposure to an allergen source such as pollen, a person’s immune system may start to respond to another part of the same allergen, or another allergen within the pollen. Over time, these new allergic sensitisations can lead to development of hay fever and possibly other conditions, such as allergic asthma.

    Grass pollen is the most common trigger of hay fever.
    winyuu/Shutterstock

    Why do some people only develop hay fever as an adult?

    1. Environmental factors

    Some people develop hay fever as an adult simply because they’ve had more time to become sensitised to specific allergens.

    Migration or moving to a new location can also change someone’s risk of developing hay fever. This may be due to exposure to different pollens, climate and weather, green space and/or air quality factors.

    A number of studies show people who have migrated from low- and middle-income countries to higher-income countries may be at a higher risk of developing hay fever. This may due to local environmental conditions influencing expression of genes that regulate the immune system.

    2. Hormonal factors

    Hormonal changes at puberty may also help drive the onset of hay fever. This may relate to sex hormones, such as oestrogen and progesterone, affecting histamine levels, immune regulation, and the response of cells in the lining of the nose and lower airways.

    3. Genetic factors

    Our genes underpin our risk of hay fever, and whether this and other related allergic disease persists.

    For instance, babies with the skin condition eczema (known as atopic dermatitis) have a three times greater risk of developing hay fever (and asthma) later in life.

    Having a food allergy in childhood is also a risk factor for developing hay fever later in life. In the case of a peanut allergy, that risk is more than 2.5 times greater.

    What are the best options for treatment?

    Depending on where you live, avoiding allergen exposures can be difficult. But pollen count forecasts, if available, can be useful. These can help you decide whether it’s best to stay inside to reduce your pollen exposure, or to take preventative medications.

    You may also find alerts on thunderstorm asthma, where pollens combine with specific weather conditions to trigger breathing difficulties.

    If you have mild, occasional hay fever symptoms, you can take non-drowsy antihistamines, which you can buy at the pharmacy.

    However, for more severe or persistent symptoms, intranasal steroid sprays, or an intranasal spray containing a steroid with antihistamine, are the most effective treatments. However, it is important to use these regularly and correctly.

    Allergen immunotherapy, also known as desensitisation, is an effective treatment for people with severe hay fever symptoms that can reduce the need for medication and avoiding allergens.

    However, it involves a longer treatment course (about three years), usually with the supervision of an allergy or immunology specialist.

    When should people see their doctor?

    It is important to treat hay fever, because symptoms can significantly affect a person’s quality of life. A GP can:

    • recommend treatments for hay fever and can guide you to use them correctly

    • organise blood tests to confirm which allergen sensitisations (if any) are present, and whether these correlate with your symptoms

    • screen for asthma, which commonly exists with hay fever, and may require other treatments

    • arrange referrals to allergy or immunology specialists, if needed, for other tests, such as allergen skin prick testing, or to consider allergen immunotherapy if symptoms are severe.

    More information about hay fever is available from the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy and Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia.

    Janet Davies receives funding from the ARC, NHMRC, Department of Health and Ageing, and MRFF. She has conducted research on diagnostics in collaboration with Abionic SA, Switzerland, supported by the National Foundation for Medical Research Innovation with co-contribution from Abionic. Her research has been supported by in-kind services or materials from Sullivan Nicolaides Pathology (Queensland), Abacus Dx (Australia), Stallergenes (France), Stallergenes Greer (Australia), Swisens (Switzerland), Kenelec (Australia), and ThermoFisher (Sweden), as well as cash or in-kind contributions from Partner Organisations for the NHMRC AusPollen Partnership Project GNT1116107, Australasian Society Clinical Immunology Allergy, Asthma Australia; Stallergenes Australia; Bureau Meteorology, Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation, Federal Office of Climate and Meteorology Switzerland. QUT owns patents relevant to grass pollen allergy diagnosis (US PTO 14/311944 issued, AU2008/316301 issued) for which Janet Davies is an inventor. She is the Executive Lead, Repository and Discovery Pillar, and Co-Chair Respiratory Allergy Stream for the National Allergy Centre of Excellence.

    Unrelated to this article, Joy Lee has received funding from the Centre of Research Excellence in Treatable Traits in Asthma, Sanofi, Fondazione Menarini and GSK. This funding support was solely used for presenting at educational meetings in asthma and travel grants to attend international meetings and conferences in asthma and allergic diseases. She has been on advisory boards for Tezepelumab (Astra Zeneca). She is affiliated with the National Allergy Centre of Excellence as the co-chair of the Respiratory Allergy Leadership Group.

    – ref. Why do I have hay fever? I didn’t have it as a child – https://theconversation.com/why-do-i-have-hay-fever-i-didnt-have-it-as-a-child-239409

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ‘Nature markets’ may help preserve biodiversity – but they risk repeating colonial patterns of Indigenous exploitation

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Hall, Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences and Public Policy, Auckland University of Technology

    Renee Raroa Renee Raroa, CC BY-SA

    As the latest global biodiversity summit gets underway in Colombia, finance for the conservation and restoration of nature is one of the key themes of negotiations.

    Global wildlife populations have shrunk by an average of 73% in the past 50 years, according to the 2024 Living Planet report. Consequently, momentum is growing worldwide to deliver new nature markets, such as biodiversity credits, to unlock new sources of funding.

    Basically, nature markets are systems of exchange that match demand for nature regeneration with a supply of nature-positive projects.

    But this creates risks, as well as opportunities, for Indigenous peoples. Without due care for data sovereignty, Indigenous communities may lose out yet again.

    Nature markets could enable Indigenous peoples to fulfill their duties of guardianship. But such markets could also forge a new form of colonialism, including enclosure and appropriation of habitats and species that Indigenous peoples have traditional connections to.

    Efforts to prevent deforestation have at times displaced Indigenous people.
    Mario Tama/Getty Images

    This can occur overtly through formalisation of property rights over species, ecosystems and associated lands or waters. For example, efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation (REDD+) in developing countries have been troubled by instances where Indigenous communities were dispossessed from ancestral lands, alienated from place-based traditions or excluded from the commercial benefits of carbon trading.

    The current surge for nature markets is attentive to these risks, with international commitments to avoid such mistakes. Yet the processes of colonialism can be less overt and more insidious.

    Indigenous data

    One neglected area is Indigenous data. This relates to traditional and cultural information, population data, oral histories and ancestral knowledge relating to the environment and natural resources.

    If care is not taken with Indigenous data, there are serious risks of reproducing colonialist patterns of exploitation.

    Data represents reality. Data helps decision makers to know whether their interventions are effective, even when they are far away from the ecosystems being protected or restored.

    If data are accurate, authentic and timely, a funder does not need to set foot in a remote habitat to know whether its carbon stock or native species abundance are improving or declining.

    Biodiversity credits represent one way to operationalise a nature market. They are basically a vehicle for data. The emerging methodologies are bundles of metrics and indicators that track biodiversity and ecological function.

    Biodiversity credits use metrics and indicators that track ecological function.
    Renee Raroa, CC BY-SA

    The data enable credit holders to make credible claims of biodiversity uplift, or avoided biodiversity loss, as a consequence of credit sales.

    As a representation of ecological reality, data are at least one step removed from the habitats and species they represent. This opens up the potential for nature markets to rely on the exchange of verifiable data, without the need to commodify nature itself, and therefore impinge on the ownership rights of Indigenous communities.

    However, data are not free from such considerations. To divert data into a system of market exchange raises a different but related set of concerns about ownership, benefit and sovereignty.

    The rise of Indigenous data sovereignty

    Indigenous data sovereignty is the right of Indigenous peoples to govern the collection, ownership and application of data about Indigenous communities, peoples, lands and resources. It relates to data produced by and about Indigenous peoples and the environments they have relationships with.

    Nature and people are precious, so data that represent nature and people are imbued with that preciousness. As Māori practitioner Ngapera Riley has written:

    Data is a taonga (treasure). It’s something that people gift us, and that we gift to others as we go about our daily lives.

    In te ao Māori, data come in many forms. This includes whakataukī (proverbs), moteatea (chants), whaikorero (oratory), maramataka (calendar), whakapapa (genealogies), pūrākau (stories) and increasingly digital forms.

    Consequently, we must take great care in how data are accessed, shared, stored and used. This is especially critical in a system of market exchange. The dominant markets of today are profit-driven, creating incentives for appropriation and exploitation.

    Sovereignty means power

    Indigenous peoples are conscious that, while there are risks in data and knowledge sharing, there are also opportunities. Indigenous data and knowledge is a living and evolving system, which can contribute to effective responses to environmental challenges, including the protection and regeneration of biodiversity.

    The principles of Indigenous data governance emerged from deliberations about how to protect Indigenous sovereignty when sharing knowledge and data for academic research. These CARE principles hold that Indigenous data should be governed for collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility and ethics.

    This is critically important in ecological research, which too often neglects duties relating to data about natural ecosystems and the people who live within them.

    It is troubling that the recognition of Indigenous data sovereignty is largely lacking from the discussion of nature markets so far. Unless Indigenous data sovereignty is upheld, the legitimacy of nature markets will likely be irreversibly tarnished.

    This is why, in a recent Biodiversity Credits Alliance discussion paper, we included Indigenous data sovereignty as a risk to be identified, understood and managed.

    But Indigenous data sovereignty is more than a risk: it is a source of power. It is a right to self-determination, to choose how data are used and their value is distributed. By ensuring this right, nature markets might deliver on their promise of inclusive, sustainable prosperity.

    David Hall is Policy Director for the Toha Network.

    Mike Taitoko is a shareholder of Toha Foundry Ltd and a Trustee of Toha Network Ltd.

    Nathalie Whitaker works for the Toha Network in various capacities, including shareholder of Toha Foundry and trustee of Toha Network Trust.

    Renee Raroa is the Establishment Director of the East Coast Exchange, a venture in the Toha Network.

    Tasman Turoa Gillies is Head of Operations for Takiwā, part of the Toha Network.

    – ref. ‘Nature markets’ may help preserve biodiversity – but they risk repeating colonial patterns of Indigenous exploitation – https://theconversation.com/nature-markets-may-help-preserve-biodiversity-but-they-risk-repeating-colonial-patterns-of-indigenous-exploitation-238579

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: More than 20% of Earth’s plant species are found only on islands – and time is running out to save them

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Schrader, Lecturer in Plant Ecology, Macquarie University

    Shutterstock

    Islands have long intrigued explorers and scientists. These isolated environments serve as natural laboratories for understanding how species evolve and adapt.

    Islands are also centres of species diversity. It has long been speculated that islands support exceptionally high amounts of global biodiversity, but the true extent was unknown until now.

    In world-first research published in Nature today, my colleagues and I counted and mapped the diversity of plant life on Earth’s islands. We found 21% of the world’s total plant species are endemic to islands, meaning they occur nowhere else on the planet.

    These findings are important. Island plants are at higher risk of extinction than those on mainlands. Detailed knowledge of plants species, and where they grow, is essential for monitoring and conserving them.

    Mapping island floras worldwide

    The study involved an international team of scientists. We developed an unprecedented database of vegetation information from more than 3,400 geographical regions worldwide, including about 2,000 islands.

    The definition of an island is somewhat arbitrary. Conventionally, an island is a landmass entirely surrounded by water and smaller than a continent. This means Tasmania and New Guinea are islands, but mainland Australia – a continent in itself – is not. This is the definition we used.

    We found 94,052 plant species, or 31% of the world’s total, are native to islands. Of these, 63,280 plant species, or 21%, only occur on islands.

    Endemic species were concentrated on large tropical islands such as Madagascar, New Guinea and Borneo. On Madagascar alone, 9,318 plant species – 83% of its total flora – grow there and nowhere else.

    Fewer plant species overall were found at ocean archipelagos such as Hawaii, the Canary Islands and the Mascarenes (east of Madagascar, including La Reunion and Mauritius). But a large share of their species were still unique to these islands.

    Two palms are endemic to Australia’s Lord Howe Island – Howea forsteriana and H. belmoreana. They are one of the best-researched examples of “sympatric speciation”, or in other words, species that evolve from a common ancestor at the same location.

    This mode of evolution has long been hypothesised to exist. But examples are rare, and highly useful for evolutionary research.

    The Norfolk Island Pine (Araucaria heterophylla) is, of course, named after the tiny island where it is found. This species, while endangered in the wild, is now widely planted along Australia’s beaches where it is instantly recognisable to us.

    Islands are of great conservation concern

    Islands cover just 5.3% of the world’s land area, but contribute disproportionately to global biodiversity.

    Island plants are at much greater risk of extinction than species found in mainland areas, for reasons such as:

    • small population sizes
    • unique evolutionary traits that make them vulnerable to invasive species such as herbivores
    • specific habitat requirements
    • habitat degradation
    • threats from invasive plant and animal species
    • climate change.

    Some 57% of the island-endemic species we assessed are considered critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, or near-threatened, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

    Alarmingly, 176 of plant species endemic to islands are already classified as extinct, accounting for 55% of all known extinct plant species globally. Among these is Hawaii’s vulcan palm (Brighamia insignis), which is now considered extinct in the wild. However, the species is popular as an ornamental plant and still survives in gardens.

    Hawaii’s vulcan palm is extinct in the wild, but is popular as an ornamental plant.
    Shutterstock

    Other species might be less lucky; extinction in the wild may mean being lost for ever.

    So, assessing the conservation status of island floras is important. Under a globally agreed United Nations target, 30% of the world’s land and oceans should be protected by 2030. We calculated how much of global islands is conserved today. Disappointingly, only 6% of endemic plant species occur on islands that meet this target.

    For instance, New Caledonia, Madagascar and New Guinea – known for their many endemic plant species – contain relatively low levels of protected areas.

    Assessing the conservation status of island floras is important.
    Shutterstock

    Protecting our island plants

    Urgent action is needed to protect island biodiversity. This includes expanding protected areas, prioritising regions with high numbers of endemic species, and implementing habitat restoration projects.

    Without such measures, the unique floral diversity of islands may continue to decline, with potentially severe consequences for global biodiversity.

    Much more research is needed to determined the best conservation strategies for all these plant species. Accurate data is vital to guide future conservation strategies and safeguard against further loss.

    Our study also serves as a stark reminder of the urgent need for targeted plant conservation efforts on islands. Many species teeter on the brink of extinction, and time is running out to preserve this irreplaceable natural heritage.

    Julian Schrader does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. More than 20% of Earth’s plant species are found only on islands – and time is running out to save them – https://theconversation.com/more-than-20-of-earths-plant-species-are-found-only-on-islands-and-time-is-running-out-to-save-them-238433

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Ocean eddy currents funnel extreme heat and cold to the life-filled depths

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ming Feng, Senior Principal Research Scientist, CSIRO

    Letowa/Shutterstock

    On land, we’re familiar with heatwaves and cold snaps. But the deep sea also experiences prolonged periods of hot and cold.

    Marine heatwaves and cold spells can severely damage ocean ecosystems and habitats such as coral reefs. These extremes can also force species to move or die and cause sudden losses for fisheries.

    In research published today in Nature, we show almost half of the heatwaves and cold snaps reaching the ocean’s twilight zone – between 200 and 1,000 metres – are driven by large eddy currents, swirling currents which transport warm or cold water.

    As the oceans heat up, heatwaves linked to eddy currents are getting more intense – and so are cold snaps. These pose potential threats to the vast amount of life in the twilight zone, home to the world’s most abundant vertebrate and the largest migration on the planet.

    Monitoring the deep sea is hard

    About 90% of heat trapped by greenhouse gases has gone into the oceans. As a result, marine heatwaves are arriving more frequently – especially off Australia’s east coast, Tasmania, the northeast Pacific coast in the United States and in the North Atlantic.

    Researchers have long relied on satellite measurements of temperatures at the ocean surface to detect these extreme ocean temperature events. Surface temperatures are directly influenced by the atmosphere. But it’s different at depth.

    Satellites can’t measure temperatures under the surface, making the deep sea much harder to monitor.

    Instead, we have a handful of long-term moorings – measurement buoys suspended at depth – across the world’s oceans. These are hugely valuable, as they continuously record temperatures and make it possible to detect extremes temperature changes.

    In recent decades, there have been welcome advances in the form of Argo floats – robotic divers which dive 2,000 metres deep and resurface, sampling temperature and salinity as they go.

    Data from these two sources coupled with traditional measurements from vessels made our research possible.

    Heatwaves inside eddy currents

    The data gave us two million high quality temperature readings or “profiles” across the world’s oceans, spanning three decades. We used this rich data to uncover the role of eddy currents.

    Ocean eddies are huge loops of swirling current, sometimes hundreds of kilometres across and reaching down over 1,000 metres. They’re so large you can see them on satellite images.

    These powerful currents can push warm surface water down deeper or lift deep cold water up, causing rapid temperature changes. Eddies can travel a long distance before dissipating, carrying bodies of colder or warmer water with them.

    We discovered their role in triggering deep heatwaves and cold snaps by examining each temperature profile and cross-matching this with eddies present at the same time and location.

    This showed eddies played a major role in triggering marine heatwaves and cold spells in waters deeper than 100 metres – especially in the mid-latitude oceans north and south of the tropics.

    The East Australian Current takes warm water southward down the east coast, triggering many eddies. More than 70% of deeper marine heatwaves in this area actually took place inside ocean eddies.

    When eddies in this current spin anticlockwise, they tend to bring marine heatwaves, transporting warm water to the depths. But when they spin clockwise, they bring cold deep water up higher, bringing cold spells.

    We found deep extreme temperature events linked to eddies are seen more often in major ocean boundary currents, such as the East Australian and Kuroshio currents in the Pacific and the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic. Deep marine heatwaves also occur in the Leeuwin Current off Western Australia. The stronger the eddy currents, the more likely they are to trigger extreme temperatures deeper down.

    Eddy currents are the main driver for nearly half of all deep ocean heatwaves and cold spells. Other drivers include ocean temperature fronts from strong ocean currents and large-scale ocean waves.

    When eddy currents spin one way, they can send heat to the depths. When they spin another, they can bring cold water towards the surface.
    olrat/Shutterstock

    What does this mean for ocean life?

    Day in, day out, heat trapped by greenhouse gases makes its way to the oceans.

    You would expect marine heatwaves to increase, which they are. But cold snaps haven’t gone away. In fact, extremes of both heat and cold are getting more intense in the deeper ocean as the climate changes.

    Our research suggests eddy currents are acting to magnify the warming rates of marine heatwaves and the cooling rate of the cold spells. Warmer oceans overall are leading to stronger eddy currents, which in turn are able to trigger large temperature change over a greater vertical distance.

    Because we can detect ocean eddies with satellites, we can use this research to predict when deeper marine heatwaves and cold spells are likely. This will help find which ecosystems are likely to be hit by extreme heat or cold and assess what damage they do.

    The ocean layer these extremes affect is called the twilight zone – between 200 and 1,000 metres deep. These depths are home to many important fish species and plankton. In fact, this zone has more fish biomass than the rest of the ocean combined. One small fish, the bristlemouth, is likely the most abundant vertebrate on earth, potentially numbering in the quadrillions – thousands of trillions.

    The mesopelagic Twilight Zone is rich in life. Clockwise from top: mesopelagic jellyfish, viperfish, lanternfish, larvacean, copepod and squid.
    Wikimedia/Drazen et al, CC BY-NC-ND

    When night falls, vast numbers of fish, crustaceans and other creatures migrate towards the surface to feed in the largest animal migration on Earth. During the day, many open ocean fish head to the twilight to avoid sharks, whales and other surface predators.

    Heat and cold brought by eddies aren’t the only threat to the twilight zone. Marine heatwaves can lead to low oxygen levels in the water and reduced nutrients. We will need to find out what threat these combined changes pose to life in the twilight.

    Ming Feng receives funding from CSIRO, the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), Western Australia State Government, and Fisheries Research and Development Corporation

    – ref. Ocean eddy currents funnel extreme heat and cold to the life-filled depths – https://theconversation.com/ocean-eddy-currents-funnel-extreme-heat-and-cold-to-the-life-filled-depths-241363

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: New research shows most space rocks crashing into Earth come from a single source

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trevor Ireland, Professor, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland

    Makarov Konstantin/Shutterstock

    The sight of a fireball streaking across the sky brings wonder and excitement to children and adults alike. It’s a reminder that Earth is part of a much larger and incredibly dynamic system.

    Each year, roughly 17,000 of these fireballs not only enter Earth’s atmosphere, but survive the perilous journey to the surface. This gives scientists a valuable chance to study these rocky visitors from outer space.

    Scientists know that while some of these these meteorites come from the Moon and Mars, the majority come from asteroids. But two separate studies published in Nature today have gone a step further. The research was led by Miroslav Brož from Charles University in the Czech Republic, and Michaël Marsset from the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

    The papers trace the origin of most meteorites to just a handful of asteroid breakup events – and possibly even individual asteroids. In turn, they build our understanding of the events that shaped the history of the Earth – and the entire solar system.

    What is a meteorite?

    Only when a fireball reaches Earth’s surface is it called a meteorite. They are commonly designated as three types: stony meteorites, iron meteorites, and stony-iron meteorites.

    Stony meteorites come in two types.

    The most common are the chondrites, which have round objects inside that appear to have formed as melt droplets. These comprise 85% of all meteorites found on Earth.

    Most are known as “ordinary chondrites”. They are then divided into three broad classes – H, L and LL – based on the iron content of the meteorites and the distribution of iron and magnesium in the major minerals olivine and pyroxene. These silicate minerals are the mineral building blocks of our solar system and are common on Earth, being present in basalt.

    “Carbonaceous chondrites” are a distinct group. They contain high amounts of water in clay minerals, and organic materials such as amino acids. Chondrites have never been melted and are direct samples of the dust that originally formed the solar system.

    The less common of the two types of stony meteorites are the so-called “achondrites”. These do not have the distinctive round particles of chondrites, because they experienced melting on planetary bodies.

    An iron-nickel meteorite found near Fort Stockton, Texas, in 1952.
    JPL/Smithsonian Institution

    The asteroid belt

    Asteroids are the primary sources of meteorites.

    Most asteroids reside in a dense belt between Mars and Jupiter. The asteroid belt itself consists of millions of asteroids swept around and marshalled by the gravitational force of Jupiter.

    The interactions with Jupiter can perturb asteroid orbits and cause collisions. This results in debris, which can aggregate into rubble pile asteroids. These then take on lives of their own.

    It is asteroids of this type which the recent Hayabusa and Osiris-REx missions visited and returned samples from. These missions established the connection between distinct asteroid types and the meteorites that fall to Earth.

    S-class asteroids (akin to stony meteorites) are found on the inner regions of the belt, while C-class carbonaceous asteroids (akin to carbonaceous chondrites) are more commonly found in the outer regions of the belt.

    But, as the two Nature studies show, we can relate a specific meteorite type to its specific source asteroid in the main belt.

    Artist’s graphic of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
    NASA/McREL

    One family of asteroids

    The two new studies place the sources of ordinary chondrite types into specific asteroid families – and most likely specific asteroids. This work requires painstaking back-tracking of meteoroid trajectories, observations of individual asteroids, and detailed modelling of the orbital evolution of parent bodies.

    The study led by Miroslav Brož reports that ordinary chondrites originate from collisions between asteroids larger than 30 kilometres in diameter that occurred less than 30 million years ago.

    The Koronis and Massalia asteroid families provide appropriate body sizes and are in a position that leads to material falling to Earth, based on detailed computer modelling. Of these families, asteroids Koronis and Karin are likely the dominant sources of H chondrites. Massalia (L) and Flora (LL) families are by far the main sources of L- and LL-like meteorites.

    The study led by Michaël Marsset further documents the origin of L chondrite meteorites from Massalia.

    It compiled spectroscopic data – that is, characteristic light intensities which can be fingerprints of different molecules – of asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. This showed that the composition of L chondrite meteorites on Earth is very similar to that of the Massalia family of asteroids.

    The scientists then used computer modelling to show an asteroid collision that occurred roughly 470 million years ago formed the Massalia family. Serendipitously, this collision also resulted in abundant fossil meteorites in Ordovician limestones in Sweden.

    In determining the source asteroid body, these reports provide the foundations for missions to visit the asteroids responsible for the most common outerspace visitors to Earth. In understanding these source asteroids, we can view the events that shaped our planetary system.

    Trevor Ireland receives funding from the Australian Research Council for research into the samples returned by the Hayabusa and Osiris-REx missions. He is a past President of the Meteoritical Society, the international organisation responsible for classification and cataloguing meteorites.

    – ref. New research shows most space rocks crashing into Earth come from a single source – https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-most-space-rocks-crashing-into-earth-come-from-a-single-source-241455

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: A new book reveals much of Trump’s success is based on a myth he is a self-made billionaire

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra

    Lucky Loser tells the story of Donald Trump’s less-than-stellar business career and how he was able to misrepresent it as a success.

    It is written by New York Times investigative journalists, Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig. Both have won Pulitzer Prizes for earlier analyses of Trump. Another badge of honour is Trump sued them – and lost.

    They are by no means the first writers to expose the Potemkin village that is Trump’s business empire. A telling insider account came from Trump’s niece, psychologist Mary Trump, who revealed the creator of Donald’s fortune was his father Fred.

    Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success – Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig (Bodley Head)

    Setting things straight

    However, at more than 500 pages, including more than 40
    pages of notes on sources, this new book is the most comprehensive rendering. It is detailed, clearly written and has been well-reviewed in the financial press and by economic historian Brad de Long.

    The authors aim to draw on financial statements and interviews to “set straight Donald Trump’s chaotic onslaught of untruths and misdirection”.

    A large part of the Trump mythology is the lie that he is a self-made billionaire. In the presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump sought to downplay the contribution of his father, saying “my father gave me a very small loan”. The book reveals his father’s contribution, in today’s money, was around half a billion US dollars.

    Trump’s first piece of luck was being born the son of hard-working, cautious and competent residential property developer Fred Trump, the son of a German immigrant. His second was that Fred’s eldest son did not have the ruthless drive to become Fred’s successor, and Fred did not consider his daughters as potential successors. So despite some characteristics that were the antithesis of his father, Donald became his heir.

    The book describes Fred’s career in some detail. The first hundred pages are mostly about him. Once Fred stepped back, Trump diversified his father’s company to form what the authors term

    an eclectic conglomerate untethered from any core competency.

    Another piece of luck was been chosen to star in the reality television series The Apprentice, from which he made a lot of money, including from licensing deals, for the small amount of time he spent on it.

    The producers of this series have a lot to answer for, as they wanted to present their star as the astute businessman they knew him not to be. As they said, it was “not a documentary”. But it enormously and misleadingly raised Trump’s profile.

    Wins followed by losses

    The authors describe how some of Trump’s ventures, such as the development of Trump Tower, went well as the Manhattan property market boomed. He also profited from some “greenmailing” (buying shares in a company with the stated or implied intention of taking it over and then selling the shares at a higher price), facilitated by exaggerated accounts in the media of his wealth.

    But Trump used up much of the proceeds of his few successes covering his losses on a range of his other business ventures.

    Among his notable failures was Trump University, where he paid A$37 million to settle lawsuits for fraud. Many other property projects, Scottish golf courses, Trump Ice bottled water and Trump Mortgage, never turned a profit. And the punters were not the only ones losing money in Trump casinos.

    While he has fought to keep them secret, what has emerged from Trump’s tax returns are a series of huge losses.

    A conundrum not really addressed in the book is why so many bankers were willing to lend to him.



    Read more:
    What would a second Trump presidency mean for the global economy?

    The book concentrates on Trump’s career before the 2016 election, when the flawed US electoral system turned his almost 3 million vote loss on the popular vote into a win in the electoral college. As president, he disregarded conflicts of interest. As the authors note, parties wanting to influence the president could funnel money to him by booking blocks of rooms at his hotel.

    After 81 million Americans voted to fire him in 2020, Trump’s businesses again performed poorly.

    Trump’s current wealth is estimated by Forbes at A$5.7 billion (less than it was a decade ago). But about half of this is from his majority stake in Truth Social, promoted as a right-wing alternative to Twitter. (Now, it could be said, an even more right-wing forum than X.) It has tiny and falling revenues and makes large losses. If Trump loses the election, its value will probably soon be close to zero. It is regarded as a “meme stock”.

    Buettner and Craig conclude Trump “would have been better off betting on the sharemarket than on himself”. Analysis cited in The Economist in 2018 concluded that had Trump just put the money from his father into a sharemarket index fund he would have had A$2.9 billion in 2018. Given subsequent rises in the US stockmarket that would have grown to around A$5.9 billion by now, more than most estimates of his wealth.

    Forbes reached a similar conclusion, as did De Long and US political commentator Professor Robert Reich. The self-described business genius destroyed rather than created value.

    A poor tycoon and a poor president

    This business record of mismanaging an inheritance is reflected in Trump’s economic performance as president. He inherited the world’s largest economy from Obama. By the end of his term it was more than 10% smaller than China’s economy. Historians rank him one of the worst performing presidents on economic management (and much else). The public gave him the lowest approval ratings during his presidential term.

    Trump has indeed been a “lucky loser”. But if this deeply flawed man is returned to the presidency, the world will be an unlucky loser.



    Read more:
    From mass deportations to huge tariff hikes, here’s what Trump’s economic program would do to the US and Australia

    John Hawkins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. A new book reveals much of Trump’s success is based on a myth he is a self-made billionaire – https://theconversation.com/a-new-book-reveals-much-of-trumps-success-is-based-on-a-myth-he-is-a-self-made-billionaire-240648

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Social investment is back – and so are the risks of using data to target disadvantage

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eileen Joy, Professional Teaching Fellow in Social Work, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

    Getty Images

    With the recent establishment of a new Social Investment Agency – described as a “driving project” for the government by Finance Minister Nicola Willis – it seems New Zealand has come full circle on this approach to social welfare.

    First championed by then finance minister Bill English in 2015, social investment was rebranded “social wellbeing” by Labour-led governments between 2017 and 2023. But Willis signalled before last year’s election that its time had come again.

    In a speech in 2022, she argued taxpayer money wasn’t being spent responsibly by the Labour administration, and that a targeted social investment approach was needed. During the 2023 election campaign, the National Party promised social investment would return.

    Essentially, the policy involves using data to calculate which groups of people cost the government the most over a lifetime. Interventions aimed at reducing that cost are then targeted at those people. The idea is that early investment saves later social costs.

    Right now, however, we don’t know the finer details of how Willis intends to implement the policy. But we do know how it worked in the past – and what lessons might be drawn from its earlier, short-lived implementation.

    An actuarial approach to welfare

    In New Zealand, the idea of social investment can be traced back to the fifth National government which held office for three terms between 2008 and 2017.

    In September 2015, English outlined his approach in a Treasury lecture, explaining how the government had commissioned Australian actuary firm Taylor Fry to calculate the lifetime welfare cost to the state of people on benefits.

    Typically, actuaries use statistics to calculate risk for insurance companies, information that is then used to set premiums. English said the Taylor Fry calculations would identify which beneficiary “is going to cost us the most money”.

    The answer was single parents receiving a benefit. Consequently, they were deemed most in need of direct government intervention, including giving an approved mentor control of their money.

    According to English’s version of social investment, data enabled the government to calculate the “forward liability” of its citizens, and target interventions accordingly.

    This is not the only way to define social investment, however, and other countries often adopt a more universal approach. For example, European models tend to focus on social equality and inclusivity rather than targeting specific groups.

    English’s model focused on applying benefit sanctions and conditions. The aim was to “reduce the lifetime public cost of the welfare-recipient population, thereby offering fiscal returns-on-investment, absorbed into public coffers”.

    A Social Investment Unit was created in 2016, followed by a Social Investment Agency in 2017. This was a standalone agency providing advice across government departments.

    Finance Minister Nicola Willis: social investment is a ‘driving project’ for the National-led government.
    Getty Images

    No accounting for structural disadvantage

    Official thinking about social investment predates the establishment of the unit and agency. In 2015, the second of two reports produced by an expert panel review of the Child, Youth and Family agency (now Oranga Tamariki) recommended a new child-centred social investment agency be created.

    The report’s analysis and advice focused on intervening early to reduce the risk of vulnerable children growing up to be beneficiaries, teen parents, substance users or prisoners (among other negative outcomes).

    It was suggested these potential future behaviours almost always stemmed from the actions (or inactions) of parents. Māori were identified as being especially costly due to their over-representation in child protection statistics. They were described as a “forward liability associated with poor outcomes”.

    The proposed response was early intervention and social investment. That would include the removal of very young children from whānau/families where they were perceived to be at high risk. The reasoning was that the predicted damage might then never eventuate, thereby saving taxpayer dollars.

    As my doctoral research found, no consideration in the report was given to the effects of systemic conditions such as poverty and the legacies of colonisation.

    Costs to the state

    The social investment model, with its emphasis on financial liability to the state, became a major influence on Oranga Tamariki’s practice.

    It led to an increase in the early removal of tamariki Māori, especially babies, from their birth families – as demonstrated in the 2019 Hawkes Bay “uplift” case, where social workers attempted to remove a Māori baby soon after birth.

    In 2017, the new Labour government promised a review of the Social Investment Agency, renaming it the Social Wellbeing Agency in 2020. The social development minister at the time, Carmel Sepuloni, said the agency would have a more holistic approach. Data would be only one of a number of considerations when delivering social services.

    But with the agency now reverting to its original name, the idea of using data to guide early intervention seems to be central again. It’s unclear, however, whether the actuarial approach of Bill English’s earlier model will return.

    Nicola Willis does seem to be aware of the criticism of the English-era model’s apparent focus on fiscal risk and returns. She has stressed that measuring other outcomes is also important.

    As yet, though, there is no indication the policy’s highly targeted approach to welfare will account for structural factors such as colonisation and poverty.

    Given the government’s drive to remove any special policy considerations based on te Tiriti of Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi, the risk remains that some Māori will again come to be viewed as a “cost” to the state.

    Eileen Joy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Social investment is back – and so are the risks of using data to target disadvantage – https://theconversation.com/social-investment-is-back-and-so-are-the-risks-of-using-data-to-target-disadvantage-240799

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Jokowi was once seen as Indonesia’s ‘new hope’. Instead, he leaves a legacy of democratic backsliding

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Aspinall, Professor in Southeast Asian Politics, Australian National University

    As Indonesia’s president Joko Widodo (Jokowi) prepares to leave office, Indonesia is still routinely lauded as one of Asia’s most important democracies. Jokowi was first elected, in 2014, on the promise of breaking with the old Jakarta elite and making government more responsive to ordinary people.

    He was backed by many ardent supporters of Indonesia’s Reformasi movement. This movement had brought down the authoritarian leader, Suharto, in 1998 and pushed a transition to democracy in the years that followed.

    But Jokowi has overseen a serious period of democratic backsliding.

    Democratic decline

    Under his watch, the Indonesian government has hobbled democratic control institutions. This includes Indonesia’s once-lauded Corruption Eradication Commission, abbreviated as KPK.

    Security agencies such the army and the police have begun to resume a political role.

    The government has banned major Islamic organisations.

    Civil society groups speak of a dramatically narrowed civic space. They complain, for example, about the government’s increasing reliance on the Electronic Information and Transactions Law to prosecute critics of the government for defamation and its growing willingness to use violent means to respond to protests.

    Jokowi’s opponents in the political elite are routinely investigated for corruption and other alleged wrongdoing.

    In last February’s presidential election, there were widespread reports the police and other agencies were pressuring community leaders to mobilise the vote for Jokowi’s preferred candidate, Prabowo Subianto.

    How and why does Jokowi leave this legacy?

    How did a man who was once seen as a “new hope” for Indonesian democracy end up here?

    The answer is part of a global story that has become broadly familiar in recent years.

    These days, it is generally not unelected coup leaders who destroy democracy. Experiences like those of Thailand and Myanmar in recent years are, happily, no longer typical.

    Instead, elected populist leaders hollow democracy out from within. They do so by hobbling institutions, such as anti-corruption commissions, which are meant to check executive power.

    Jokowi has, in my view, followed this pattern.

    Unlike many populists, Jokowi never peppered his early speeches with angry denunciations of his opponents as traitors. He never tried to whip up vitriol against vulnerable minorities.

    Instead, he positioned himself as a leader who was uniquely able to understand and to embody the aspirations of ordinary people.

    His trademark campaign method was known as blusukan. He would drop by unexpectedly at a marketplace, for example, to chat with ordinary people about prices and other everyday matters.

    Jokowi has positioned himself as a man of the people.
    BahbahAconk/Shutterstock

    A former mayor, he was interested in the nitty gritty of governance, such as how to improve transport services or upgrade parks. He was less interested in “abstract” notions like human rights.

    The implications of this philosophy only became apparent after Jokowi was elected president.

    He retained his belief in his own unique ability to understand the aspirations of ordinary citizens, which had been long neglected by elite politicians.

    He maintained a single-minded focus on what ordinary Indonesians wanted – improved living standards and better social welfare. And he used polls to regularly monitor public opinion.

    For Jokowi, maintaining popular support and satisfying public demands was the essence of democracy. He was not interested in institutions that place limits on governmental power, which are arguably just as important to a functioning democratic system.

    For example, his government enacted legal amendments that significantly weakened the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

    Late last year, the Constitutional Court – headed by his brother-in-law – changed the the rules on candidate age limits to allow Jokowi’s son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, to stand for the vice presidency. Many Indonesians viewed this as a transparent – and successful – attempt to manipulate a key control institution for the purpose of maintaining Jokowi’s dynastic grip on power.

    Even so, as Jokowi leaves office, he does so a very popular politician.

    Prabowo as president

    Jokowi hands power to a man with an even more chequered democratic history.

    Prabowo Subianto is a former general with a record of alleged human rights abuses dating back to the late Suharto period. (Although, like other senior military officers accused of responsibility for the Suharto regime’s well-documented record of human rights abuses, he was never convicted of any crimes). Prabowo was close to the heart of that regime: indeed, he used to be Suharto’s son-in-law.

    Prabowo has promised he would provide the strong hand the country needed.
    Algi Febri Sugita/Shutterstock

    Prabowo has since reinvented himself as a fun-loving grandfather figure and Jokowi’s greatest fan, capitalising on the president’s own popularity.

    In fact, Prabowo used to be among Jokowi’s greatest rivals before becoming his defence minister in 2019.

    In previous elections, Prabowo presented himself as a firebrand populist who angrily denounced his opponents for allegedly selling Indonesia out to foreigners. He promised he would provide the strong hand the country needed to become truly great.

    We don’t know yet what kind of president Prabowo will be. His early political socialisation, as a leading elite figure close to the heart of the Suharto regime, suggests his instincts are likely to be deeply authoritarian.

    He inherits from Jokowi a country in which democratic institutions have already been seriously undermined, and a series of lessons in how to weaken them further.

    Edward Aspinall has received funding from the ARC and DFAT.

    – ref. Jokowi was once seen as Indonesia’s ‘new hope’. Instead, he leaves a legacy of democratic backsliding – https://theconversation.com/jokowi-was-once-seen-as-indonesias-new-hope-instead-he-leaves-a-legacy-of-democratic-backsliding-237319

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Why China now wants to put some limits on its ‘no limits’ friendship with Russia

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Guangyi Pan, Teaching fellow, international politics, UNSW Sydney

    Just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China announced to much fanfare a “no-limits friendship” with Russia, suggesting a future of close collaboration in trade, energy and, perhaps most importantly, security.

    Now, more than two years into the war, the meaning and interpretation of this “no-limits” commitment has evolved.

    There has been much debate in Chinese society in recent months about Beijing’s alignment with Moscow. While some have advocated for a more formal alliance with Russia, others have taken a more cautious stance.

    In sharp contrast to 2022, China’s growing wariness is increasingly being discussed in the open, even among those who were previously censored. In early 2022, for instance, a joint letter by six Chinese emeritus historians opposing Russia’s invasion was censored by the government. The scholars were also warned.

    Now, however, it appears the government is seeking to balance its relationships with both Russia and the West. Beijing may not want to be seen as a “decisive enabler” of the war.

    For example, the once-prominent “no-limits” friendship language quietly vanished from a Sino-Russian joint statement in May.

    And Beijing’s response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit that month was notably subdued. Putin ingratiated himself with Xi, saying they were “as close as brothers”. Xi’s response was more perfunctory – he called Putin a “good friend and a good neighbour”.

    Scholars are also articulating their concerns about China’s political and economic investments in Russia, both publicly and privately.

    Shen Dingli, a leading scholar of Chinese security strategy at Fudan University in Shanghai, said China doesn’t want to be seen as collaborating with Russia against Ukraine or any other country.

    He also quoted Fu Cong, China’s former ambassador to the European Union, who said last year the “no-limits” [friendship] is “nothing but rhetoric”.

    And in August, after Putin referred to China as an “ally” during a visit to far-eastern Russia, Chinese scholars promptly sought to clarify this statement to prevent any misunderstanding China wants a formal alliance with Russia.

    These statements carry weight. In many respects, leading Chinese scholars at the government-affiliated universities act as propagandists to convey and justify the government’s stance on issues. As a result, subtle shifts in their commentary provide insights into the strategic mindset in Beijing.

    Why China is rethinking its ‘no-limits’ friendship?

    There are three elements driving this re-evaluation of the Russia-China alignment.

    First, there is growing scepticism of Russia’s state capacities. The mutiny by the Wagner Group last year and Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russia’s Kursk region have prompted critical reassessments in Beijing of Russia’s political stability and military preparedness, as well as the growing anti-war sentiment in Russia.

    As Feng Yujun, director of Fudan University’s Russia and Central Asia Study Centre, argued, the Wagner rebellion was a reflection of Russia’s internal conflicts and domestic security challenges. He noted every time Russia has faced both internal and external crises in history, its regimes have become less stable.

    More recently, Feng has been even bolder, predicting Russian defeat in Ukraine. He argued China should keep its distance from Moscow and resume a policy of “non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-partisanship”.

    Second, China’s sluggish economy and its underwhelming trade with Russia have further exposed how dependent both countries are on the West.

    While Russia-China trade reached a record US$240 billion (A$360 billion) in 2023, it has slowed so far this year, as Chinese financial institutions have sought to limit connections with Russia.

    The relationship still heavily favours Beijing. Russia accounts for only 4% of China’s trade, while China accounts for nearly 22% of Russia’s trade.

    Many Chinese experts are now warning against an over-dependence on Russia, instead calling for more cooperation with neighbouring countries. This echoes a recent concern Russia has been using its natural resources as a bargaining chip to extract greater benefits from China.

    Russia’s value as a military ally

    Finally, there are rising Chinese concerns its international outlook does not align with Russia’s.

    Zhao Long, deputy director of the Shanghai Institute of International Relations, says there is an important difference in how they view the world:

    Russia wants to destroy the current international system to build a new one. China wants to transform the current system by taking a more prominent place in it.

    Shi Yinhong, a strategist at Renmin University in Beijing, has highlighted an unbridgeable gap preventing a stronger China-Russia alliance. He says there’s a deep mutual mistrust on regional security. Russia has never promised support for China in the event of a conflict over Taiwan, just as China has avoided involvement in the war in Ukraine.

    As Russia’s war in Ukraine reaches a stalemate, its value as a military ally is increasingly being questioned in China.

    Recently, Feng Yujun warned China risks being led by the nose by Russia, despite being the stronger economic partner. He says every time China has attempted an alliance with Russia in history, it has had negative consequences for China.

    Consequently, it is crucial for China to maintain its long-term partnership with Russia without undermining its constructive relationship with the West.

    Russia has arguably benefited from the current competition between the US and China, as it has sought to exploit the rivalry for its own benefit. But this has also led to uncertainty in the China-Russia relationship.

    As another analyst, Ji Zhiye, argues, relying too heavily on Russia will leave China isolated and vulnerable. And this is not a position China wants to be in.

    Guangyi Pan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Why China now wants to put some limits on its ‘no limits’ friendship with Russia – https://theconversation.com/why-china-now-wants-to-put-some-limits-on-its-no-limits-friendship-with-russia-238436

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The government has a target for Indigenous digital inclusion. It’s got little hope of meeting it

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Carlson, Professor, Critical Indigenous Studies and Director of The Centre for Global Indigenous Futures, Macquarie University

    Digital inclusion for Indigenous communities is important. It’s so important, in fact, that the government has made it one of the targets under the Closing The Gap plan. The goal is:

    by 2026, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have equal levels of digital inclusion.

    Digital exclusion is the continuing unequal access and capacity to use digital technology that is essential to participate fully in society.

    It severely stifles Indigenous creativity. It restricts access to essential tools, skills and platforms that are crucial for digital expression and innovation.

    For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, this exclusion leads to missed opportunities, particularly in areas linked to economic prosperity, such as employment and education. As the government’s policy focus is on economic empowerment, this is a major barrier.

    Measuring progress towards the 2026 deadline is challenging because there are simply no recent data.

    But given how big the gap was to start with, the lack of importance based on gathering relevant data and the insufficient government action since, we know the target is highly unlikely to be met.



    Read more:
    ‘Digital inclusion’ and closing the gap: how First Nations leadership is key to getting remote communities online

    What’s being done?

    To support the goal, the First Nations Digital Inclusion Plan offers a comprehensive strategy focused on three key pillars:

    • access (to telecommunication services, devices, and data)

    • affordability (the cost of services, devices, and data)

    • ability (skills, attitudes, and confidence with technology).

    Focused mostly on remote communities, initiatives such as the Australian Digital Inclusion Index highlight persistent challenges across all three areas.

    Although digital inclusion is an urgent issue in remote areas, research also shows Indigenous populations face widespread digital exclusion across the nation, regardless of remoteness.

    Some 84.6% (832,800) of Indigenous people live in non-remote areas. Many of these people are also excluded.

    Last year, the government established an advisory group to drive progress.

    It has developed a “road map”. This involves travelling to Indigenous communities across Australia to ensure their diverse needs, aspirations and environments are fully considered.

    Despite these ongoing government initiatives and policies, efforts to close the digital divide for Indigenous peoples remain insufficient. As technology continues to advance, Indigenous communities are left in an increasingly precarious situation.

    The rise of artificial intelligence

    The government’s current plans do not explicitly address the role of artificial intelligence (AI). This oversight is particularly concerning given the rapid advancement of AI technologies.

    A recent report on adult media literacy in Australia reveals 48% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants do not understand what AI is or the risks and opportunities it presents. This knowledge gap could further exacerbate the digital divide and deepen existing inequalities.

    AI presents both opportunities and challenges. When led by Indigenous people, it holds transformative potential across multiple sectors.

    It could enhance learning tailored to Indigenous knowledge systems, help in the revitalisation and preservation of languages, and improve healthcare delivery. It could also empower Indigenous businesses by optimising operations and market reach.



    Read more:
    AI affects everyone – including Indigenous people. It’s time we have a say in how it’s built

    Indigenous people are already collaborating on research that combines Indigenous knowledge with AI to support land-management practices.

    There are very few Indigenous-led AI projects underway nationally, but there’s great potential. With Indigenous people helping develop AI, these technologies could contribute to meaningful, self-determined growth across Indigenous communities.

    But only if we’re included.

    Avoiding exploitation

    Indigenous digital exclusion, especially in policy development and regulation, can result in AI being used by non-Indigenous people to tell our stories without our permission.

    They can profit from appropriation of our culture, including art and languages.

    The government needs to adopt a more comprehensive and forward-thinking approach. This should involve expanding the scope of digital inclusion initiatives beyond the current limited focus to encompass Indigenous communities across the entire country.

    The development of Indigenous-led digital literacy programs that respect learning styles and culture is also essential.

    The government should incorporate AI and other emerging technologies into planning to ensure Indigenous communities are not left behind.

    Establishing long-term partnerships with technology companies, educational institutions and Indigenous organisations to create sustainable digital inclusion programs is vital.

    The focus should be on creating Indigenous-led opportunities that leverage digital technologies for economic empowerment without exploiting or harming.

    Underrepresented in tech

    One barrier to this is there are very few Indigenous peoples involved in the tech industry, especially in decision-making roles and policy development.

    As of 2022, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people accounted for less than 1.4% of tech workers. There urgently needs to be more support to boost this figure.

    That’s because technology like AI presents potential careers for Indigenous people.

    Currently however, Indigenous peoples are not employed in the industries involved in AI. Of the global study of people working in this specific industry, Indigenous participation was not noted.

    The fact the government recognises digital inclusion as a national priority is a positive step. The current approach, however, is piecemeal and limited. We need a more holistic strategy.

    By developing more inclusive, technologically advanced policies led by Indigenous people, the government can ensure they are not left behind in the digital age. We need to be at the decision-making table.

    Closing the digital divide requires a multifaceted, long-term commitment from government. This means a national strategy recognising the diverse needs and aspirations of Indigenous communities across the country.

    By harnessing the full potential of digital technologies, including AI, and addressing the unique challenges faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the government can create lasting positive change and truly empower Indigenous communities in the digital era.

    Bronwyn Carlson is a member of the First Nations Digital Inclusion Advisory Council.

    – ref. The government has a target for Indigenous digital inclusion. It’s got little hope of meeting it – https://theconversation.com/the-government-has-a-target-for-indigenous-digital-inclusion-its-got-little-hope-of-meeting-it-239733

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Should King Charles apologise for the genocide of First Nations people when he visits Australia?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebe Taylor, Associate Professor of History, University of Tasmania

    King Charles and Queen Camilla will visit Australia from Friday on a five-day tour of Canberra and Sydney.

    The king will be the second ruling British monarch to visit Australia, after Queen Elizabeth II’s 16 visits over 57 years.

    These visits showcase Australians’ evolving relationship with the monarchy and our colonial past.

    Changing attitudes

    An estimated 75% of Australians greeted Elizabeth on her first tour in 1954, at events that celebrated Australia’s growth as a prosperous nation.

    Historical milestones remained central to the queen’s subsequent visits.

    In 1970, she attended the re-enactment of Captain Cook’s arrival at Botany Bay. This included depictions of shooting at First Nations actors.

    The queen’s 1986 visit included signing the Australia Act that severed Britain’s formal powers over Australia.

    Her 1988 visit coincided with the Australian bicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet carrying convicts and officials from Britain. But by this time, many Australians had lost their royal fervour.

    Her final tour, in 2011, came 12 years after Australia had attempted to become a republic by referendum.

    The queen’s death in 2022 not only reignited questions over the future of the monarchy in Australia, it instigated a public discussion over the monarchy’s role in imperial colonialism.

    Genocide in Australia?

    On the eve of Charles’ coronation in 2023, Indigenous leaders from 12 settler states including Australia and New Zealand cosigned a letter calling on the new monarch to apologise for the genocides that British colonisation brought to their territories.

    Australia was settled in the name of the Kingdom of Great Britain. Did that settlement result in genocide?

    Recent research led by Ben Kiernan for The Cambridge World History of Genocide has investigated this question using the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as a framework.

    The convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

    The term “genocide” itself is modern; coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. The colonisation of Tasmania by the British provided Lemkin with one of the clearest examples.

    The prosecution of crimes before 1951 is not permissible under the convention, which provides a definitional framework to evaluate past events as constituent acts of genocide.

    The Cambridge World History of Genocide Volume II and Volume III demonstrate how settlers and government agents committed acts of genocide against First Nations Australians from the beginning of settlement to the late 20th centuries.

    All parts of Australia are considered. Acts conforming to the convention’s clauses include killing, forcibly removing children and inflicting destructive conditions.

    Australian historian Lyndall Ryan’s chapter, Frontier Massacres in Australia, draws on her research for a Massacre Map showing how British troops and settlers committed more than 290 massacres across Australia between 1794 and 1928.

    These massacres killed more than 7,500 Aboriginal people.

    Ryan found the massacres were not sporadic and isolated – they were planned and sanctioned killings, integral to the aims of the Australian colonial project.

    Rebe Taylor’s chapter on genocide in Tasmania details a pattern of government-sanctioned mass killings in a colony where an estimated 6,000 Palawa (Tasmanian Aboriginal) people were reduced to about 120 by 1835.

    Raymond Evans shows how as colonisation moved northward in Australia, massacres increased in size.

    Evans documents killings that persisted into the 1940s, postdating the 1928 Coniston massacre widely regarded as the last frontier slaughter.

    These findings are underscored by Tony Barta’s insight that colonists’ destructive actions constitute a record of genocidal intent “more powerful than any documented plot to destroy a people”.

    Research by Anna Haebich documents the taking of Indigenous children during the 19th century.

    Joanna Cruikshank and Crystal Mckinnon explain how these state-sanctioned removals in the 20th century were intended to eliminate First Nations people from Australia’s national life.

    The 1997 Bringing Them Home report, commissioned by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, concluded the “Australian practice of Indigenous child removal involved […] genocide as defined by international law”.

    A significant moment of resistance

    The colonial governor of Tasmania began to exile Palawa people from their land in 1829.

    More than 200 survivors of the “Black War” were removed to Flinders Island and subjected to life-threateningly harsh conditions. High death rates were caused by ill-treatment, disease and insufficient care.

    In 1846, the Palawa petitioned Queen Victoria to honour the agreement made when they were removed: that in exchange for temporarily leaving their country, they would regain their freedom.

    In this bold petition, Tasmanian Aboriginal people initiated a historic appeal to the British monarchy.

    Aware of Queen Victoria’s sovereign authority across the vast British Empire, this action marked a significant moment in their continued resistance to genocide.

    An acknowledgement of wrongs

    British sovereignty over Australia was imposed without the required consent of its First Nations. The result has been continued dispossession and suffering.

    Despite the Crown’s deferral of power to its parliament, the call for an apology from the king has immense symbolic importance.

    It is rooted in the desire for acknowledgement of wrongs. These include genocide and the continuing destructive effects of colonisation across Australia.

    Rebe Taylor receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    Greg Lehman receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. He is a member of the Board of the Tasmanian Land Conservancy.

    – ref. Should King Charles apologise for the genocide of First Nations people when he visits Australia? – https://theconversation.com/should-king-charles-apologise-for-the-genocide-of-first-nations-people-when-he-visits-australia-239092

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Mounjaro is more effective for weight loss than Ozempic. So how does it work? And why does it cost so much?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Joyce, Senior Research Fellow, University of South Australia

    Halfpoint/Shutterstock

    A weight-loss drug more effective than Ozempic and Wegovy has recently been approved in Australia.

    The drug, tirzepatide, is sold under the brand name Mounjaro and affects feelings of hunger and fullness, as well as changing how the body processess food. (In other countries, tirzepatide is also sound under the brand name Zepbound.)

    So how does tirzepatide work and differ from Ozempic? And with a price tage of $315–$645 per month for the starting dose, why is it so expensive?

    How does it work?

    Think of tirzepatide as a master key that unlocks two important doors in your body’s weight control system. It mimics two hormones: GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) and GIP (glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide).

    When you eat, your body naturally releases GIP and GLP-1 hormones. These hormones play crucial roles in regulating appetite, food intake and blood sugar levels. Tirzepatide mimics and amplifies the effects of these hormones.

    By mimicking the GLP-1 and GIP hormones, tirzepatide makes people feel fuller with smaller meals. This can reduce the overall food intake and lead to weight loss over time.

    It also helps your body process sugar more effectively and slows down how quickly food leaves your stomach. This results in eating less, feel satisfied for longer and having healthier blood sugar levels.

    How does it compare with Wegovy/Ozempic?

    Tirzepatide (Mounjaro) and semaglutide (Wegovy/Ozempic) are similar in many ways. Both are injectable medications used for weight loss and work by mimicking hormones that regulate appetite and blood sugar.

    The key difference is that tirzepatide acts on two hormone receptors (GIP and GLP-1), while semaglutide only acts on one (GLP-1). This dual action is thought to be why tirzepatide shows slightly better results for weight loss in clinical trials.

    Clinical trials have shown participants lost an average of 25% of their body fat in the first year of treatment with tirzepatide. This is when combined with lifestyle counselling from a health-care professional who encouraged a healthy and reduced-calorie diet (500 calories less per day compared to patient’s diet at the beginning of the study) and at least 150 minutes of physical activity per day.

    This compares with an average of 15% weight loss in the first year for semaglutide, also alongside a reduced-calorie diet (a 500 calorie-deficit per day) and increased physical exercise (150 minutes per week).

    For a person weighing 120kg, this might mean the difference between losing 30kg with tirzepatide versus 18kg with semaglutide. But of course, with both drugs, some people will lose less weight than the average, some will lose more, and some may not respond to the drug at all.

    What are the side effects of tirzepatide?

    Like any medication, tirzepatide has side effects. The most common are nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea and constipation. These could feel like a mild tummy bug and are similar to those seen with semaglutide.

    For most people, these side effects are manageable and often improve over time.

    There are also some rarer, more serious risks to consider. These include inflammation of the pancreas and gallbladder problems. There is also a potential increased risk for thyroid cancer, although this has only been seen in lab rats so far, not humans.

    As with Ozempic and Wegovy, when you stop taking tirzepatide, its effects stop. Most people regain some, if not all, of the weight they lost.

    People often regain some or all of the weight they lost after stopping the medication.
    /John Hanson PyeShutterstock

    Who can access tirzepatide?

    In Australia, tirzepatide is approved for use in adults with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher, or a or BMI of 27 or above if you have a weight-related health condition such as diabetes. It can only be prescribed by a doctor, after you have tried other weight-loss methods.

    But it’s not suitable for everyone. It shouldn’t be used in pregnancy and may not be suitable for people with certain medical conditions and those with a history of eating disorders.

    If you’re considering tirzepatide, it’s important to discuss the benefits and risks for your personal health situation with your doctor.

    Why is it so expensive?

    Tirzepatide typically costs around A$345 per month for the starting dose. This can escalate to $645 per month for the ongoing “maintenance” dose if a higher dose is necessary for diabetes and/or weight management. This puts the drug out of reach for most people.

    Tirzepatide, sold as Mounjaro in Australia, is only available on private prescription and is not subsidised by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). This means you pay the full cost of the medication without any government support.

    However, the United Kingdom recently announced it would add tirzepatide to the National Health Service in a phased approach over the next three years, so it’s possible we might see it subsidised in Australia in the future.

    Developing new drugs is a costly business. Companies spend billions on research, clinical trials, and getting regulatory approvals. They then set high prices to recoup these costs and make a profit.

    The patent for tirzepatide lasts until 2036. So we won’t have any cheaper generic versions for more than a decade.

    Paul Joyce receives funding from The Hospital Research Foundation, Cancer Council SA, and the Australian Research Council. He is Director of the Australian Controlled Release Society.

    Srinivas Kamath does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Mounjaro is more effective for weight loss than Ozempic. So how does it work? And why does it cost so much? – https://theconversation.com/mounjaro-is-more-effective-for-weight-loss-than-ozempic-so-how-does-it-work-and-why-does-it-cost-so-much-239185

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Glucose monitors for diabetes have finally been funded – but a chronic workforce shortage will limit the benefits

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lynne Chepulis, Associate Professor, Health Sciences, University of Waikato

    Pharmac’s decision to fund continuous glucose monitors and automated insulin delivery systems for the approximately 18,000 people who currently live with type 1 diabetes in Aotearoa New Zealand is good news.

    The decision comes after years of advocacy from patient groups and clinicians.

    But there are problems within the broader system – particularly around workforce shortages – that mean full patient access to training on how to use the insulin pumps will likely take years.

    Failing to address these issues will also perpetuate health inequities for Māori and Pacific people, who are less likely to have used the monitor and pump in the past, and may have to wait longer for training. These delays could mute the positive effect of Pharmac’s funding decision.

    A complex balance

    Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder that causes a person’s pancreas to stop producing insulin. This all-important hormone is needed to move glucose into every cell in the body.

    Without insulin, the cells (and the person) “starve”. While the current approach to the management of type 1 diabetes – finger pricking to test blood glucose levels and injecting insulin – works, it’s complex.

    Inject too much insulin and you’ll get low blood sugar (hypoglycaemia). This leaves a person with type 1 feeling shaky and weak, or possibly even in a coma. Don’t inject enough and you have ongoing high blood sugar (hyperglycaemia). This leads to long-term health complications.

    Figuring out the right amount of insulin is elusive. Needs constantly vary according to time of day, diet, exercise, illness, caffeine, alcohol, stress and other factors. This can take a toll psychologically and physiologically.

    Modern solutions

    Continuous monitors track blood glucose levels 24 hours a day through a sensor just under your skin, replacing finger-prick testing. They are widely funded and used overseas.

    The monitors alert users to low blood glucose and have significantly reduced hospitalisations for people with type 1 diabetes.

    Combining the monitors with a pump and appropriate algorithm automates the delivery of insulin when glucose levels rise higher than a patient’s target range – significantly reducing the day-to-day burden of treatment.

    But the continuous monitors and insulin pumps are expensive.

    Prior to Pharmac’s decision, the monitors were completely unfunded. Prices ranged between NZ$2,600 and $4,800 per year. Insulin pumps were funded, but only for a small group of people.

    This created an ever-widening equity gap. Māori and Pacific people with type 1 diabetes were less likely to access monitors and pumps. They were also more likely to have recurrent hospitalisations for diabetes-related events.

    A workforce shortage

    When compared with other countries, New Zealand has been slow to fund the monitors.

    Unfortunately, the diabetes workforce is also significantly understaffed when compared to international guidelines.

    There is a shortage of all qualified health care professionals for type 1 diabetes including endocrinologists, nurse practitioners, diabetes nurse specialists, dietitians, psychologists, social workers and podiatrists.

    To meet international recommendations, New Zealand would have to more than double the clinical workforce.

    Most people with type 1 diabetes will be able to rapidly access the monitors because these can be prescribed through GPs as well as by diabetes specialists. However, insulin pumps and automated insulin delivery will only be accessible through specialists.

    While insulin pumps offer advantages for managing glucose levels, learning to use the device takes time and requires support from clinicians. This will likely be a problem, particularly for those who already have challenges accessing healthcare services in this country.

    An equity issue

    Māori and Pacific people with type 1 diabetes are less likely to be current insulin pump users. This means there is a clear risk of workforce shortages causing those who would benefit most from automated insulin delivery to be among the last to have access.

    Increasingly, evidence on continuous glucose monitors and automated insulin delivery shows they improve managing type 1 diabetes for everyone.

    Monitor use has been shown to reduce the differences in the management of glucose levels between Māori and non-Māori children with type 1 diabetes.

    Automated insulin delivery can also be an effective tool for children and adolescents with very high-risk glucose levels.

    So, thank you Pharmac. Funded devices are a game changer. New Zealand has moved from an outdated, inequitable system of technology funding in type 1 diabetes to a progressive and fair system. But so much more needs to be done to support everyone with this disease.

    Lynne Chepulis receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand. She is an executive member of the New Zealand Society for the Study of Diabetes.

    Hamish Crocket receives funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand. He is an executive member of the New Zealand Society for the Study of Diabetes and is the chairperson of Nightscout New Zealand, a diabetes advocacy group. Hamish has been living with type one diabetes since 2013.

    Martin de Bock receives funding from Novo Nordisk, Medtronic, Ypsomed, Dexcom, and Insulet. Honoraria, travel expenses or speaking fees from Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, Pfizer, Medtronic, Boerhinger Ingelheim, Ypsomed, Dexcom, and Insulet. Advisory Boards for Tandem and Dexcom, Tautoko Tech, Nascence biomedical.

    – ref. Glucose monitors for diabetes have finally been funded – but a chronic workforce shortage will limit the benefits – https://theconversation.com/glucose-monitors-for-diabetes-have-finally-been-funded-but-a-chronic-workforce-shortage-will-limit-the-benefits-241113

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