Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefanie Broszeit, Senior Scientist, Marine Ecosystem Services, Plymouth Marine Laboratory
Drake’s Island in Plymouth Sound, Devon, is part of the UK’s first national marine park.Artur Niedzwiedz/Shutterstock
Nature protection, conservation and restoration is “not a trivial matter but key to human survival,” according to scientists quoted in a 2005 UN report. To demonstrate this, they developed the concept of “ecosystem services” – the benefits that people derive from nature. Over the next 20 years, this concept has been in constant development to reflect our growing understanding of how ecosystems work and how we benefit from them.
For many people, it feels wrong to take a human-centred view on nature. But for governments and conservation organisations, this concept is a useful tool. It helps us quantify the value of nature and make sure certain aspects are conserved and protected.
My team and I provide other scientists with information about how coastal areas help to regulate the climate and reduce water pollution. In part, we work with marine conservation experts who restore ecosystems that have been depleted, such as seagrass or oyster beds. This can help choose the best approaches to restoring coastal areas to healthy habitats while providing other benefits, such as shelter for young fish or food for seabirds. Another group of scientists use our data to assess the value of these habitats, now and in the future once they have been restored to good health.
In my work as a marine ecologist, I split ecosystem services into three different groups. First, provisioning services include the provision of food or timber along many other material gains we get from nature. For marine ecosystem services ,this includes fish and chemicals used for research and medicines. Second, regulating services support our planet and human wellbeing. Mussels clean water by filtering it and seagrass takes up and stores carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby helping to regulate the climate. Third, cultural services include leisure and recreation such as sea swimming or fishing.
Diving deeper
A baby crab on seagrass growing at Kingsand, Plymouth Sound. Stefanie Broszeit, CC BY-NC-ND
To better understand these marine ecosystem services and how to use them sustainably, my research delves into some of the more complicated processes that regulate ecosystem services. In terms of the ocean’s role in regulating climate, it’s not just about seagrass.
Seaweeds such as kelp take up carbon too, but cannot bury it in the soil beneath them due to holding onto rocks rather than having roots. They store carbon by getting buried in the deep sea when they are whipped off the rocks during winter storms and transported by currents into deeper waters. There, worms and crabs can feed on this important food source, drawing the carbon deeper into the sediment.
Another step is to measure the benefits of particular ecosystem services. Food provision can be relatively easily measured by data collected by harbours to quantify how much fish is being landed and sold. So we can estimate the volume of harvested fish and calculate their market value. Some cultural services, such as measuring the wellbeing benefits people receive from interacting with coastal environments, can be more difficult to measure.
Plymouth Sound is a great place to assess both benefits to human wellbeing and marine ecology, because not only is this city a hotspot for marine biology research with three internationally recognised marine institutes, it’s also the UK’s first national marine park. Here, I can engage not only with the ecological sciences and datasets but also with environmental psychologists who study how nature affects us and how we affect nature. My team and I have created the marine, social and natural capital laboratory to explore this more.
Because of so many complex variables, it’s important that scientists like me choose the appropriate indicators to estimate the value of contributions from different ecosystem services. Then, we can assess whether interventions such as restoring seagrass or building a port might help or hinder the marine environment.
Often, different ecosystem services might interact or conflict with each other. Fishing in the northeast Atlantic might, for example, negatively affect marine mammals such as seal if the fish they rely on as food are also being eaten by humans. So we need to look at the bigger picture to assess all of the ecosystem services provided by a particular area of ocean. And as our understanding of ecosystem services develops, we can refine efforts to give nature a helping hand.
Swimming, sailing, even just building a sandcastle – the ocean benefits our physical and mental wellbeing. Curious about how a strong coastal connection helps drive marine conservation, scientists are diving in to investigate the power of blue health.
This article is part of a series, Vitamin Sea, exploring how the ocean can be enhanced by our interaction with it.
Stefanie Broszeit receives funding from the United Kingdom Research and Innovation and from Horizon Europe, funding European research through the European Commission.
Will the next human to walk on the Moon speak English or Mandarin? In all, 12 Americans landed on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972. Now, both the US and China are preparing to send humans back there this decade.
However, the US lunar programme is delayed, in part because the spacesuits and lunar-landing vehicle are not ready. Meanwhile, China has pledged to put astronauts on the Moon by 2030 – and it has a habit of sticking to timelines.
Just a few years ago, such a scenario would have seemed unlikely. But there now appears to be a realistic possibility that China could beat the US in a race that America, arguably, has defined. So who will return there first, and does it really matter?
Nasa’s Moon programme is called Artemis. The US has involved international and commercial partners to spread the cost. Nasa set out a plan to get American boots back on lunar soil over the course of three missions. In November 2022, Nasa launched its Orion spacecraft on a loop around the Moon without humans aboard. This was the Artemis I mission.
Artemis II, scheduled for late 2025, is similar to Artemis I, but this time Orion will carry four astronauts. They will not land; this will be left for Artemis III. For this third mission, Nasa will send a man and the first woman to the lunar surface. Though as yet unnamed, one of them will be the first person of colour on the Moon.
Artemis III astronauts are set to use SpaceX’s Starship vehicle to land on the Moon. Nasa
Artemis III was scheduled to launch this year, but the timescale has slipped several times. A review in December 2023 gave a one in three chance that Artemis III would not have launched by February 2028. The mission is currently slated to happen no earlier than September 2026.
Meanwhile, China’s space programme seems to be moving at speed, without significant failures or delays. In April 2024, Chinese space officials announced that the country was on track to put its astronauts on the Moon by 2030.
It’s an extraordinary trajectory for a country that launched its first astronaut in 2003. China has been operating space stations since 2011 and has been ticking off important, challenging firsts through its Chang’e lunar exploration programme.
These robotic missions returned samples from the surface, including from the lunar far side. They have tested technology that could be crucial for landing humans. The next mission will touch down at the lunar south pole, a region that attracts intense interest because of the presence of water ice in shadowed craters there.
This water could be used for life support by a lunar base and turned into rocket propellant. Making rocket propellant on the Moon would be cheaper than bringing it from Earth, making lunar exploration more affordable. It is for these reasons that Artemis III will land at the south pole. It’s also the planned location for US and Chinese-led bases.
On September 28 2024, China showed off a spacesuit, to be worn by its Moon walkers, or “selenauts”. The suit is designed to protect the wearer against extreme temperature variations and unfiltered solar radiation. It is lightweight and flexible. Is it a sign of China already overtaking the US in one aspect of the Moon race? The company manufacturing the Artemis Moon suit, Axiom Space, is currently having to modify several aspects of the reference design given to them by Nasa.
The lander that will carry US astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface is also delayed. In 2021, Elon Musk’s SpaceX was given the contract to build this vehicle. It is based on SpaceX’s Starship, which consists of a 50m-long spacecraft that launches on the most powerful rocket ever built.
On October 13 2024, Starship scored a successful fifth test flight. But several challenging steps are required before the Starship Human Landing System can carry astronauts down to the lunar surface. Starship cannot fly directly to the Moon. It must refuel in Earth orbit first (using other Starships that act as propellant “tankers”). SpaceX needs to demonstrate refuelling and conduct a test landing on the Moon without crew before Artemis III can proceed.
In addition, during Artemis I, Orion’s heat shield suffered considerable damage as the spacecraft made the high-temperature return through Earth’s atmosphere. Nasa engineers have been working to find a remedy before the Artemis II mission.
Too complicated?
Some critics argue that Artemis is too complex, referring to the intricate way in which astronauts and Moon lander are brought together in lunar orbit, the large number of independently operating commercial partners and the number of Starship launches required. Depending who you ask, between four and 15 Starship flights are needed to complete the refuelling for Artemis III.
Former Nasa administrator Michael Griffin has advocated a simpler strategy, broadly along the lines of how China expects to accomplish its lunar landing. His vision sees Nasa relying on traditional commercial partners such as Boeing, rather than relative “newbies” such as SpaceX.
However, simple is not necessarily better or cheaper. The Apollo programme was simpler, but at almost three times the cost of Artemis. SpaceX has been more successful, and economical, than Boeing in sending crews to the International Space Station.
The Artemis I mission was broadly successful, but Orion’s heat shield suffered damage. Nasa
New technology is not developed through simple, tried approaches but in bold endeavours that push boundaries. The James Webb Space Telescope is highly complex, with its folded mirror and distant position in space, but it allows astronomers to peer into the depths of the universe as no other telescope can. Innovation is especially crucial bearing in mind future ambitions such as asteroid mining and a settlement on Mars.
Does it matter whether the first 21st-century selenauts are Chinese or American? This is largely a question about the relationship between governments and their citizens, and between nations.
Democratic governments depend on public support to safeguard funding for expensive, long-term ventures – and prestige is an important selling point. But prestige in a 21st-century Moon race will be earned by doing it well, not sooner. Rushing back to the Moon could be costly, both financially and in the risk to human life.
Governments must set an example of responsible behaviour. Peace, inclusivity and sustainability should be guiding principles. Going back to the Moon must not be about dominion or superiority. It should be a chance to show that we can improve on how we have previously behaved on Earth.
Jacco van Loon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penny Van Bergen, Head of School of Education and Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Wollongong
Everyone knows a kid who cheats at Monopoly or backyard cricket. Perhaps they have even cheated on a test at school.
If your notice your own child is doing this, you may worry they are headed for a life of crime.
But in developmental terms, cheating is not usually a cause for concern for kids.
What is cheating?
Cheating occurs when a child behaves dishonestly to gain an unfair advantage. They might pretend to roll a six, peek at others’ cards, score a sports game incorrectly, or use video game modifications to skip levels.
Despite parents’ and teachers’ best efforts, cheating is remarkably common. In one experiment, five-year-olds were asked not to peek inside a box while the experimenter left the room. Almost all peeked and most then denied having done so.
A sign of development
The capacity to deceive can signal the emergence of new skills, including an understanding of others peoples’ minds.
To cheat effectively, we have to think about what someone else is thinking. We then need to trick them into believing a different reality. These cognitive skills only emerge in preschool, and it is not until the primary years that children can successfully maintain a false story over time.
Research shows it is very common for children to cheat. spass/Shutterstock
Cheating at school
As children get older, they can get more cautious about cheating in general, but also start cheating at school.
In a US study, more than three in four high school students reported cheating at school at least once over the past year.
Common techniques included sharing their work with others, getting test answers ahead of time, plagiarising from the internet, and collaborating when they weren’t supposed to.
Students were more likely to see cheating as acceptable when helping a peer, or when they could rationalise the behaviour in a pro-social way (for example, they ran out of time and needed to cheat because they were caring for a family member).
Temptation matters
Like adults, children are more likely to cheat when the temptation is greater. In one study, children aged seven to ten were more likely to cheat at a die-rolling game if they could win a bigger prize.
Children and adolescents also report being more likely to cheat to avoid negative consequences. As far back as 1932, US school principal M.A. Steiner wrote how too much work encourages students to cheat. In a 2008 study, students themselves reported cheating at school because they were uninterested in the material or under pressure to perform.
While temptation encourages cheating, the risk of being caught can encourage honesty. Children must weigh up the benefits of cheating against the risks of being caught.
As they get older, children may also consider how cheating impacts their sense of self. For example, “being a good person is important to me – so I won’t cheat”.
Do boys cheat more than girls?
Some children are more likely to cheat than others. For example, in a 2019 study in which children’s rolls of six dice could win them prizes, boys cheated more than girls. Boys and girls also approached cheating differently: girls were more likely to cheat to avoid losses, while boys were equally motivated by losses and gains.
Social skills also make a difference. A 2003 US study showed second grade children who have been rejected by their peers are more likely to cheat at board games – even when playing with new children they have never met before. It is possible such children are not as good at regulating their emotions and behaviours.
Adolescents with lower self-restraint and greater tolerance for breaking rules are more likely to accept academic cheating, as are those who misbehave in class.
Although cheating is common, it can pose increasing problems for children and teens as the stakes become higher. Research with Chinese students in the eighth grade showed those who cheated when scoring their own test were less likely to have learned the correct answer later on.
Here are four things parents and teachers can do to help discourage cheating.
1. Have open conversations: talk openly and compassionately about why cheating is not a good idea (for example, “it ruins the fun for your friends”). Research shows children and adolescents who made a promise to experimenters not to cheat at a game were less likely to do so. But children who fear getting in trouble are less likely to tell the truth.
2. Don’t put too much pressure on results: when talking about school, use language related to learning rather than performance (“just try your best, that’s all you can do”). Studies show highly competitive academic environments make cheating more likely, because the benefits of success and risks of failure are heightened.
3. Be positive about your child’s character:in one study, preschoolers were allocated to one of two groups. In the “good reputation” group, children were told “I know kids in your class and they told me you were a good kid”. In another group, children were not told anything. All children were then asked not to peek at a tempting toy while the experimenter left the room. Those in the good reputation group were less likely to cheat (60%) than those in other group (90%).
4. Show kids how it’s done: if adults are being honest and open, children are more likely to do the same. In one study, children were told there was a big bowl of candy in the next room. When this turned out to be a lie, children themselves were more likely to cheat in a game and to lie about it.
Penny Van Bergen receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the NSW Department of Education.
“Nature positive” is seemingly everywhere. Two weeks ago, Australia hosted the first Global Nature Positive Summit. This week, nations are meeting in Colombia for a global biodiversity summit to discuss progress on nature positive commitments.
Nature positive has a simple meaning: ensuring more nature in future than there is now. Making it a reality is the hard part.
It’s necessary because nature is in trouble. Once common species are becoming threatened and threatened species are going extinct. Humans, too, will be severely impacted. When ecosystems are healthy, they provide vital benefits. Insects pollinate crops, trees slow floodwaters, earthworms, fungi and soil critters make healthy soil and natural vistas improve our mental wellbeing.
While Australia’s government is working to embed nature positive ideas in environmental reform efforts, we may see lip service rather than real change. The government’s Nature Positive Plan faces opposition from businesses and politicians ahead of a looming election. And the plan itself doesn’t fully align with true nature positive outcomes.
In our article published today in Science, we lay out four vital steps to ensure nature positive policies are actually positive for nature.
Step 1: Ensure biodiversity increases are absolute
At present, Australia’s planned nature positive reforms would only require developers removing habitat to achieve a relative net gain for nature compared to business as usual.
We have argued this approach won’t work – it should be an absolute net gain.
It might sound abstract – but it makes all the difference. For instance, consider a population of endangered koalas living on the site of a new mine. Any negative impact to koalas would have to be offset with a benefit to the species elsewhere, usually on a separate site.
If Australia had absolute net gain in effect, the company would have to ensure there are more koalas overall. If the mine site and an offset site had a combined population of 100 koalas before the development, this combined population would need to be more than 100 koalas after the development – even though some will be lost.
But let’s say these 100 koalas over two sites were expected to fall to 80, even if the mine didn’t happen. In this case, a relative net gain could be achieved if the mine and offset site had 90 koalas. The population fell, but less than it would have otherwise.
By contrast, England brought in a net gain approach in February of this year, with developers now required to provide a 10% net gain in biodiversity.
Importantly, the vast majority of developments affecting threatened species habitat never require any offset at all. Plugging this major gap is also key.
For nature positive to work properly, any damage done to a species by a development has to be offset by net gain. Pictured: Peak Hill gold mine in NSW. Phillip Wittke/Shutterstock
Step 2: Avoid conservation payments in risky situations
The Australian government plans to introduce conservation payments, where developers can pay into a government-managed fund rather than providing direct offsets.
If developers were to cut down trees used by the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum, for example, they could choose either to improve habitat elsewhere to offset the damage – or they could pay into the fund instead.
This is a risky plan. For one, it’s often almost impossible or extremely expensive to find suitable habitat for critically endangered species because they have very little habitat remaining.
It’s far better to avoid all further habitat removal. For developers, this would mean avoiding damage to rare habitat in the first place.
Even where offsetting is possible, payments are often inadequate to cover the cost of purchasing and managing an offset site.
Then there’s the time lag. The fund might take years to buy or restore habitat sites, adding to already-long delays between damage and any benefit. And worse, under the government’s proposal, the money could be used for different, potentially less threatened species.
Under Queensland’s scheme, most developers choose to pay into a fund rather than create their own offset sites. Very little of these offset funds have been spent.
Meanwhile, the latest independent assessment of the New South Wales biodiversity offset payment scheme recommended the fund be completely phased out.
Step 3: Go beyond compensation
Compensating for new damage is important. But it’s not nearly enough. Over the last century, we have done huge damage to the natural world. Australia’s southern seas were once ringed with oyster reefs, for instance, but these were nearly all fished out.
We need to begin to recover what was lost by restoring ecosystems, managing weeds and reducing risk of diseases.
Nature-positive laws should include funding and actions designed to produce absolute gains in biodiversity over and above any required compensation.
The world has long seriously underfunded conservation, including threatened species recovery, ecosystem restoration and protected area management. Australia alone needs a roughly 20-fold increase in funding to actually bring back threatened species.
While this sounds large, it’s off an extraordinarily low base – just A$122 million in 2019. By contrast, we spend over $100 billion on human health each year.
Two years ago, the government passed the first of its nature-positive reforms to create a nature repair market aimed at drawing more funds into nature restoration. But as the market will rely on voluntary private sector investment, we don’t know how much funding will flow or whether it will focus on threatened species recovery.
Ensuring compliance with new nature-positive laws requires transparent and effective enforcement, such as through the independent national environment protection authority with extra powers proposed in Australia.
Its independence and powers may be less than required, due to proposed call-in powers allowing the minister to overrule decisions. True independence and adequate resources are crucial.
If governments do pass environmental reforms, we need to collect adequate and robust data on species to know if they are actually working to boost nature recovery. At present, many Australian threatened species remain unmonitored.
Is nature positive within reach?
It’s not easy to create a future with more nature than we have now. Australia’s current government took office vowing to embrace nature positive. To date, their reforms are not yet likely to make that a reality.
But the task will only get more urgent. Meaningful nature-positive policy means ensuring targets of absolute net gain for threatened species, ensuring strict compensation for any nature loss, independently resourcing and financing other recovery efforts and implementing these laws effectively.
With a course correction, Australia can still act as a leading example for other nations as they reform their own policies to meet nature-positive ambitions. Now is the time for real and decisive action.
We acknowledge our research coauthors, Brooke Williams (Queensland University of Technology), Martine Maron (University of Queensland), Jonathan Rhodes (Queensland University of Technology), Jeremy Simmonds (2rog), and Michelle Ward (Griffith University).
Yi Fei Chung has received funding from UQ Research Training Scholarship. He is also involving in a Australian Research Council Linkage Project with financial and in-kind support from the NSW Department of Planning and Environment, the Biodiversity Conservation Trust, Tweed Shire Council, and the NSW Koala Strategy.
Hannah Thomas has received funding from WWF-Australia and an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. She is an early-career leader with the Biodiversity Council.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Evelyn Parr, Research Fellow in Exercise Metabolism and Nutrition, Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Australian Catholic University
Type 2 diabetes affects 1.2 million Australians and accounts for 85-90% of all diabetes cases. This chronic condition is characterised by high blood glucose (sugar) levels, which carry serious health risks. Complications include heart disease, kidney failure and vision problems.
Diet is an important way people living with type 2 diabetes manage blood glucose, alongside exercise and medication. But while we know individualised, professional dietary advice improves blood glucose, it can be complex and is not always accessible.
Our new study looked at the impact of time-restricted eating – focusing on when you eat, rather than what or how much – on blood glucose levels.
We found it had similar results to individualised advice from an accredited practising dietitian. But there were added benefits, because it was simple, achievable, easy to stick to – and motivated people to make other positive changes.
What is time-restricted eating?
Time-restricted eating, also known as the 16:8 diet, became popular for weight loss around 2015. Studies have since shown it is also an effective way for people with type 2 diabetes to manage blood glucose.
Time-restricted eating involves limiting when you eat each day, rather than focusing on what you eat. You restrict eating to a window during daylight hours, for example between 11am and 7pm, and then fast for the remaining hours. This can sometimes naturally lead to also eating less.
Participants in our study could still share meals with family, as long as it was within a nine-hour window finishing at 7pm. Kitreel/Shutterstock
Giving your body a break from constantly digesting food in this way helps align eating with natural circadian rhythms. This can help regulate metabolism and improve overall health.
For people with type 2 diabetes, there may be specific benefits. They often have their highest blood glucose reading in the morning. Delaying breakfast to mid-morning means there is time for physical activity to occur to help reduce glucose levels and prepare the body for the first meal.
How we got here
We ran an initial study in 2018 to see whether following time-restricted eating was achievable for people with type 2 diabetes. We found participants could easily stick to this eating pattern over four weeks, for an average of five days a week.
Importantly, they also had improvements in blood glucose, spending less time with high levels. Our previous research suggests the reduced time between meals may play a role in how the hormone insulin is able to reduce glucose concentrations.
Other studies have confirmed these findings, which have also shown notable improvements in HbA1c. This is a marker in the blood that represents concentrations of blood glucose over an average of three months. It is the primary clinical tool used for diabetes.
However, these studies provided intensive support to participants through weekly or fortnightly meetings with researchers.
While we know this level of support increases how likely people are to stick to the plan and improves outcomes, it is not readily available to everyday Australians living with type 2 diabetes.
What we did
In our new study, we compared time-restricted eating directly with advice from an accredited practising dietitian, to test whether results were similar across six months.
We recruited 52 people with type 2 diabetes who were currently managing their diabetes with up to two oral medications. There were 22 women and 30 men, aged between 35 and 65.
Participants were randomly divided into two groups: diet and time-restricted eating. In both groups, participants received four consultations across the first four months. During the next two months they managed diet alone, without consultation, and we continued to measure the impact on blood glucose.
In the diet group, consultations focused on changing their diet to control blood glucose, including improving diet quality (for example, eating more vegetables and limiting alcohol).
In the time-restricted eating group, advice focused on how to limit eating to a nine-hour window between 10am and 7pm.
Over six months, we measured each participant’s blood glucose levels every two months using the HbA1c test. Each fortnight, we also asked participants about their experience of making dietary changes (to what or when they ate).
Continuous glucose monitoring measures the levels of glucose in the blood. Halfpoint/Shutterstock
What we found
We found time-restricted eating was as effective as the diet intervention.
Both groups had reduced blood glucose levels, with the greatest improvements occurring after the first two months. Although it wasn’t an objective of the study, some participants in each group also lost weight (5-10kg).
When surveyed, participants in the time-restricted eating group said they had adjusted well and were able to follow the restricted eating window. Many told us they had family support and enjoyed earlier mealtimes together. Some also found they slept better.
After two months, people in the time-restricted group were looking for more dietary advice to further improve their health.
Those in the diet group were less likely to stick to their plan. Despite similar health outcomes, time-restricted eating seems to be a simpler initial approach than making complex dietary changes.
Is time-restricted eating achievable?
The main barriers to following time-restricted eating are social occasions, caring for others and work schedules. These factors may prevent people eating within the window.
However, there are many benefits. The message is simple, focusing on when to eat as the main diet change. This may make time-restricted eating more translatable to people from a wider variety of socio-cultural backgrounds, as the types of foods they eat don’t need to change, just the timing.
Many people don’t have access to more individualised support from a dietitian, and receive nutrition advice from their GP. This makes time-restricted eating an alternative – and equally effective – strategy for people with type 2 diabetes.
People should still try to stick to dietary guidelines and prioritise vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, lean meat and healthy fats.
But our study showed time-restricted eating may also serve as stepping stone for people with type 2 diabetes to take control of their health, as people became more interested in making diet and other positive changes.
Time-restricted eating might not be appropriate for everyone, especially people on medications which don’t recommend fasting. Before trying this dietary change, it’s best speak to the healthcare professional who helps you manage diabetes.
Evelyn Parr receives funding from Diabetes Australia and Australian Catholic University.
Brooke Devlin received funding from Diabetes Australia.
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sathana Dushyanthen, Academic Specialist & Senior Lecturer in Cancer Sciences & Digital Health| Superstar of STEM| Science Communicator, The University of Melbourne
Cancers are abnormal groups of cells that grow uncontrollably and start invading neighbouring sites. They can also spread to other organs in the body. This is known as metastases.
Treatment of early disease, when cancer is confined to the original site, is focused on that single area, most often with surgery or radiation therapy. Treatment of advanced disease, when it has spread, often relies on treatments that can travel all around the body such as chemotherapy or immunotherapy.
A more advanced form of radiation therapy, called stereotactic ablative radiotherapy, may be able to treat both early and advanced cancers. So how does it work? And how does it compare to existing therapies?
It delivers a higher dose to a smaller target
Stereotactic radiotherapy uses high doses of radiation to target and kill cancer cells. It uses newer machines that can deliver very focused radiation beams. Combined with advances in imaging and radiation planning software this allows clinicians to “track” and target cancers.
This results in such high precision – with a targeting accuracy less than 1mm – that cancers can be safely treated with minimal risk of damaging surrounding healthy organs.
Having a higher dose means radiotherapy can be delivered in fewer treatments (one to five sessions over one to two weeks) where it previously would have been divided into many small doses (20 to 40), delivered over weeks or even months.
Stereotactic radiotherapy has increasingly been used to treat cancer in the brain and lungs. But new data has shown it can also effectively treat prostate cancer.
What did the new study find?
A study published this month in the New England Journal of Medicine compared two groups of patients with early prostate cancer with a median age of 69.8 years. Half (433 participants) received five sessions of stereotactic radiation therapy, the other half (431 participants) received standard radiation therapy consisting of at least 20 sessions.
The researchers found no long-term difference in outcomes between the groups, with 95% of patients showing no evidence of disease five years after treatment. These cure rates are equivalent to patients who had their prostates surgically removed.
Early evidence suggests that stereotactic radiation therapy appears to be as effective, less onerous and less invasive than currently available treatment options.
Prostate cancer that has spread beyond its original site is, unfortunately, incurable in most circumstances. Treatments for this stage of disease are aimed at suppressing or controlling the cancer for as long as possible.
However, studies have shown stereotactic radiation therapy can be used to target disease that has spread to distant sites in patients who have advanced prostate cancer.
Researchers found stereotactic radiation therapy could render patients free of clinically evident disease for eight to 13 months, delaying the need for hormone therapy or chemotherapy.
How do the side effects compare to other cancer treatments?
Stereotactic radiation therapy is delivered daily, with painless radiation beams. In the weeks following delivery it is common to notice soreness and/or inflammation at the treated site. This reaches a level requiring medication in one-third of cases.
Erectile function is frequently impacted during prostate cancer treatment, as the nerves and blood vessels responsible for erections are often damaged.
Another recent study comparing stereotactic radiation therapy to surgery found 48% of patients treated with stereotactic radiation therapy had difficulties with their sexual function two years after treatment compared to 75% of patients who had surgery.
Comparison of differences between traditional radiotherapy and stereotactic radiotherapy. Precision Radiation Oncology
What are the costs? And who can access it?
Newer and more advanced radiation treatment machines can deliver more precise treatments, but these are much more expensive than standard machines. They also have more complex maintenance and operational requirements.
However, traditional radiotherapy machines can also be upgraded to provide stereotactic precision.
While the initial investment costs can be high, cost-benefit analyses show stereotactic radiation therapy for lung cancer costs the health system less than other cancer treatments and conventional radiotherapy. This is in part because treatment is completed far more quickly. Formal cost-benefit analyses have not been completed for prostate cancer but are likely to be similar.
Stereotactic radiation therapy is now widely available at most major Australian public hospitals for many cancer types, including selected lung cancers, kidney cancers, advanced brain cancers and bone cancers. This has no out-of-pocket costs for patients. It is also provided in many private centres.
However, even when a centre can deliver stereotactic radiation therapy, there is still significant variation in the devices used to deliver the therapy.
In addition, the actual planning and delivery of radiation therapy is a complex skill. Studies have shown that patients treated by clinicians with higher caseloads have better outcomes, due to their greater familiarity with these specialised techniques.
Radiotherapy departments throughout the world have rapidly upgraded their capability over the past few years to provide stereotactic radiotherapy. After the recent clinical trial findings, it’s likely prostate cancer will be added to the list of cancers treated this way.
David Kok has a clinical appointment at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre which provides prostate cancer treatments including stereotactic radiotherapy, conventional radiotherapy and surgery.
Sathana Dushyanthen 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.
In late September, the governor of the state of Oklahoma, Kevin Stitt, boasted that election officials had removed 453,000 people from the state’s voter rolls since 2021. In a state with only 2.3 million registered voters, it appears that roughly one in six registered voters had been purged.
While some of these people were dead or disfranchised owing to felony convictions, nearly 200,000 of them were removed for being “inactive voters”. This means they likely failed to respond to a postcard sent to their mailing address.
Voters can re-register if they were incorrectly removed, but this “voter list maintenance” process still creates a barrier to democratic participation.
This bucks the national trend. Overall, across the United States, electoral turnout has increased in presidential and midterm elections since 2018. Americans feel, now more than ever, that elections have high stakes.
And some states have made it easier to vote. Minnesota, for example, allows voters to register online or at the polls on Election Day.
In states like Oklahoma, however, voters are discouraged or demoralised by policies and laws meant to make voting difficult and time consuming. Legislatures in these states have been emboldened over the past decade by a series of Supreme Court rulings voiding key parts of the Voting Rights Act.
These states are now the new fronts in the unfinished battle to secure one of the fundamental elements of democracy – the right to vote. We’ve analysed data on voter turnout and voting accessibility across the US and found states restricting access the most are overwhelmingly led by Republican legislatures.
A long history of voter disenfranchisement
US elections have always been the domain of the states. And state legislatures have long wielded this power to discriminate against marginalised groups.
Prior to the Civil War, most states restricted the right to vote to white men. Then, in 1870, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, which forbade states from restricting the right to vote on the basis of “race, color or previous condition of servitude”
In practice, however, this didn’t change things in all states. In the South, where Jim Crow laws maintained segregation in many facets of public life, lawmakers found other ways to disenfranchise Black voters.
When other methods failed, white people used violence and intimidation to discourage Black voters from showing up at the polls.
Women made gains state by state in the decades following the Civil War, though Black women in the South were disenfranchised alongside Black men. This made white women the primary beneficiaries of the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920. This dictated that states could not withhold voting rights “on account of sex”.
It was not until the ratification of the 24th Amendment in 1964, which prohibited the use of the poll tax, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed the literacy tests, that American democracy could begin to live up to its name.
How states are erecting more barriers
However, even these landmark developments have not ensured that voting is easy or universally accessible to all Americans.
In fact, many states have accelerated efforts to police voting rolls and enact hurdles to civic engagement in the wake of then-President Donald Trump’s false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Republican-dominated states like Oklahoma have been particularly keen to adopt restrictive policies.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, 26 states have made voting less accessible since 2020. These barriers include many tactics:
Partisan redistricting also discourages members of minority parties from turning out on Election Day. By drawing district lines that clearly favour one party over another, such practices can make people feel it is pointless to vote.
What our research found
According to our calculations, out of the states that have made voting less accessible since 2020, most are located in the South (43%) or Midwest (31%). The data reveal the most significant losses in voting access have occurred in southern states with large populations of Black voters.
And the most restrictive lawmaking has been spearheaded by Republican-dominated state legislatures, with 86% of such states passing inequitable voting barriers. In contrast, only 5% of Democratic-led states have made voting harder.
In addition, according to our research, high barriers to voting are directly related to lower voter turnout rates.
When all states are analysed, “high barrier” states had an average turnout rate of 45.8% compared to 49% for “low barrier” states in the 2022 election, a statistically significant difference. The average turnout rate across all US states in 2022 was 46.2%.
In the South, most states (11 of 16) made voting more difficult after the 2020 election – and nearly all had voter turnout rates well below the national average in 2022. (Mississippi was the lowest at 32.5%.)
High-barrier southern states with Republican-led legislatures had an average turnout rate of 40.6%, compared to 46.2% in high-barrier, Republican-led states in other regions.
Three states in low-barrier states, meanwhile, had turnout rates above 60% – Oregon, Maine and Minnesota. All had Democratic-majority legislatures, or in the case of Minnesota, a divided legislature and Democratic governor.
States should motivate voters, not demoralise them
These policies to restrict voting accessibility, draped in the cloak of “election security”, will no doubt affect turnout in certain states in the upcoming November elections, as well.
Yet, staying home on Election Day is also a rational behaviour since the chances of being the pivotal voter that decides an election is estimated at one in one million in a battleground state and much less in a noncompetitive state.
With national voter turnout already low compared to other democracies, state legislatures should be doing what they can to motivate voters and make it easier for them to cast a ballot – not making it more difficult for them to do so.
Kathryn Schumaker has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Allyson Shortle is affiliated with the Public Religion Research Institute.
A team led by researchers at MIT in the United States has discovered large molecules containing carbon in a distant interstellar cloud of gas and dust.
This is exciting for those of us who keep lists of known interstellar molecules in the hope that we might work out how life arose in the universe.
But it’s more than just another molecule for the collection. The result, reported today in the journal Science, shows that complex organic molecules (with carbon and hydrogen) likely existed in the cold, dark gas cloud that gave rise to our Solar System.
Furthermore, the molecules held together until after the formation of Earth. This is important for our understanding of the early origins of life on our planet.
Difficult to destroy, hard to detect
The molecule in question is called pyrene, a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon or PAH for short. The complicated-sounding name tells us these molecules are made of rings of carbon atoms.
Carbon chemistry is the backbone of life on Earth. PAHs have long been known to be abundant in the interstellar medium, so they feature prominently in theories of how carbon-based life on Earth came to be.
A pyrene molecule, consisting of carbon atoms (black) and hydrogen atoms (white). Jynto/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
We know there are many large PAHs in space because astrophysicists have detected signs of them in visible and infrared light. But we didn’t know which PAHs they might be in particular.
Pyrene is now the largest PAH detected in space, although it’s what is known as a “small” or simple PAH, with 26 atoms. It was long thought such molecules could not survive the harsh environment of star formation when everything is bathed in radiation from the newborn suns, destroying complex molecules.
In fact, it was once thought molecules of more than two atoms could not exist in space for this reason, until they were actually found.
Also, chemical models show pyrene is very difficult to destroy once formed.
Last year, scientists reported they found large amounts of pyrene in samples from the asteroid Ryugu in our own Solar System. They argued at least some of it must have come from the cold interstellar cloud that predated our Solar System.
So why not look at another cold interstellar cloud to find some? The problem for astrophysicists is that we don’t have the tools to detect pyrene directly – it’s invisible to radio telescopes.
Using a tracer
The molecule the team has detected is called 1-cyanopyrene, what we call a “tracer” for pyrene. It is formed from pyrene interacting with cyanide, which is common in interstellar space.
The researchers used the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to look at the Taurus molecular cloud or TMC-1, in the Taurus constellation. Unlike pyrene itself, 1-cyanopyrene can be detected by radio telescopes. This is because 1-cyanopyrene molecules act as small radio-wave emitters – tiny versions of earthly radio stations.
As scientists know the proportions of 1-cyanopyrene compared to pyrene, they can then estimate the amount of pyrene in the interstellar cloud.
The amount of pyrene they found was significant. Importantly, this discovery in the Taurus molecular cloud suggests a lot of pyrene exists in the cold, dark molecular clouds that go on to form stars and solar systems.
A wide-field view of part of the Taurus molecular cloud ~450 light-years from Earth. Its relative closeness makes it an ideal place to study the formation of stars. Many dark clouds of obscuring dust are clearly visible against the background stars. ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin.
The complex birth of life
We are gradually building a picture of how life on Earth evolved. This picture tells us that life came from space – well, at least the complex organic, pre-biological molecules needed to form life did.
That pyrene survives the harsh conditions associated with the birth of stars, as shown by the findings from Ryugu, is an important part of this story.
Simple life – consisting of a single cell – appeared in Earth’s fossil record almost immediately (in geological and astronomical terms) after the planet’s surface had cooled enough to not vaporise complex molecules. This happened more than 3.7 billion years ago in Earth’s approximately 4.5 billion history.
For simple organisms to then appear so quickly in the fossil record, there’s just not enough time for chemistry to start with mere simple molecules of two or three atoms.
The new discovery of 1-cyanopyrene in the Taurus molecular cloud shows complex molecules could indeed survive the harsh conditions of our Solar System’s formation. As a result, pyrene was available to form the backbone of carbon-based life when it emerged on the early Earth some 3.7 billion years ago.
This discovery also links to another important finding of the last decade – the first chiral molecule in the interstellar medium, propylene oxide. We need chiral molecules to make the evolution of simple lifeforms work on the surface of the early Earth.
So far, our theories that molecules for early life on Earth came from space are looking good.
Maria Cunningham has received funding from The Australian Research Council. In the past she has collaborated with Anthony Remijan, one of the co-authors on the Science paper discussed in this publication. Their last co-authored paper was in 2015.
As we continue to change the planet, scientists are worried we might also be altering the evolutionary trajectories of the species that live alongside us, perhaps even including some irreversible shifts.
Certainly, the evidence for change is everywhere. As the planet warms, species’ ranges are shifting and their life cycles are changing. As we harvest the largest fish in the ocean, the species affected are now maturing at smaller sizes.
But are these shifts we observe in wild populations underpinned by genetic changes (mutations in the DNA) or are they simply flexible responses to environmental change? If the changes are genetic, how are they happening?
Our findings are centred on an intriguing case of “mimicry” from New Zealand, in which a harmless insect has evolved to mimic the warning colours of a highly toxic species.
Forest removal drives colour shift
Convincingly demonstrating “evolution in action” involves finding the agents of natural selection (environmental factors driving the change) and discovering the genetic mechanism.
Until now, the peppered moth was the “classic” example of human-driven evolution. Dark-coloured specimens of the moth suddenly appeared during the 19th century. It was a likely response to industrial pollution which meant light-coloured individuals were no longer blending in to the increasingly sooty British environment. Despite its broad appeal, some aspects of even this famous case have been criticised as unclear and anecdotal.
We worked on stoneflies and the impact of deforestation.
The black stonefly Austroperla lives in forests. It produces cyanide to deter potential predators, and to advertise its toxicity this species has high-contrast black, white and yellow markings, reminiscent of wasp colouration.
The non-toxic Zelandoperla stonefly has evolved astonishingly similar warning colouration, apparently to trick predators (forest birds) into assuming that it, too, is toxic. The intricate and unique ecological interactions between these insects and their predators have apparently evolved together over millions of years.
Dark coloured Zelandoperla stoneflies (middle) mimic the poisonous Austroperla (top), which are abundant in forests. Recent forest clearance has eliminated Austroperla from many regions of New Zealand. In response, Zelandoperla populations have quickly evolved lighter colouration (bottom). Graham McCulloch, Jon Waters, CC BY-SA
Where do humans come into this story? Aotearoa New Zealand was the last major landmass to be colonised by people. In many places the human impacts on its ecosystems have been devastating.
In addition to species extinctions, New Zealand has lost much of its original native forest cover in just a few centuries. This deforestation has wiped out countless populations of forest birds, along with the poisonous, forest-dependent Austroperla.
Our study reveals this widespread deforestation has also proven a game changer for the stonefly “mimic”. As its predators and the poisonous species it mimics have vanished from many regions, there is no longer much point in displaying warning colouration.
In an astonishing about-turn, Zelandoperla populations from deforested habitats have quickly lost their spectacular “mimic” colouration. It turns out that the production of this intricate colouration was costly, and when no longer essential, evolution rapidly removed it – in a case of “use it or lose it”.
Human-driven deforestation in New Zealand has altered species interactions in a mimicry system, leading to rapid evolution of insect colour. Graham McCulloch, Jon Waters, CC BY-SA
Genetic change
In our study, we compared insect populations across several parts of the South Island. We found a remarkably consistent picture. The removal of forest has driven similar colour shifts across different deforested regions.
The finding that evolutionary change can be “predictable” offers hope that scientists can use evolutionary theory to predict future biodiversity shifts.
Stonefly models helped to reveal the role of birds. Author provided, CC BY-SA
How do we know birds have played a key role in this rapid colour change? By placing stonefly models of different colours in a variety of habitats, we were able to demonstrate that birds only avoid attacking stoneflies with the “warning” colouration when they are in forests.
Another challenge was to show that this colour change represents evolution at the DNA level rather than a flexible response to environmental change. We looked at genetic variation across the Zelandoperla genome and found that just a single gene – ebony – is almost completely responsible for this colour evolution.
Our study also reveals the pace of evolutionary change. By comparing regions deforested soon after human arrival (for example Central Otago, which was deforested around 600 to 700 years ago) with those cleared much more recently (Otago Peninsula, 150 years ago), we show that evolution has proceeded steadily yet inexorably over this human timeframe.
On the positive side, the finding that at least some of our native species can adapt in the face of rapid environmental change suggests ongoing resilience of our native biodiversity. However, our results also highlight how quickly the intricate interactions that have evolved among native species over millennia can be lost from disturbed ecosystems.
These new findings raise tantalising questions about the potential to reverse the negative impacts of deforestation on our native biodiversity. In particular, our increasing focus on reforestation and ecological restoration provides hope for restoring the complex ecosystems we have inherited.
Jonathan Waters receives funding from the RSNZ Marsden Fund.
Graham McCulloch receives funding from the RSNZ Marsden Fund
The Queensland election campaign suggests both sides of politics have embraced the renewable energy transition. But solar and wind are variable and need energy storage. That is where pumped hydro energy storage and batteries come in.
Both are off-the-shelf technologies. And both are already being used on a vast scale.
Having promised 80% renewable energy by 2035, the incumbent Labor government is committed to large pumped hydro systems at Borumba, on the Sunshine Coast, and Pioneer-Burdekin, near Mackay. The A$14.2 billion Borumba project appears to have support from both major parties. However, the Liberal National Party (LNP) says it will scrap the $12 billion Pioneer Burdekin project and the renewables target if elected.
While Pioneer-Burdekin is a very good site, there are good alternatives. The LNP says it “will investigate opportunities for smaller, more manageable pumped hydro projects”. Regardless, in supporting more pumped hydro storage and rejecting the federal Coalition’s nuclear power plans, the state LNP is accepting the renewable energy transformation as inevitable.
What is pumped hydro energy storage?
Pumped hydro systemsstore surplus electricity from solar and wind on sunny and windy days. The electricity is used to pump water from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir. This water can later be released downhill though turbines to generate power when it’s needed.
Snowy 2.0 will last for at least 100 years. Its capacity (350 gigawatt-hours, GWh) is equivalent to 6 million electric vehicle batteries. It’s enough to power 3 million homes for a week.
ANU’s RE100 Group has published global atlases of about 800,000 potential pumped hydro sites. None require new dams on rivers. Some are new sites (greenfield). Others would use existing reservoirs (bluefield) or old mines (brownfield).
What about batteries?
Batteries are best for short-term storage (a few hours). Pumped hydro is better for overnight or several days – Snowy 2.0 will provide 150 hours of storage.
As with any major infrastructure, pumped hydro development has costs and risks. It has high upfront capital costs but very low operating costs.
What are Queensland’s options?
In Queensland, solar and wind electricity rose from 2% to 26% of total generation over the past decade. It’s heading for about 75% in 2030 as part of Australia’s 82% renewables target.
Queensland needs roughly 150 GWh of extra storage for full decarbonisation. After accounting for Borumba (50 GWh), batteries and other storage, Pioneer-Burdekin (120 GWh) would meet that need.
A similarly sized system or several smaller systems would also suffice. The latter approach has advantages of decentralisation but would cost more and have environmental impacts in more places.
The state has thousands of potential sites that are “off-river” (do not require new dams on rivers). The table below shows 15 premium sites, most with capacities of 50–150 GWh. Some larger sizes are included for interest – 5,000 GWh would store enough energy for 100 million people.
The key technical parameters are:
head: the altitude difference between the two reservoirs – bigger is better
slope: the ratio of the head to the distance between the reservoirs – larger slope means shorter tunnel
W/R: the volume of stored water (W) divided by the volume of rock (R) needed for the reservoir walls. Large W/R means low-cost reservoirs.
Clicking on each name takes you to a view of the site with more details.
Pumped storage in far north Queensland is valuable because it can absorb solar and wind energy from the Copperstring transmission extension to Mt Isa. It can then send it down the transmission line to Brisbane at off-peak times. This will ensure the line mostly operates close to full capacity.
Two potential premium 150 GWh bluefield pumped hydro energy storage systems near Tully. Author provided/RE100
The fossil fuel lobby argues gas is needed in the energy transition. But pumped hydro and battery storage eliminate the need for gas generators and their greenhouse gas emissions.
In the past decade, solar and wind generation in Australia’s National Electricity Market increased from 6% to 35%. Gas fell from 12% to 5%.
Most pumped hydro projects can be built off rivers. The same water is repeatedly transferred between the reservoirs. This means the system keeps running during droughts and avoids the impacts of new dams blocking rivers and flooding valleys.
The environmental and social impacts of off-river pumped hydro projects are much lower than for conventional hydropower or fossil fuel projects.
The system uses very common materials, primarily water, rock, concrete and steel. Very little land is flooded for off-river pumped hydro to support a 100% renewable energy system: about 3 square metres per person. Only about 3 litres of water per person per day is needed for the initial fill and to replace evaporation.
Sometimes, safely disposing of tunnel spoil is a challenge – as with mining (including for coal and battery metals). Any major new generation facility and its transmission lines may involve clearing and disturbing bushland. Local communities sometimes oppose pumped hydro developments.
In Australia, ANU identified 5,500 potential sites. Only one to two dozen are needed to enable the nation to be fully powered by renewables.
You can expect to see more pumped hydro systems in a state near you.
Jamie Pittock receives funding from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to provide technical assistance for the development of pumped storage hydropower to aid the transition to renewable energy for governments and others in Asia. He holds governance and advisory roles with a number of non-government environmental organisations.
Andrew Blakers receives funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
You had a great night out, but the next morning, anxiety hits: your heart races, and you replay every conversation from the night before in your head. This feeling, known as hangover anxiety or “hangxiety”, affects around 22% of social drinkers.
While for some people, it’s mild nerves, for others, it’s a wave of anxiety that feels impossible to ride out. The “Sunday scaries” may make you feel panicked, filled with dread and unable to relax.
Hangover anxiety can make even simple tasks feel overwhelming. Here’s why it happens, and what you can do about it.
What does alcohol do to our brains?
A hangover is the body’s way of recovering after drinking alcohol, bringing with it a range of symptoms.
Dehydration and disrupted sleep play a large part in the pounding headaches and nausea many of us know too well after a big night out. But hangovers aren’t just physical – there’s a strong mental side too.
Alcohol is a nervous system depressant, meaning it alters how certain chemical messengers (or neurotransmitters) behave in the brain. Alcohol relaxes you by increasing gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the neurotransmitter that makes you feel calm and lowers inhibitions. It decreases glutamate and this also slows down your thoughts and helps ease you into a more relaxed state.
Together, this interaction affects your mood, emotions and alertness. This is why when we drink, we often feel more sociable, carefree and willing to let our guard down.
As the effects of the alcohol wear off, your brain works to rebalance these chemicals by reducing GABA and increasing glutamate. This shift has the opposite effect of the night before, causing your brain to become more excitable and overstimulated, which can lead to feelings of anxiety.
So why do some people get hangxiety, while others don’t? There isn’t one clear answer to this question, as several factors can play a role in whether someone experiences hangover-related anxiety.
Genes play a role
For some, a hangover is simply a matter of how much they drank or how hydrated they are. But genetics may also play a significant role. Research shows your genes can explain almost half the reason why you wake up feeling hungover, while your friend might not.
Because genes influence how your body processes alcohol, some people may experience more intense hangover symptoms, such as headaches or dehydration. These stronger physical effects can, in turn, trigger anxiety during a hangover, making you more susceptible to “hangxiety.”
Do you remember what you said last night?
But one of the most common culprits for feeling anxious the next day is often what you do while drinking.
Let’s say you’ve had a big night out and you can’t quite recall a conversation you had or something you did. Maybe you acted in ways that you now regret or feel embarrassed about. You might fixate on these thoughts and get trapped in a cycle of worrying and rumination. This cycle can be hard to break and can make you feel more anxious.
Research suggests people who already struggle with feelings of anxiety in their day-to-day lives are especially vulnerable to hangxiety.
Some people drink alcohol to unwind after a stressful day or to make themselves feel more comfortable at social events. This often leads to heavier consumption, which can make hangover symptoms more severe. It can also begin a cycle of drinking to feel better, making hangxiety even harder to escape.
Preventing hangover anxiety
The best way to prevent hangxiety is to limit your alcohol consumption. The Australian guidelines recommend having no more than ten standard drinks per week and no more than four standard drinks on any one day.
Generally, the more you drink, the more intense your hangover symptoms might be, and the worse you are likely to feel.
Some people may drink more alcohol to feel more comfortable in social situations. LADO/Shutterstock
Mixing other drugs with alcohol can also increase the risk of hangxiety. This is especially true for party drugs, such as ecstasy or MDMA, that give you a temporary high but can lead to anxiety as they wear off and you are coming down.
If you do wake up feeling anxious:
focus on the physical recovery to help ease the mental strain
drink plenty of water, eat a light meal and allow yourself time to rest
try mindfulness meditation or deep breathing exercises, especially if anxiety keeps you awake or your mind races
consider journalling. This can help re-frame anxious thoughts, put your feelings into perspective and encourage self-compassion
talk to a close friend. This can provide a safe space to express concerns and feel less isolated.
Hangxiety is an unwelcome guest after a night out. Understanding why hangxiety happens – and how you can manage it – can make the morning after a little less daunting, and help keep those anxious thoughts at bay.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
People who chose medically assisted death when they were not terminally ill were more likely to be marginalized than those who chose MAiD when death was already imminent.(Shutterstock)
The reports have received international attention for what they highlight, including patients being euthanized despite untreated mental illness and addictions, unclear medical diagnoses and suffering fuelled by housing insecurity, poverty and social marginalization.
Some are shocked by what these reports reveal, but none should be surprised. This is what happens when you let the foxes run the henhouse, as Canada has arguably done by allowing right-to-die advocacy to shape policy and replace evidence.
Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAiD) laws, introduced for those in terminal situations, were expanded by the Trudeau government in 2021 to allow death by MAiD via “Track 2” to Canadians struggling with disabilities who were not dying. In 2023, Track 2 represented 2.6 per cent of the 4,644 MAiD deaths in Ontario, or 116 people.
I am not a conscientious objector. I am a psychiatrist and previously chaired my former hospital’s MAiD team. However, I believe we’ve experienced a bait and switch: laws initially intended to compassionately help Canadians avoid suffering a painful death have metastasized into policies facilitating suicides of other Canadians seeking death to escape a painful life.
The coroner’s reports show how far over the cliff we’ve fallen with Track 2 MAiD.
The coroner’s report uses a marginalization index based on area of residence (similar to the way impacts on marginalized populations were identified during COVID-19) to divide the population into five levels, each representing 20 per cent of the population. The data shows a much higher proportion of Track 2 MAiD recipients come from highly marginalized categories than Track 1 MAiD recipients, or the general population.
People in the lowest “material resource” category (i.e. poverty) represent 20 per cent of the general population, but they make up 28.4 per cent of Track 2 MAiD recipients, compared to 21.5 per cent of Track 1 recipients.
People in the lowest 20 per cent of the population with the worst housing instability made up 48.3 per cent of Track 2 MAiD recipients, compared to 34.3 per cent of Track 1 recipients. Track 2 recipients were also far more likely to come from the most vulnerable 20 per cent of the population in terms of age and labour force participation, with 56.9 per cent of Track 2 MAiD recipients coming from this category compared to 41.8 per cent of Track 1 MAiD recipients.
Gender gaps of more women than men receiving Track 2 MAiD are also emerging.
This includes a man with a history of suicidal ideation and untreated addictions whose psychiatrist asked during a session whether he was aware of MAiD. After being approved, he was “personally transported (by the MAiD provider) in their vehicle to an external location for the provision of MAiD”.
Denialism
Policy mistakes can occur, but these marginalized deaths result from wilful avoidance and denial of evidence-based cautions. I have previously written of the lack of safeguards and absence of evidence informing MAiD expansion.
Beyond the evidence in the coroner’s report, there are clear signs of this denial:
The federally appointed chair of the MAiD expansion panel charged with recommending safeguards for psychiatric euthanasia recommended no additional legislative safeguards and said the gender gap of twice as many women as men being euthanized for mental illness in Europe “doesn’t concern” her, testifying:
“It doesn’t concern me, in the sense that I don’t think anybody knows what it means. We can make all sorts of hypotheses about what it might mean, but nobody really knows. What I would caution you about is drawing inferences, like the one in your question with respect to male-to-female suicide ratios, because we don’t know what it means.” (It should be noted that there is longstanding evidence of a 2:1 gender gap of more women than men attempting suicide when mentally ill, most of whom do not die by suicide and do not try again.)
Groups presenting as experts continue providing false reassurances that their CAMAP (Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers) training guidelines filter out suicidality, despite criticisms their guidelines lack any evidence-based factors distinguishing motivations for expanded MAiD requests from traditional suicide
These repeated refusals to have our MAiD expansion be informed by evidence have led to a MAiD house of cards wilfully blind to suicide risks.
Denialism of all sorts is dangerous. Canada’s expanded MAiD policies have fallen prey to a new form of it: suicide denialism. What else can it be called when expansion ideologues repeatedly ignore and deny the fact that some Canadians are getting Track 2 MAiD fuelled not by illness suffering, but by known suicide risk factors of social deprivation?
‘Social murder’
People in the lowest ‘material resource’ category represent 20 per cent of the general population, but they make up 28.4 per cent of Track 2 MAiD recipients, compared to 21.5 per cent of Track 1 recipients. (Shutterstock)
The remarkable blind spot of this privileged perspective is obvious: none of the marginalized receiving Track 2 MAiD would have died if they had not gotten MAiD; even their own MAiD assessors predicted they would have over another decade of life to live (otherwise they would have been Track 1).
Arguing that a higher proportion of marginalized people dying from Track 2 MAiD is acceptable because they die at similar rates anyway is disturbing and revealing. Most people in Canada are aware of the issue of Indigenous youth disenfranchisement and suicide. Consider the natural implications of this dangerous argument. Death rates for First Nations youth under 20 are three to five times higher than youth death rates for non-Indigenous populations, driven by suicide and unintentional injuries. Does MAiD expansionist logic suggest that it would be acceptable to provide high levels of Track 2 MAiD to First Nations 19-year-olds since their social disenfranchisement puts them at higher risk of death anyway?
Claiming that state-facilitated death fuelled by social deprivation is acceptable since more marginalized people die from social deprivation and structural inequities anyway is indistinguishable from eugenics.
During COVID-19, some suggested our social policies linked to marginalized deaths were enabling “social murder,” a term coined by Friedrich Engels in the 19th century describing working conditions causing premature deaths of English workers. How should we describe Canadian policy providing state facilitated deaths to non-dying marginalized individuals fuelled by social suffering?
I previously wrote about how our MAiD expansion is setting the stage for a future prime minister issuing a national apology. Beyond apologies, tobacco companies recently were held accountable for a $32.5 billion settlement resulting from claims they “knew their product was causing cancer and failed to warn consumers adequately.”
No medication comes to market without evidence of safety, yet policymakers have ignored known evidence and have instead expanded MAiD while failing to warn Canadians adequately of the risks of premature death posed by Track 2 MAiD to those suffering from social marginalization.
Social murder is a jarring term. If we don’t want to be charged with providing it, it’s time policymakers honestly acknowledged the suffering for which some marginalized Canadians are receiving state sponsored MAiD, rather than taking refuge behind “small numbers” justifications and suicide denial.
Karandeep Sonu Gaind is affiliated with the Ontario District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association (president).
Investing in film and TV productions is a risky venture. Even the best directors and producers are just a flop away from ruining their careers.
So if a company owns the intellectual property to a popular material, or if that material enters the public domain, these companies – risk-averse entities, to be sure – will hastily retread their tyres for another lap of the track. This is partly why you’ll see well-worn stories from your childhood told over and over onscreen, even now.
But if the new version is too similar to the old, people will cynically roll their eyes. Enter Disney, which has perfected the strategy over the past few decades of retelling the same stories from different characters’ perspectives – a gambit that seems to strike people as inherently interesting.
Maleficent, for example, is Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the evil queen. Although this kind of fairytale revisionism goes back to Angela Carter’s best-selling feminist fiction, Disney has, more than any other corporation, become an expert at co-opting social movements in pursuit of profits.
The latest revisionist work set to be distributed by Disney+ was Nautilus. The series filters the story of Jules Verne’s inimitable maritime adventure novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea through the lens of Captain Nemo, framed as a prequel to the original.
The fact that Disney+ dropped Nautilus before its release (it has been picked up by Prime in the UK and Ireland and Stan in Australia) immediately stoked my interest. This is particularly notable because, with a budget of A$300 million, it’s the most expensive series ever made in Australia (filmed mainly on the Gold Coast).
Alas, after restlessly sitting through all ten episodes, I understand Disney’s decision.
Diluting a powerful message
Where Verne’s novel (and to a lesser extent, the 1954 Disney live action film) effortlessly creates an authentic world, which is absolutely critical to the effectiveness of any fantasy work, Nautilus seems painfully contrived from its opening.
It’s the kind of show where all the British soldiers and East India Company men speak in toffee accents and spout horrifically ruthless commands between sips of tea.
The show is a $300 million wreck. Stan
The Nautilus’ crew is made up of a miscellany of virtuous victims of the company (and thus of the British empire): a wealthy British woman being forced into an arranged marriage, an old Chinese worker, a Māori cook, a trader from Zanzibar and ex‑slave Indians.
The characters frequently pontificate about the value of freedom, the evils of slavery and the glory of the environment. In one particularly ludicrous scene early on, Nemo jumps onto a whale’s back to remove a harpoon.
In the novel, Nemo’s romantic alienation perfectly complements his maniacal drive, interspersed with Verne’s faux-scientific descriptions of the submarine, giant squid and other objects.
Similarly, here, Nemo is presented as being far from mercenary; hounded to the north seas by the British, he’s seeking treasure in order to bring the company down. But lead Shazad Latif’s delivery is monotonous and strained, as though even he doesn’t buy it.
British actor Shazad Latif’s performance as Captain Nemo is far from convincing. Stan
The idea that this is some kind of “fresh” (read “politically correct”) re‑imagining of the world of the novel is strange in the first place, given the original story (although narrated by Professor Aronnax) is already closely anchored to Nemo’s point of view.
Verne clearly presents Nemo as a kind of eco-warrior responding to the brutalities of colonialism. If anything, the original message is diluted in this adaptation as it implies Nemo’s quest is mainly personal – that he simply wants vengeance for what the company did to his family – rather than political.
At the same time, I sense the creators are going for some kind of psychological realism by painfully spelling out that Nemo had bad things done to him by the British. But this didacticism causes the spirit of adventure to suffer, so we’re left with something both silly and not particularly exciting.
The British soldiers and company men speak in ridiculous accents. Stan
A big fish isn’t always a good fish
The show’s production design and cinematography (some of the most important components in this kind of adventure epic) seem flat, too. The sets, though colourful, look decidedly artificial. The synthesis of CGI elements with filmed footage is far from smooth.
And the odd colour grade makes the characters’ skin look hyper-artificial. This was surely the intention, but why? It is distracting in every closeup.
Not to single out any particular department, every aspect of the production seems dialled in, including the score, which sounds like something hastily composed using AI software.
Of course, one could talk about the production’s benefits to the Australian industry, but this seems like a hapless argument if the work is no good. How many low-budget films could have been made with $300 million? 100? 150? Those would have also invested money in the industry, while developing local talent.
The impact of a big-budget production on local industries isn’t clear when the production in question isn’t very compelling. Stan
Not camp enough, yet not careful enough
If it were camper, Nautilus could have acquired the cult value of a great cinematic fiasco such as Renny Harlin’s 1995 film Cutthroat Island. All the actors seem to be trying hard, and the writers clearly laboured away at the story.
Perhaps this is the problem. Like so many new commercial works, Nautilus tries so hard to please everyone it ends up pleasing no one. The wider the appeal, the greater the risk mitigation, apparently.
But given it actually tries to embed the story in a sense of history, its sins seem greater than mere televisual boredom for the viewer. The series presents a monolithic and simplistic image of the way colonialism and capitalism are intertwined.
At best, this is naïve – one could argue, “who cares, it’s just a silly fantasy series”. At worst, however, it is actively destructive of historical consciousness. And that’s not smooth sailing.
Ari Mattes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
New genome editing technologies mean that the genetic modification of embryos is a scientific possibility, and laws governing its practice require extensive public consultation.(Shutterstock)
A little-noticed change to South Africa’s national health research guidelines, published in May of this year, has put the country on an ethical precipice. The newly added language appears to position the country as the first to explicitly permit the use of genome editing to create genetically modified children.
Heritable human genome editing has long been hotly contested, in large part because of its societal and eugenic implications. As experts on the global policy landscape who have observed the high stakes and ongoing controversies over this technology — one from an academic standpoint (Françoise Baylis) and one from public interest advocacy (Katie Hasson) — we find it surprising that South Africa plans to facilitate this type of research.
The fate of these three children, and whether they have experienced any negative long-term consequences from the embryonic genome editing, remains a closely guarded secret.
Controversial research
Considerable criticism followed the original birth announcement. Some argued that genetically modifying embryos to alter the traits of future children and generations should never be done.
Genetically modifying embryos to alter the traits of future children and generations has immense societal impacts. (Shutterstock)
Many pointed out that the rationale in this case was medically unconvincing – and indeed that safe reproductive procedures to avoid transmitting genetic diseases are already in widespread use, belying the justification typically given for heritable human genome editing. Others condemned his secretive approach, as well as the absence of any robust public consultation, considered a prerequisite for embarking on such a socially consequential path.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2018 revelation, the organizing committee of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing joined the global uproar with a statement condemning this research.
At the same time, however, the committee called for a “responsible translational pathway” toward clinical research. Safety thresholds and “additional criteria” would have to be met, including: “independent oversight, a compelling medical need, an absence of reasonable alternatives, a plan for long-term follow-up, and attention to societal effects.”
Notably, the additional criteria no longer included the earlier standard of “broad societal consensus.”
Nobel laureate David Baltimore, chair of the organizing committee for the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, talks about the importance of public global dialogue on gene editing.
New criteria
Now, it appears that South Africa has amended its Ethics in Health Research Guidelines to explicitly envisage research that would result in the birth of gene-edited babies.
Section 4.3.2 of the guidelines on “Heritable Human Genome Editing” includes a few brief and rather vague paragraphs enumerating the following criteria: (a) scientific and medical justification; (b) transparency and informed consent; (c) stringent ethical oversight; (d) ongoing ethical evaluation and adaptation; (e) safety and efficacy; (f) long-term monitoring; and (g) legal compliance.
While these criteria seem to be in line with those laid out in the 2018 summit statement, they are far less stringent than the frameworks put forth in subsequent reports. This includes, for example, the World Health Organization’s report Human Genome Editing: Framework for Governance (co-authored by Françoise Baylis).
Alignment with the law
Further, there is a significant problem with the seemingly permissive stance on heritable human genome editing entrenched in these research guidelines. The guidelines clearly require the research to comply with all laws governing heritable human genome research. Yet, the law and the research guidelines in South Africa are not aligned, which entails a significant inhibition on any possible research.
This is because of a stipulation in section 57(1) of the South African National Health Act 2004 on the “Prohibition of reproductive cloning of human beings.” This stipulates that a “person may not manipulate any genetic material, including genetic material of human gametes, zygotes, or embryos… for the purpose of the reproductive cloning of a human being.”
When this act came into force in 2004, it was not yet possible to genetically modify human embryos and so it’s not surprising there’s no specific reference to this technology. Yet the statutory language is clearly wide enough to encompass it. The objection to the manipulation of human genetic material is therefore clear, and imports a prohibition on heritable human genome editing.
Ethical concerns
The question that concerns us is: why are South Africa’s ethical guidelines on research apparently pushing the envelope with heritable human genome editing?
In 2020, we published alongside our colleagues a global review of policies on research involving heritable human genome editing. At the time, we identified policy documents — legislation, regulations, guidelines, codes and international treaties — prohibiting heritable genome editing in more than 70 countries. We found no policy documents that explicitly permitted heritable human genome editing.
It’s easy to understand why some of South Africa’s ethicists might be disposed to clear the way for somatic human genome editing research. Recently, an effective treatment for sickle cell disease has been developed using genome editing technology. Many children die of this disease before the age of five and somatic genome editing — which does not involve the genetic modification of embryos — promises a cure.
Somatic genome editing may provide a cure for sickle cell disease. (Shutterstock)
Implications on future research
But that’s not what this is about. So, what is the interest in forging a path for research on heritable human genome editing, which involves the genetic modification of embryos and has implications for subsequent generations? And why the seemingly quiet modification of the guidelines?
How many people in South Africa are aware that they’ve just become the only country in the world with research guidelines that envisage accommodating a highly contested technology? Has careful attention been given to the myriad potential harms associated with this use of CRISPR technology, including harms to women, prospective parents, children, society and the gene pool?
Is it plausible that scientists from other countries, who are interested in this area of research, are patiently waiting in the wings to see whether the law in South Africa prohibiting the manipulation of human genetic material will be an insufficient impediment to creating genetically modified children? Should the research guidelines be amended to accord with the 2004 statutory prohibition?
Or if, instead, the law is brought into line with the guidelines, would the result be a wave of scientific tourism with labs moving to South Africa to take advantage of permissive research guidelines and laws?
We hope the questions we ask are alarmist, as now is the time to ask and answer these questions.
Katie Hasson, Associate Director at the Center for Genetics and Society, co-authored this article.
Françoise Baylis is affiliated with the International Science Council, the UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) and the Royal Society of Canada.
If you’re found guilty of a crime, it’s a basic principle of Australian law that you have a right to appeal.
But having a right and being able to exercise it are two different things, especially when it comes to fresh evidence casting doubt on your conviction.
In Australia, your ability to challenge a conviction with fresh evidence depends on where you live, because each state and territory has different rules. Too often, it also depends on the resources someone can access, including money and knowledge of the legal system.
Everyone should have the same opportunities to clear their name, so how can we make accessing appeals more equitable?
State by state
Direct pathways to appeal differ between the states and territories.
In all postcodes, it’s difficult to get appeal courts to consider fresh evidence in the first instance.
South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, Queensland and the ACT allow multiple appeal applications if “fresh and compelling” evidence emerges after your first appeal. Since 2013, six convictions have been quashed this way, including Henry Keogh’s in SA after the state coroner recanted trial evidence.
Tasmania and WA allow subsequent appeals only for serious offences, while SA has no such restriction.
New South Wales and the Northern Territory don’t allow subsequent appeals, so people there have less direct access to the courts if wrongly convicted.
There are, however, indirect ways people can seek an appeal with fresh evidence.
In all states, you can ask the government to refer your case back to an appeal court. For example, the Victorian Attorney-General referred Faruk Orman’s case after evidence emerged about his lawyer’s misconduct. Referral decisions are made in secret and not reviewable.
In the ACT, you can ask the Supreme Court for a judicial inquiry into your conviction. If you get an inquiry, the inquiry officer can refer your case back to the appeal court if they find reasonable doubt. This led to David Eastman’s conviction being quashed.
These inquiries are only available if the issue can’t be properly addressed in an appeal, for example because the time for filing an appeal has lapsed. But, the ACT introduced subsequent appeals in 2024 which have no time limit, so it is unclear whether this pathway is still usable.
You can also ask the NSW Supreme Court for an inquiry or direct referral of your case back to the appeal court. This path is available for all offences and sentences and decisions are public. Since 2014, 59 conviction review applications to the NSW Supreme Court have resulted in one inquiry order and six referrals, with three successful appeals.
The inquiry (currently underway) involves the Croatian Six, convicted in 1981 for conspiracy to bomb sites in Sydney. After many failed attempts, they finally secured an inquiry with fresh evidence casting doubt on police and witnesses’ trial evidence.
These different pathways across the country create an uneven playing field, where some wrongfully convicted people may have more opportunities to clear their name than others.
The right resources
Access to appeals doesn’t just depend on location. It’s also about resources.
To succeed in getting an appeal via any of the above pathways, you need the power to obtain documents and the resources to gather other evidence. You also need the ability to prepare a strong case. That’s before you even get to court.
Judicial inquiries have investigatory powers and resources, but are expensive. For example, the Eastman inquiry cost the ACT government $12 million.
These commissions have the power to compel evidence and resources to investigate claims of wrongful conviction at no cost to applicants. They also have the power to refer cases back to the courts. While these commissions don’t refer many cases overall, about 70% of of cases referred in the UK are successful on appeal.
But, even for commissions, a strong initial application is important. In the UK, the Cardiff University Innocence Project engages law students to investigate claims of innocence and prepare applications for claims with merit.
Canada and the United States don’t have criminal case review commissions. Innocence Projects there review claims of innocence and help prepare applications for government or court review.
This is similar to the work of the few innocence clinics in Australia, such as those at RMIT and Griffith universities.
Innocence initiatives around the world work with limited investigatory resources and powers compared with those of a review commission. In the absence of a such a commission in Australia, second appeals are useful, but they are expensive to run, hard to access and don’t address the resource issue.
The free NSW Supreme Court pathway doesn’t address the resource issue either. But it can lead to an inquiry or referral, is open and accountable, and comes with guiding criteria and discretion to make short shrift of baseless applications.
My research suggests free pathways to appeal are important justice mechanisms for the wrongly convicted, but they work best when applicants have legal help to prepare a clear and concise application. Involving law students to help edit applications could make it easier for decision-makers to review cases and help applicants without lawyers get a fairer chance to be heard.
Kylie Lingard 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.
In the lead up to the inauguration of President Prabowo Subianto last Sunday, Indonesia established five “Vulnerable Area Buffer Infantry Battalions” in key regions across West Papua — a move described by Indonesian Army Chief-of-Staff Maruli Simanjuntak as a “strategic initiative” by the new leader.
The battalions are based in the Keerom, Sarmi, Boven Digoel, Merauke and Sorong regencies, and their aim is to “enhance security” in Papua, and also to strengthen Indonesia’s military presence in response to long-standing unrest and conflict, partly related to independence movements and local resistance.
According to Armed Forces chief General Agus Subiyanto, “the main goal of the new battalions is to assist the government in accelerating development and improving the prosperity of the Papuan people”.
However, this raises concerns about further militarisation and repression of a region already plagued by long-running violence and human rights abuses in the context of the movement for a free and independent West Papua.
Thousands of Indonesian soldiers have been stationed in areas impacted by violence, including Star Mountain, Nduga, Yahukimo, Maybrat, Intan Jaya, Puncak and Puncak Jaya.
As a result, the situation in West Papua is becoming increasingly difficult for indigenous people.
Extrajudicial killings in Papua go unreported or are only vaguely known about internationally. Those who are aware of these either disregard them or accept them as an “unavoidable consequence” of civil unrest in what Indonesia refers to as its most eastern provinces — the “troubled regions”.
Why do the United Nations, Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the international community stay silent?
While the Indonesian government frames this move as a strategy to enhance security and promote development, it risks exacerbating long-standing tensions in a region with deep-seated conflicts over autonomy and independence and the impacts of extractive industries and agribusiness on West Papuan people and their environment.
Exploitative land theft The Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice, in collaboration with various international and Indonesian human and environmental rights organisations, presented testimony at the public hearings of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) at Queen Mary University of London, in June.
The tribunal heard testimonies relating to a range of violations by Indonesia. A key issue, highlighted was the theft of indigenous Papuan land by the Indonesian government and foreign corporations in connection to extractive industries such as mining, logging and palm oil plantations.
The appropriation of traditional lands without the consent of the Papuan people violates their right to land and self-determination, leading to environmental degradation, loss of livelihood, and displacement of Indigenous communities.
The tribunal’s judgment underscores how the influx of non-Papuan settlers and the Indonesian government’s policies have led to the marginalisation of Papuan culture and identity. The demographic shift due to transmigration programmes has significantly reduced the proportion of Indigenous Papuans in their own land.
Moreover, a rise in militarisation in West Papua has often led to heightened repression, with potential human rights violations, forced displacement and further marginalisation of the indigenous communities.
The decision to station additional military forces in West Papua, especially in conflict-prone areas like Nduga, Yahukimo and Intan Jaya, reflects a continuation of Indonesia’s militarised approach to governance in the region.
Indonesian security forces . . . “the main goal of the new battalions is to assist the government in accelerating development and improving the prosperity of the Papuan people,” says Armed Forces chief General Agus Subiyanto. Image: Antara
Security pact The Indonesia-Papua New Guinea Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) was signed by the two countries in 2010 but only came into effect this year after the PNG Parliament ratified it in late February.
Indonesia ratified the pact in 2012.
As reported by Asia Pacific Report, PNG’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko and Indonesia’s ambassador to PNG, Andriana Supandy, said the DCA enabled an enhancement of military operations between the two countries, with a specific focus on strengthening patrols along the PNG-West Papua border.
This will have a significant impact on civilian communities in the areas of conflict and along the border. Indigenous people in particular, are facing the threat of military takeovers of their lands and traditional border lines.
Under the DCA, the joint militaries plan to employ technology, including military drones, to monitor and manage local residents’ every move along the border.
Human rights Prabowo, Defence Minister prior to being elected President, has a controversial track record on human rights — especially in the 1990s, during Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor.
His involvement in military operations in West Papua adds to fears that the new battalions may be used for oppressive measures, including crackdowns on dissent and pro-independence movements.
As indigenous communities continue to be marginalised, their calls for self-determination and independence may grow louder, risking further conflict in the region.
Without substantial changes in the Indonesian government’s approach to West Papua, including addressing human rights abuses and engaging in meaningful dialogue with indigenous leaders, the future of West Papuans remains uncertain and fraught with challenges.
With ongoing military operations often accused of targeting indigenous populations, the likelihood of further human rights violations, such as extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, and forced displacement, remains high.
Displacement Military operations in West Papua frequently result in the displacement of indigenous Papuans, as they flee conflict zones.
The presence of more battalions could drive more communities from their homes, deepening the humanitarian crisis in the region. Indigenous peoples, who rely on their land for survival, face disruption of their traditional livelihoods and rising poverty.
The Indonesian government launched the Damai Cartenz military operation on April 5, 2018, and it is still in place in the conflict zones of Yahukimo, Pegunungan Bintang, Nduga and Intan Jaya.
Since then, according to a September 24 Human Rights Monitor update, more than 79,867 West Papuans remain internally displaced.
The displacement, killings, shootings, abuses, tortures and deaths are merely the tip of the iceberg of what truly occurs within the tightly-controlled military operational zones across West Papua, according to Benny Wenda, a UK-based leader of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP).
The international community, particularly the United Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum have been criticised for remaining largely silent on the matter. Responding to the August 31 PIF communique reaffirming its 2019 call for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visit to West Papua, Wenda said:
“[N]ow is the time for Indonesia to finally let the world see what is happening in our land. They cannot hide their dirty secret any longer.”
Increased global attention and intervention is crucial in addressing the humanitarian crisis, preventing further escalations and supporting the rights and well-being of the West Papuans.
Without meaningful dialogue, the long-term consequences for the indigenous population may be severe, risking further violence and unrest in the region.
As Prabowo was sworn in, Wenda restated the ULMWP’s demand for an internationally-mediated referendum on independence, saying: “The continued violation of our self-determination is the root cause of the West Papua conflict.”
Ali Mirin is a West Papuan academic from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands bordering the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and Green Left in Australia.
Travis Scott’s Melbourne concert on October 22 lived up to his reputation for chaotic performances. Fans, eager for a high-energy show, were met with unruly scenes both inside and outside the venue.
Reports described concertgoers clashing, throwing plastic bottles and dismantling barricades.
These occurrences, at times, were reminiscent of the dangerous atmosphere at Scott’s past concerts, including the fatal 2021 crowd crush at Astroworld Festival in Houston.
Modern crowd psychology shows us collective behaviour is shaped by perceived group norms, and these norms can either foster safety or encourage chaos. This performance – contrasted with other recent big concerts in Australia – highlights the urgent need to rethink the roles of performers in crowd management.
Scott’s performances are characterised by his desire to have his energy reciprocated by the audience, which creates an environment where defiance is normalised.
Statements such as “forget security, this is for y’all” push fans toward risky behaviours, making these concerts highly charged and, at times, uncontrollable.
While this may foster excitement and adrenaline, it also sets the stage for unsafe crowd dynamics.
The 2021 Astroworld tragedy, in which ten people died and thousands were injured in a crowd surge, should have served as a wake-up call about the elevated risks at Scott’s performances.
Despite signs of crowd distress, Scott continued performing for nearly 40 minutes after Houston officials started responding to the mass casualty event. Despite visible signs of crowd distress, the show continued.
More than 300 injury lawsuits were settled between festivalgoers and Scott and concert promoter Live Nation. Plaintiffs argued the concert’s organisers failed to act swiftly to prevent the disaster once the crowd surge became life-threatening.
Though the Melbourne concert didn’t reach the same tragic levels, the chaotic scenes were reminders of the ongoing risks at Scott’s performances.
Incidents like the one in Melbourne – with security struggles, fan injuries and disorder – should serve as near-miss warnings. The same volatile energy persists in Travis’ concerts and could amount to risky behaviour, luckily not of catastrophic consequences in this case.
Swift’s recent Australian shows, which hosted record-breaking attendance numbers, ran smoothly.
The difference in audience behaviour isn’t just about the genre of music and the energy and culture that comes with it. It’s also about how the artist interacts with the crowd. Swift creates an atmosphere of excitement while maintaining a sense of order, often engaging the audience in a way that fosters respect for boundaries and safety.
Swift has a strong track record of prioritising audience safety and wellbeing during her concerts.
In many shows, she stopped to address issues such as heat exhaustion or crowd distress, by encouraging fans to stay hydrated and to look out for each other.
Crowd psychology emphasises how individuals in large gatherings adjust behaviour based on the perceived norms of the group.
The Social Identity Theory of crowds explains that people align their behaviour with the crowd’s collective identity.
A shared social identity within a crowd increases the likelihood of people adopting collective norms – even if those norms encourage risk-taking. Perceived group norms can override personal caution in favour of behaviour that is seen as accepted or approved by the group.
In the case of music performers, artists can guide actions that align with the group’s sense of “us”. This can ultimately lead to shifts in behaviour towards safety or risk-taking.
What now?
The contrasting experiences between Scott’s and Swift’s concerts offers a crucial lesson in crowd management: the role of leadership and the norms set by performers.
We need to rethink the roles of performers in crowd management. Artists such as Scott wield immense influence over crowd dynamics, and this power should be harnessed more consciously.
The chaotic, high-energy nature of Scott’s performances is part of his identity. Fans attend his shows expecting that intensity.
The key difference lies in how the artist can create a high-energy environment without compromising fan safety. Encouraging fans to disregard security is an example of where defiance can stretch too far. The line between excitement and chaos becomes blurred. The messaging needs to shift to maintaining intensity but within boundaries that safeguard the audience.
Awareness around how crowd behaviour is influenced by artists and the group norms that they set can help walk the line between excitement and chaos.
Milad Haghani 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.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka says he will take a back seat in the upcoming Pacific leaders’ fact-finding mission to New Caledonia, which was postponed from earlier in the year.
Leaders from the Cook Islands, Tonga, and Solomon Islands make up a group called the Pacific Islands Forum troika, comprising past, present and future hosts of the annual PIF leaders’ meeting.
The call for a PIF fact-finding mission was made while Fiji was still part of the troika.
Rabuka spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron the week before the mission was originally scheduled to take place.
When asked by RNZ Pacific why the trip had been postponed, Rabuka replied: “I do not know. I’m just the troika-plus.”
Moments after touching down in Samoa, Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka was bestowed the chiefly title, Tagaloa in Samoa’s Leauva’a village. #CHOGM2024pic.twitter.com/zzrNqgc1u0
Rabuka, who is currently in Apia for the 27th Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), was bestowed with a Samoan matai title of Tagaloa by the village of Leauva’a yesterday.
He confirmed to RNZ Pacific that he would be in Nouméa on Sunday.
“We will be talking about the future of negotiations and the relationship between New Caledonia and the people and France,” he said.
PIF Secretary-General Baron Waqa told RNZ Pacific that supporting peace and harmony in New Caledonia was top of the agenda for the leaders’ mission.
Waqa, who is also attending CHOGM, said an advance team was in Nouméa making preparations for the visit.
Violence and destruction has been ongoing in New Caledonia for much of the past five months in protest over French plans for the territory.
The death toll stands at 13.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
If Donald Trump wins the US presidency on November 5, his victory will have profound implications for other countries on many fronts. Not least of them will be climate change policy.
Perhaps the uncertainty now hanging over US politics was on the mind of Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who shilly-shallied this week over when he’ll announce Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction target under the Paris climate agreement.
Bowen refused to be pinned down at the Australian Financial Review’s energy and climate summit on whether the target would be public before next year’s election. Neither his office nor that of the prime minister would be more specific later.
Australia, like other countries, is required under the Paris agreement to put forward its target in February. But, also like other countries, Australia is focused on what’s happening in the US.
Trump wants to take the US out of the Paris agreement for the second time. The first exit took effect immediately after his 2020 defeat and incoming President Joe Biden was able to reverse it at once. This time, there’d be no such quick turnaround.
The Biden administration has been strongly committed on climate issues. If the US exited, the Paris agreement would likely be transformed.
There may be other reasons why Bowen is being cagey about the 2035 target. Climate change and energy will be harder issues for Labor in this election, as it struggles with the realities of the transition, than in the 2022 one.
In the run-up to that election, a desperate Scott Morrison pulled out all stops to win support within the Coalition to sign up to the 2050 net-zero emissions target.
Labor was on the front foot, with a policy for a 43% reduction in emissions (on 2005 levels) by 2030, underpinned by a target of 82% renewable electricity by then. The election promise for consumers was a $275 cut in household power bills by 2025.
Crafting a policy is often easier than implementing it. The journey to a clean energy economy is arduous.
The $275 promise was quickly seen as unrealisable. The government has had to provide rebates to keep prices in check. The rollout of renewables is complicated by local resistance to some projects, including wind farms and transmission lines. At present, more than 40% of electricity comes from renewables.
The cost-of-living crisis has increasingly dominated everything. Climate change remains a significant issue with people, but over time it tends to go up and down their scale of concerns, depending on changing circumstances.
The Ipsos Climate Change Report, done annually, found in 2024 “strong notional support for the energy transition”, but low understanding of what progress had been made.
Concerns about the negative impacts of the transition on cost of living and energy reliability have increased, particularly in the current high inflation environment. The perceived economic benefits of the transition are less clear, with many unsure about the impact on jobs and the broader economy.
The emphasis on cost of living is influencing priorities for the energy transition, with Australians wanting to see energy prices and reliability prioritised. There is a growing sentiment that Australia should only take action if other countries are also contributing fairly to climate change efforts.
Of course a summer of bad bushfires can change people’s priorities suddenly. Barring that, Labor is looking at a 2025 election in which it will be more on the defensive than the offensive on climate and energy issues.
The opposition has already acted to sharpen the difference with Labor over the medium term targets. Peter Dutton will have no 2035 target before the election, and has questioned the 2030 target to which Australia is signed up, although he says a Coalition government would not leave the Paris agreement. He is also running hard on his controversial policy for nuclear energy.
While Bowen is not clarifying whether he’ll announce the government’s target ahead of the election, it would be awkward for Australia not to meet the February deadline.
There would not be a penalty, but it would be a bad look, especially given we are vying with Turkey to host, together with Pacific countries, COP31 in 2026. One unknown, incidentally, is whether a Coalition government would continue this bid, which the opposition has describes as a “vanity project”.
If the government does announce the 2035 target before the election, the big question is how ambitious it will make it.
Bowen will receive advice on this from the Climate Change Authority, to which the government has appointed, as head, former New South Wales Liberal Treasurer Matt Kean.
A 2035 target in the range of 65-75% […] could be achievable and sustainable if additional action is taken by governments, business, investors and households […]. However, attempting to go much faster could risk significant levels of economic and social disruption and put progress at risk.
A bold target would make the government more vulnerable, just when Labor would want the attention on the Coalition’s problematic nuclear policy. On the other hand, if the target were modest, that would be exploited by the Greens.
Next month, Bowen will attend COP29 in Azerbaijan, where the central issue will be a financial goal, replacing the 2015 goal, for developed and major economies to help fund developing countries’ emission reduction efforts. Bowen, with Egyptian Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad, is leading the consultations on this, and so has a significant role at the conference.
At the COP meeting, Bowen will get a better idea of where other countries are on their expected 2035 targets. He indicated this week he has already started taking soundings. “Obviously […] of course you think about international context.”
By the time of COP, which runs November 11-22, America will have chosen its next president. The COP meeting will either be business-as-usual, looking to an incoming Kamala Harris presidency, or trying to anticipate the implications of a Trump administration that could be a major disruptor of international climate policy.
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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Frank Ledwidge, Senior Lecturer in Military Strategy and Law, University of Portsmouth
A friend of mine, usually an intensely optimistic pro-Ukraine analyst, returned from Ukraine last week and told me: “It’s like the German Army in January 1945.” The Ukrainians are being driven back on all fronts – including in the Kursk province of Russia, which they had opened with much hope and fanfare in August. More importantly, they are running out of soldiers.
For most of 2024, Ukraine has been losing ground. This week, the town of Selidove in the western Donetsk region is being surrounded and, like Vuhledar earlier this month, is likely to fall in the next week or so – the only variable being how many Ukrainians will be lost in the process. Over the winter, the terrible prospect of a major battle to hold the strategically significant industrial town of Pokrovsk beckons.
Ukrainian forces are steadily losing ground close to the strategically vital town of Pokrovsk, western Donetsk region. Institute for the Study of War
Ultimately, this is not a war of territory but of attrition. The only resource that counts is soldiers – and here the calculus for Ukraine is not positive.
Ukraine claims to have “liquidated” nearly 700,000 Russian soldiers – with more than 120,000 killed and upwards of 500,000 injured. Its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, admitted in February this year to 31,000 Ukrainian fatalities, with no figure given for injured.
A dreadful debate is taking place in Ukraine. The question revolves around whether to mobilise – and risk serious casualties to – the 18-25 age group. Due to economic pressures in the early 2000s, Ukraine suffered a major drop in its birth rate, leaving relatively few people now aged between 15 and 25. Mobilisation and serious attrition of this group may be something Ukraine simply can’t afford, given the already serious demographic crisis the country faces.
History knows of no example where taking on Russia in an attritional contest has proved successful. Let’s be clear: this means there is a real possibility of defeat – there is no sugar-coating this.
Zelensky’s maximalist war aims of restoring Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, along with other unlikely conditions – which were unchallenged and encouraged by a confused but self-aggrandising west – will not be achieved, and the west’s leaders are partly to blame. Ill-advised wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East left western armed forces hollow, poorly armed, and entirely unprepared for a serious and prolonged conflict, with ammunition stocks likely to last weeks at best.
Only the US has significant stocks of weaponry in the form of thousands of armoured vehicles, tanks and artillery pieces in reserve – and it is unlikely to change its policy of drip-feeding weapons to Ukraine now. Even if such a decision is made, the lead-time for delivery will be years, not months.
In a confidential briefing I attended recently given by western defence officials, the atmosphere was downbeat. The situation is “perilous” and “as bad as it has ever been” for Ukraine. Western powers cannot afford another strategic disaster like Afghanistan which, in the words of Ernest Hemingway (aptly quoted by the strategist Lawrence Freedman), happened “gradually, then suddenly”.
There will be no decisive breakthrough by Russia’s army when they take this town or that (say, Pokrovsk). They haven’t the capability to do it. So, there won’t be a collapse – no “Kyiv as Kabul” moment.
However, there are limits to the losses Ukraine can take. We do not know where that limit lies, but we’ll know when it happens. Crucially, there will be no victory for Ukraine. Unforgivably, there is not, and never has been, a western strategy except to bleed Russia as long as possible.
The problem, as so often before, is that the west has not defined what it considers a success. The cost, meanwhile, is becoming all-too clear.
To have clearly defined its goals and limits would have constituted the beginnings of a strategy – and the west isn’t good at that. Nato’s leaders now need to move quickly beyond meaningless rhetoric or anything that smacks of “as long as it takes”. We saw where that led in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
We need a realistic answer to what something like a “win”, or at least an acceptable settlement, now looks like – as well as the extent to which it is achievable, and whether the west is really going to pursue it. And then for western leaders to act accordingly.
A starting point could be accepting that Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk are lost – something an increasing number of Ukrainians are beginning to say openly. Then we need to start planning seriously for a post-war Ukraine that will need the west’s suppport more than ever.
Russia cannot possibly take all, or even the bulk of, Ukraine’s territory. Even if it could, it could not possibly hold it. It is amply clear there will be a compromise settlement.
So, it is time for Nato – and the US in particular – to articulate a viable end to this nightmarish ordeal, and to develop a pragmatic strategy to deal with Russia in the coming decade. More importantly, the west must plan how to support a heroic, shattered – but still independent – Ukraine.
Frank Ledwidge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The mirror universe, with the big bang at the centre.Neil Turok, CC BY-SA
We live in a golden age for learning about the universe. Our most powerful telescopes have revealed that the cosmos is surprisingly simple on the largest visible scales. Likewise, our most powerful “microscope”, the Large Hadron Collider, has found no deviations from known physics on the tiniest scales.
These findings were not what most theorists expected. Today, the dominant theoretical approach combines string theory, a powerful mathematical framework with no successful physical predictions as yet, and “cosmic inflation” – the idea that, at a very early stage, the universe ballooned wildly in size. In combination, string theory and inflation predict the cosmos to be incredibly complex on tiny scales and completely chaotic on very large scales.
The nature of the expected complexity could take a bewildering variety of forms. On this basis, and despite the absence of observational evidence, many theorists promote the idea of a “multiverse”: an uncontrolled and unpredictable cosmos consisting of many universes, each with totally different physical properties and laws.
This is article is part of our series Cosmology in crisis? which uncovers the greatest problems facing cosmologists today – and discusses the implications of solving them.
So far, the observations indicate exactly the opposite. What should we make of the discrepancy? One possibility is that the apparent simplicity of the universe is merely an accident of the limited range of scales we can probe today, and that when observations and experiments reach small enough or large enough scales, the asserted complexity will be revealed.
The other possibility is that the universe really is very simple and predictable on both the largest and smallest scales. I believe this possibility should be taken far more seriously. For, if it is true, we may be closer than we imagined to understanding the universe’s most basic puzzles. And some of the answers may already be staring us in the face.
The trouble with string theory and inflation
The current orthodoxy is the culmination of decades of effort by thousands of serious theorists. According to string theory, the basic building blocks of the universe are miniscule, vibrating loops and pieces of sub-atomic string. As currently understood, the theory only works if there are more dimensions of space than the three we experience. So, string theorists assume that the reason we don’t detect them is that they are tiny and curled up.
Unfortunately, this makes string theory hard to test, since there are an almost unimaginable number of ways in which the small dimensions can be curled up, with each giving a different set of physical laws in the remaining, large dimensions.
Meanwhile, cosmic inflation is a scenario proposed in the 1980s to explain why the universe is so smooth and flat on the largest scales we can see. The idea is that the infant universe was small and lumpy, but an extreme burst of ultra-rapid expansion blew it up vastly in size, smoothing it out and flattening it to be consistent with what we see today.
Inflation is also popular because it potentially explains why the energy density in the early universe varied slightly from place to place. This is important because the denser regions would have later collapsed under their own gravity, seeding the formation of galaxies.
Over the past three decades, the density variations have been measured more and more accurately both by mapping the cosmic microwave background – the radiation from the big bang – and by mapping the three-dimensional distribution of galaxies.
In most models of inflation, the early extreme burst of expansion which smoothed and flattened the universe also generated long-wavelength gravitational waves –– ripples in the fabric of space-time. Such waves, if observed, would be a “smoking gun” signal confirming that inflation actually took place. However, so far the observations have failed to detect any such signal. Instead, as the experiments have steadily improved, more and more models of inflation have been ruled out.
Furthermore, during inflation, different regions of space can experience very different amounts of expansion. On very large scales, this produces a multiverse of post-inflationary universes, each with different physical properties.
The history of the universe according to the model of cosmic inflation. wikipedia, CC BY-SA
The inflation scenario is based on assumptions about the forms of energy present and the initial conditions. While these assumptions solve some puzzles, they create others. String and inflation theorists hope that somewhere in the vast inflationary multiverse, a region of space and time exists with just the right properties to match the universe we see.
However, even if this is true (and not one such model has yet been found), a fair comparison of theories should include an “Occam factor”, quantifying Occam’s razor, which penalises theories with many parameters and possibilities over simpler and more predictive ones. Ignoring the Occam factor amounts to assuming that there is no alternative to the complex, unpredictive hypothesis – a claim I believe has little foundation.
Over the past several decades, there have been many opportunities for experiments and observations to reveal specific signals of string theory or inflation. But none have been seen. Again and again, the observations turned out simpler and more minimal than anticipated.
It is high time, I believe, to acknowledge and learn from these failures, and to start looking seriously for better alternatives.
A simpler alternative
Recently, my colleague Latham Boyle and I have tried to build simpler and more testable theories that do away with inflation and string theory. Taking our cue from the observations, we have attempted to tackle some of the most profound cosmic puzzles with a bare minimum of theoretical assumptions.
Our first attempts succeeded beyond our most optimistic hopes. Time will tell whether they survive further scrutiny. However, the progress we have already made convinces me that, in all likelihood, there are alternatives to the standard orthodoxy – which has become a straitjacket we need to break out of.
I hope our experience encourages others, especially younger researchers, to explore novel approaches guided strongly by the simplicity of the observations – and to be more sceptical about their elders’ preconceptions. Ultimately, we must learn from the universe and adapt our theories to it rather than vice versa.
Boyle and I started out by tackling one of cosmology’s greatest paradoxes. If we follow the expanding universe backward in time, using Einstein’s theory of gravity and the known laws of physics, space shrinks away to a single point, the “initial singularity”.
In trying to make sense of this infinitely dense, hot beginning, theorists including Nobel laureate Roger Penrose pointed to a deep symmetry in the basic laws governing light and massless particles. This symmetry, called “conformal” symmetry, means that neither light nor massless particles actually experience the shrinking away of space at the big bang.
By exploiting this symmetry, one can follow light and particles all the way back to the beginning. Doing so, Boyle and I found we could describe the initial singularity as a “mirror”: a reflecting boundary in time (with time moving forward on one side, and backward on the other).
Picturing the big bang as a mirror neatly explains many features of the universe which might otherwise appear to conflict with the most basic laws of physics. For example, for every physical process, quantum theory allows a “mirror” process in which space is inverted, time is reversed and every particle is replaced with its anti-particle (a particle similar to it in almost all respects, but with the opposite electric charge).
According to this powerful symmetry, called CPT symmetry, the “mirror” process should occur at precisely the same rate as the original one. One of the most basic puzzles about the universe is that it appears to [violate CPT symmetry] because time always runs forward and there are more particles than anti-particles.
Our mirror hypothesis restores the symmetry of the universe. When you look in a mirror, you see your mirror image behind it: if you are left-handed, the image is right-handed and vice versa. The combination of you and your mirror image are more symmetrical than you are alone.
Likewise, when Boyle and I extrapolated our universe back through the big bang, we found its mirror image, a pre-bang universe in which (relative to us) time runs backward and antiparticles outnumber particles. For this picture to be true, we don’t need the mirror universe to be real in the classical sense (just as your image in a mirror isn’t real). Quantum theory, which rules the microcosmos of atoms and particles, challenges our intuition so at this point the best we can do is think of the mirror universe as a mathematical device which ensures that the initial condition for the universe does not violate CPT symmetry.
Surprisingly, this new picture provided an important clue to the nature of the unknown cosmic substance called dark matter. Neutrinos are very light, ghostly particles which, typically, move at close to the speed of light and which spin as they move along, like tiny tops. If you point the thumb of your left hand in the direction the neutrino moves, then your four fingers indicate the direction in which it spins. The observed, light neutrinos are called “left-handed” neutrinos.
Heavy “right-handed” neutrinos have never been seen directly, but their existence has been inferred from the observed properties of light, left-handed neutrinos. Stable, right-handed neutrinos would be the perfect candidate for dark matter because they don’t couple to any of the known forces except gravity. Before our work, it was unknown how they might have been produced in the hot early universe.
Our mirror hypothesis allowed us to calculate exactly how many would form, and to show they could explain the cosmic dark matter.
A testable prediction followed: if the dark matter consists of stable, right-handed neutrinos, then one of three light neutrinos that we know of must be exactly massless. Remarkably, this prediction is now being tested using observations of the gravitational clustering of matter made by large-scale galaxy surveys.
The entropy of universes
Encouraged by this result, we set about tackling another big puzzle: why is the universe so uniform and spatially flat, not curved, on the largest visible scales? The cosmic inflation scenario was, after all, invented by theorists to solve this problem.
Entropy is a concept which quantifies the number of different ways a physical system can be arranged. For example, if we put some air molecules in a box, the most likely configurations are those which maximise the entropy – with the molecules more or less smoothly spread throughout space and sharing the total energy more or less equally. These kinds of arguments are used in statistical physics, the field which underlies our understanding of heat, work and thermodynamics.
The late physicist Stephen Hawking and collaborators famously generalised statistical physics to include gravity. Using an elegant argument, they calculated the temperature and the entropy of black holes. Using our “mirror” hypothesis, Boyle and I managed to extend their arguments to cosmology and to calculate the entropy of entire universes.
To our surprise, the universe with the highest entropy (meaning it is the most likely, just like the atoms spread out in the box) is flat and expands at an accelerated rate, just like the real one. So statistical arguments explain why the universe is flat and smooth and has a small positive accelerated expansion, with no need for cosmic inflation.
How would the primordial density variations, usually attributed to inflation, have been generated in our symmetrical mirror universe? Recently, we showed that a specific type of quantum field (a dimension zero field) generates exactly the type of density variations we observe, without inflation. Importantly, these density variations aren’t accompanied by the long wavelength gravitational waves which inflation predicts – and which haven’t been seen.
These results are very encouraging. But more work is needed to show that our new theory is both mathematically sound and physically realistic.
Even if our new theory fails, it has taught us a valuable lesson. There may well be simpler, more powerful and more testable explanations for the basic properties of the universe than those the standard orthodoxy provides.
By facing up to cosmology’s deep puzzles, guided by the observations and exploring directions as yet unexplored, we may be able to lay more secure foundations for both fundamental physics and our understanding of the universe.
Neil Turok 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.
In the UK and Ireland, children who have significant special educational needs and disabilities can receive their education outside mainstream school. This often takes place in “special schools” or “special classes”.
In the UK, as well as the Republic of Ireland, legislation sets out that children have the right to attend mainstream education. This right cannot be refused based on the complexity of the child’s needs. However, many children are educated in specialist schools, and the devolved governments of the UK, and Ireland, have taken differing approaches to this provision.
But there is a problem. Across the UK and Ireland, there are far fewer places available in specialist schools and classes for the number of children identified with needs significant enough to warrant a place.
England
In 2010, then-prime minister David Cameron set out the aim to “end the bias” towards including children with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream schools.
His government felt there had been an overemphasis on inclusion in mainstream schools. As a consequence, England has seen an expansion of specialist education provision. From 2015 to 2023, there has been a 47% increase in the number of pupils at special schools in England – from 109,177 to 161,072.
However, as of May 2024, 4,407 children across England were waiting for school places in specialist provision.
There has also been a large increase in the number of appeals against councils by parents or carers of children with special educational needs in England, challenging the decision made around a child’s school placement and provision.
A new report from the National Audit Office on special educational needs suggests that the current system in England is unsustainable, with many councils set to run out of money by early 2026.
Wales
Wales has also seen a 25% increase in special school provision from 2017-18 to 2023-4.
However, there has recently been a large decrease in the number of learners being identified with additional learning needs. This has coincided with the introduction of a new additional learning needs system.
However, the proportion of all learners in special schools has increased. This means that this reduction in identification does not seem to have changed the number of those who require specialist placements.
Scotland
Scotland has taken a different route. Here, the legal right to mainstream schooling has been taken a step further: there is an underlying “presumption of mainstreaming”, in other words, a right to attend a mainstream school, although exceptions in which a specialist provision should be considered are set out.
This presumption of mainstreaming means that there has been a reduction in the number of special schools. However, alongside this there has been an increase in the proportion of children not spending time in mainstream classes.
This implies that more children are being educated in units attached to mainstream schools, without necessarily participating in mainstream classes. A recent review has raised concerns that the children with additional support needs in mainstream schools are not having their needs met.
Northern Ireland
The number of children with a statement of special educational needs in Northern Ireland increased by 24% in the five years from 2017-18 to 2021-22. A Department of Education official recently told the Education Committee of the NI Assembly that there was a need for an additional 1,000 places for children with SEN. This would require 66 new special school classes and 94 new specialist classes in mainstream schools.
Northern Ireland is addressing the increased demand for special school places by embarking on a programme to develop specialist provision in mainstream schools. It is important to note, however, that although attached to and often under the same roof as mainstream schools, these are separate, specialist classes for children whose needs would ordinarily have been met in special schools, if pupil places had been available.
Republic of Ireland
In the Irish republic, there has been a dramatic increase in demand for specialist provision. There has also been an increase in the number of special schools in recent years, from 123 in 2018-19 to 134 in 2024-25, and further schools are planned.
However, the challenges experienced by children with SEN in accessing school places continues. Some children are receiving home tuition grants because they don’t have a school place, and even more students are waiting to secure a place for the school year 2024-25. To address this, the minister for education in Ireland is now able to compel schools to open special classes under amended legislation.
The challenge
The devolved governments of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, are committed to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which upholds the right to inclusive education for all learners. This includes the right to be educated without segregation.
Scotland have addressed this by reducing specialist provision – although there have been criticisms of how this has been implemented in practice. Elsewhere in the UK, the demand for specialist provision is leading to each government increasing the amount of specialist provision, as opposed to considering how the principles of inclusive education could be embedded in mainstream schools.
In line with guidance from the UN, it is important to consider how mainstream schools can effectively support and include all learners. If these schools are designed to better accommodate a broader range of learners, the need for specialist placements could well decrease.
However, criticisms of the Scottish system show that without adequate support, placing children with special educational needs in mainstream schools is not enough for students to feel fully included.
Cathryn Knight receives funding from the ESRC Impact Acceleration Account.
Joanne Banks receives funding from The Irish Research Council New Foundations Award.
Noel Purdy 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.
Most people imagine philosophers as rational thinkers who spend their time developing abstract logical theories and strongly reject superstitious beliefs. But several 20th-century philosophers actively investigated spooky topics such as clairvoyance, telepathy – even ghosts.
Many of these philosophers, including Henri Bergson and William James, were interested in what was called “psychical research”. This was the academic study of paranormal phenomena including telepathy, telekinesis and other-worldly spirits.
These thinkers attended seances and were attempting to develop theories about ghosts, life after death and the powers exhibited by mediums in trances. My recent archival research has been looking at how these topics shaped 20th-century philosophy.
CD Broad (1887-1971) was a professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He is now recognised as one of the most important writers on the philosophy of time. He also published on ethics, logic and the history of philosophy. What is less known, though, is that he was an active member of the Society for Psychical Research, a learned society dedicated to the study of paranormal phenomena. The society twice elected him as their president, and he published widely on topics including clairvoyance and poltergeists.
In his 1925 book, The Mind and Its Place in Nature, Broad developed what has come to be known as the “compound theory” of ghosts. Broad argued that the human mind was a compound of two components. One of these was the “physical factor,” roughly corresponding to the body. The other one was the “psychic factor,” which carries our mental content like emotions or thoughts. The two of them conjointly form the human mind – just like salt is composed of sodium and chloride.
Broad believed that after death, the psychic factor can continue existing for a bit on its own and might enter, like a spirit, a medium during a seance.
Images in the ether
Another philosopher interested in ghosts and spirits of the dead was HH Price (1899-1984). He was a professor of logic at the University of Oxford and is mostly known for his publications on the philosophy of perception. However, just like Broad, he was heavily involved in the Society for Psychical Research and attended several international conferences dedicated to life after death and telepathy.
In his presidential address to the society in 1939, Price tried to offer an explanation of ghosts and hauntings.
At any given moment, he argued, your mind is full of “mental images” – the memory of your last holiday, the things you see outside your window, your hopes and expectations for the future. Price theorised that there is a substance, which he called the “psychic ether” that exists halfway between matter and the human mind. He believed that this ether could carry the images that currently exist in your mind even after you die. A bundle of these images and memories can appear as a ghost to some particularly sensitive people.
What does ‘ghost’ mean?
Casimir Lewy (1919-1991) was one of the most influential philosophical logicians of the 20th century. He spent most of his career at the University of Cambridge – in fact, the philosophy faculty library there is named after him.
Lewy is now mostly known for his work on logic, and few people know that he actually wrote his PhD thesis (which was examined by Broad) on life after death.
Portrait of Casimir Lewy by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (1937). Trinity College
He was primarily interested in language and in the meanings of the terms people use when they talk about ghosts and life after death. What does it mean to say that I might survive the death of my body? What sort of experiences would I need to have as a ghost for the statement “I have survived my death” to be true? Would I have to be able to see myself in the mirror, or to speak to people in the seance room?
Lewy insisted that these questions need answering before looking at the empirical “evidence” for ghosts.
Following a series of scandalous and widely publicised discoveries of fraudulent mediums faking their supernatural powers and accusations of pseudo-scientific research methods, psychical research eventually moved to the fringes of academia. Lewy, for example, never returned to write on these topics after passing the defence of his PhD in 1943.
Nevertheless, despite its brief lifespan, academic psychical research had a significant influence on an entire generation of British philosophers. It shaped their views on time, causation and matter, and gave them an opportunity to think one of life’s most pressing questions: what happens after we die?
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Matyáš Moravec 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.
A new report from the National Audit Office into special educational needs provision in England has concluded that despite a significant increase investment over the last decade, “the system is still not delivering better outcomes for children and young people”.
This is borne out by my research. Students with special educational needs in England are significantly behind in reading, writing and maths compared to their classmates.
Laws like the 2014 Children and Families Act, which aimed to improve support for these students, haven’t closed the gap. My recent research suggests that we need to rethink current educational policies and practices.
My study looked at data from 2.5 million year 6 students (aged ten and 11) between 2014 and 2019. It shows that students with special educational needs are significantly behind in key academic areas.
On average, students with special educational needs are two years behind in writing and one and a half years behind in reading and maths. The gap in maths is growing, which is especially worrying. It shows that current educational strategies are failing these students.
Not all students with special educational needs face the same challenges. Students with intellectual disabilities were, on average, more than two years behind in writing and maths. In contrast, students with autism spectrum disorder and visual impairment do somewhat better, especially in reading, but they are still, on average, about one year behind.
Rethinking support
Despite well-intentioned policies, current educational frameworks are falling short. A major issue is the heavy reliance on teaching assistants as the main support for students with special educational needs in mainstream schools.
Teaching assistants are dedicated and play an important role in classrooms. However, research shows that their involvement can sometimes have negative effects on academic outcomes due to a limited range of teaching methods and lack of professional development. Over-relying on teaching assistants without specialised support might be one reason for the continuing achievement gap.
This raises important questions. If we would not accept teaching assistants as the main instructors for typical students, it should not be acceptable for students with special educational needs, who have more complex learning needs.
Support in schools also comes from special educational needs coordinators. They manage the school’s approach to supporting students with special educational needs. They handle administrative tasks, work with parents and outside agencies, and ensure legal compliance. But while their role is important, they usually do not teach students directly.
One solution is to have specialised special education teachers in mainstream schools. This is not just a suggestion; it’s a critical need.
Special education teachers are trained educators who work directly with students needing extra support. They teach tailored lessons, adapt teaching materials, and use specialised strategies to meet individual learning needs. Their focus is on providing hands-on educational help within the school.
Learning from other countries
Integrating special education teachers into our mainstream classrooms, as seen in countries such as the US and Singapore, could be the key to better supporting our students.
In these countries, special education teachers are part of the mainstream classrooms. They complete certification programmes, learning advanced skills in assessing students’ needs, developing tailored support and creating individual education plans. They teach alongside general educators, ensuring that students with special educational needs are not left out but receive high-quality support.
This approach addresses both academic and emotional needs in the classroom, providing an effective support system.
Similar steps should be taken in England to establish comprehensive special education teacher training programmes. This could include postgraduate certifications in special education or specialised modules in existing teacher education programmes.
Inspection frameworks like Ofsted must include specific criteria to evaluate the presence and effectiveness of specialised support in classrooms for students with special educational needs.
Schools should be encouraged to hire qualified special education teachers, and government funding models must be changed to support these professionals. Also, ongoing professional development should be a priority, ensuring that all educators expand their expertise in proven teaching methods.
By aligning teacher training, hiring and policies, England can reduce its reliance on teaching assistants as the main support for students with special educational needs. Instead, schools can have strong support systems led by trained special education teachers. These specialists can work with teaching assistants and classroom teachers to provide more effective, targeted support.
This change would provide students with special educational needs with improved overall quality of teaching and learning. This could lead to mainstream classrooms fostering a truly inclusive educational environment.
Johny Daniel 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.
Also in continuation of Israel’s war on journalism, the IDF has published the names of six Al Jazeera reporters who it claims are actually members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, citing as evidence documents which it claims Israeli forces found in Gaza.
These allegations would mark these journalists as legitimate military targets.
Al Jazeera has denounced these claims as unfounded, saying in a statement: “The Network views these fabricated accusations as a blatant attempt to silence the few remaining journalists in the region, thereby obscuring the harsh realities of the war from audiences worldwide.”
There is of course no reason to ever believe any claim Israel makes about anything whatsoever absent mountains of independently verifiable evidence, after the mountains of lies it has churned out over the last year.
The fact that Western news outlets are treating these allegations as plausible is evidence of their propagandistic nature.
Israel claims everyone it wants to kill is Hamas. The journalists are Hamas, the hospitals are Hamas, the UN is Hamas, the aid trucks are Hamas, the schools are Hamas, the mosques are Hamas, the water infrastructure is Hamas, the civilian homes are all Hamas, and Hamas is hiding behind every woman and child in Gaza.
The only exception to this rule is in Lebanon, in which case everyone Israel wants to kill is Hezbollah.
“Israel hates truth” . . .Gaza: The Al Jazeera investigation into Israeli war crimes.
Why journalists are killed Israel hates truth, which is why it kills journalists at every opportunity and blocks them from entering Gaza. This is because truth tends to have a marked anti-Israel bias.
We saw this illustrated recently when Israel announced that there is a secret Hezbollah bunker underneath a hospital in Beirut, so the press simply sent a bunch of reporters to go and investigate because Israel can’t block the press from entering Lebanon like it can in Gaza.
Even Western outlets like the BBC and Sky News entered the hospital and interviewed medical staff, reporting that they found no trace of evidence supporting Israel’s claims and that the hospital staff all denied the existence of any Hezbollah bunker on the premises.
And you may be sure those outlets would have eagerly reported any sign of Hezbollah if they were given the opportunity.
Criminal institutions need to function in the dark. They cannot function in the light of visibility and critical journalism and inconvenient video footage.
That’s why the mafia murders witnesses. That’s why the inner workings of the US war machine are shrouded in government secrecy. That’s why Julian Assange spent five years in a maximum security prison.
And that’s why Israel does everything it can to kill and obstruct journalists who tell the truth about its crimes.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom F.A Watts, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy, Royal Holloway University of London
October 26, 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of director James Cameron’s science fiction classic, The Terminator – a film that popularised society’s fear of machines that can’t be reasoned with, and that “absolutely will not stop … until you are dead”, as one character memorably puts it.
The plot concerns a super-intelligent AI system called Skynet which has taken over the world by initiating nuclear war. Amid the resulting devastation, human survivors stage a successful fightback under the leadership of the charismatic John Connor.
In response, Skynet sends a cyborg assassin (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) back in time to 1984 – before Connor’s birth – to kill his future mother, Sarah. Such is John Connor’s importance to the war that Skynet banks on erasing him from history to preserve its existence.
Today, public interest in artificial intelligence has arguably never been greater. The companies developing AI typically promise their technologies will perform tasks faster and more accurately than people. They claim AI can spot patterns in data that are not obvious, enhancing human decision-making. There is a widespread perception that AI is poised to transform everything from warfare to the economy.
Immediate risks include introducing biases into algorithms for screening job applications and the threat of generative AI displacing humans from certain types of work, such as software programming.
But it is the existential danger that often dominates public discussion – and the six Terminator films have exerted an outsize influence on how these arguments are framed. Indeed, according to some, the films’ portrayal of the threat posed by AI-controlled machines distracts from the substantial benefits offered by the technology.
Official trailer for The Terminator (1984)
The Terminator was not the first film to tackle AI’s potential dangers. There are parallels between Skynet and the HAL 9000 supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It also draws from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, and Karel Čapek’s 1921 play, R.U.R.. Both stories concern inventors losing control over their creations.
On release, it was described in a review by the New York Times as a “B-movie with flair”. In the intervening years, it has been recognised as one of the greatest science fiction movies of all time. At the box office, it made more than 12 times its modest budget of US$6.4 million (£4.9 million at today’s exchange rate).
What was arguably most novel about The Terminator is how it re-imagined longstanding fears of a machine uprising through the cultural prism of 1980s America. Much like the 1983 film WarGames, where a teenager nearly triggers World War 3 by hacking into a military supercomputer, Skynet highlights cold war fears of nuclear annihilation coupled with anxiety about rapid technological change.
Forty years on, Elon Musk is among the technology leaders who have helped keep a focus on the supposed existential risk of AI to humanity. The owner of X (formerly Twitter) has repeatedlyreferencedthe Terminator franchise while expressing concerns about the hypothetical development of superintelligent AI.
But such comparisons often irritate the technology’s advocates. As the former UK technology minister Paul Scully said at a London conference in 2023: “If you’re only talking about the end of humanity because of some rogue, Terminator-style scenario, you’re going to miss out on all of the good that AI [can do].”
That’s not to say there aren’t genuine concerns about military uses of AI – ones that may even seem to parallel the film franchise.
AI-controlled weapons systems
To the relief of many, US officials have said that AI will never take a decision on deploying nuclear weapons. But combining AI with autonomous weapons systems is a possibility.
These weapons have existed for decades and don’t necessarily require AI. Once activated, they can select and attack targets without being directly operated by a human. In 2016, US Air Force general Paul Selva coined the term “Terminator conundrum” to describe the ethical and legal challenges posed by these weapons.
The Terminator’s director James Cameron says ‘the weaponisation of AI is the biggest danger’.
Stuart Russell, a leading UK computer scientist, has argued for a ban on all lethal, fully autonomous weapons, including those with AI. The main risk, he argues, is not from a sentient Skynet-style system going rogue, but how well autonomous weapons might follow our instructions, killing with superhuman accuracy.
Russell envisages a scenario where tiny quadcopters equipped with AI and explosive charges could be mass-produced. These “slaughterbots” could then be deployed in swarms as “cheap, selective weapons of mass destruction”.
Countries including the US specify the need for human operators to “exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force” when operating autonomous weapon systems. In some instances, operators can visually verify targets before authorising strikes, and can “wave off” attacks if situations change.
AI is already being used to support military targeting. According to some, it’s even a responsible use of the technology, since it could reduce collateral damage. This idea evokes Schwarzenegger’s role reversal as the benevolent “machine guardian” in the original film’s sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
However, AI could also undermine the role human drone operators play in challenging recommendations by machines. Some researchers think that humans have a tendency to trust whatever computers say.
‘Loitering munitions’
Militaries engaged in conflicts are increasingly making use of small, cheap aerial drones that can detect and crash into targets. These “loitering munitions” (so named because they are designed to hover over a battlefield) feature varying degrees of autonomy.
As I’ve argued in research co-authored with security researcher Ingvild Bode, the dynamics of the Ukraine war and other recent conflicts in which these munitions have been widely used raises concerns about the quality of control exerted by human operators.
Ground-based military robots armed with weapons and designed for use on the battlefield might call to mind the relentless Terminators, and weaponised aerial drones may, in time, come to resemble the franchise’s airborne “hunter-killers”. But these technologies don’t hate us as Skynet does, and neither are they “super-intelligent”.
However, it’s crucially important that human operators continue to exercise agency and meaningful control over machine systems.
Arguably, The Terminator’s greatest legacy has been to distort how we collectively think and speak about AI. This matters now more than ever, because of how central these technologies have become to the strategic competition for global power and influence between the US, China and Russia.
The entire international community, from superpowers such as China and the US to smaller countries, needs to find the political will to cooperate – and to manage the ethical and legal challenges posed by the military applications of AI during this time of geopolitical upheaval. How nations navigate these challenges will determine whether we can avoid the dystopian future so vividly imagined in The Terminator – even if we don’t see time travelling cyborgs any time soon.
Tom F.A Watts receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship scheme.
An Amur falcon feeds on flying insects as it migrates across Nagaland, India. Greeneries/Shutterstock
Wildlife conservation is an exercise in human persuasion. It may seem counterintuitive that we hold the keys to the survival of wildlife, but 98% of all threatened species are threatened exclusively by human activities such as pollution, invasive species or habitat loss.
Influencing human behaviour to benefit nature is hard, but it can be done. In the case of the Amur falcon, we found that legislation and enforcement were successful at stopping hunting of this migratory raptor and maintaining changes in hunting practices. But the key to success involved fostering local pride in the bird, alongside providing economic incentives.
The Amur falcon is a bird the size of an apple with a yearly commute from Siberia to Africa and back – the equivalent in total to six trips from London to New York. One key stop in the bird’s journey is the forests of Nagaland in north-east India.
Since its construction in 2000, an artificial reservoir over Nagaland’s Doyang river has attracted vast numbers of winged termites – in turn increasing the number of Amur falcons stopping to feed on these insects. As the numbers of falcons rose, they became very easy targets for local hunters, for whom wildlife hunting is an integral part of their traditional culture. These birds were hunted for food as well as traded in local markets, earning significant seasonal revenue for the hunters.
Fast-forward to November 2012. The scale of the hunt at Doyang reservoir, particularly in Pangti village, came to the attention of conservationists like us, who estimated that between 120,000 and 140,000 birds (about 10% of the global adult population) were being caught in only ten days. These birds stopped at the Doyang reservoir to fatten up before their migration to Africa, but were trapped using fishing nets hung across trees.
A global media campaign was spearheaded by the environmental charity Conservation India. A hard-hitting short film, The Amur Falcon Massacre, was shared online to show the true horror and scale of this hunt. Conservationists tried to leverage India’s membership of the Convention on Migratory Species, and such pressure led to the Indian government making a global commitment to protect species including the Amur falcon.
The government took swift action. It warned Pangti villagers that unless the hunting stopped, it would cut off funding for crucial development projects. Faced with this threat, the village council imposed a ban on hunting falcons in 2013 – without consulting the broader community.
That decision was deeply unpopular with local villagers. Falcon hunting had been an important source of income, and many villagers were resistant to the ban. Though the hunting stopped, local trust in the council leadership was low because the ban was seen as authoritarian.
However, the decision was backed by financial incentives and environmental outreach from charitable organisations and the government’s forest department. This helped reframe the falcons as “honoured guests”, and to connect local people more empathetically with the birds. Hunting was actively discouraged; eventually, it ceased altogether.
By 2017, a sense of pride began to grow within the community. Awards and recognition from external bodies, including the Indian government, for Pangti’s conservation efforts helped create a positive image of the village worldwide. The community’s emotional bond with the falcons strengthened. Villagers even held prayers for satellite-tagged falcons before releasing them. Falcon conservation became a symbol of local identity and pride, which helped overcome the initial resistance to the hunting ban.
This allowed conservation measures to expand. The community outlawed air guns to prevent the hunting of small birds, and extended the hunting ban to cover all wildlife for six months of the year. These actions showed the community wasn’t just enforcing government rules; it was actively creating new conservation initiatives of its own.
The power of persuasion
Human actions drive biodiversity outcomes. These can be destructive, like poaching, or protective, like community-led conservation. The end of the indiscriminate killing of the Amur falcon in Nagaland highlights that, while behaviour change can take place in a short period, maintaining it over the long term is often much more challenging.
For instance, while the initial ban was effective in quickly eliminating hunting, the shift from resistance to pride in falcon conservation took years to fully develop. Sustaining this change has required continuous community engagement and building of pride in the species.
Visual storytelling – in this case, a film widely shared on social media – can also play a powerful role in turning local issues into global ones. The international attention brought to the unsustainable hunting of the Amur falcon was instrumental in prompting government action. This shows how global media exposure can elevate a local conservation issue, creating a sense of urgency that compels authorities to act.
However, while media campaigns can quickly drive policy changes, they don’t always lead to lasting behaviour change. Campaigns that rely on shock and urgency may alienate local communities, creating resistance.
Sustainable behaviour change requires building trust, understanding local values, and supporting community leadership. True change happens when people feel empowered and see benefits from their actions – not simply when they feel pressured to comply.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Sahila Kudalkar received funding from the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation for research on Amur falcon conservation in Nagaland.
Diogo Veríssimo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
When most people think about caring for their mental health, they may think about getting more exercise, getting more sleep and making sure they’re eating healthy. Increasingly, research is showing that spending time in nature surrounded by plants and wildlife can also contribute to preventing and treating mental illness.
Our research focuses on the importance of birds and trees in urban neighbourhoods in promoting mental well-being. In our study, we combined more than a decade of health and ecological data across 36 Canadian cities and found a positive association between greater bird and tree diversity and self-rated mental health.
The well-being benefits of healthy ecosystems will probably not come as a great surprise to urban dwellers who relish days out in the park or hiking in a nearby nature reserve. Still, the findings of our study speak to the potential of a nature-based urbanism that promotes the health of its citizens.
Across cultures and societies, people have strong connections with birds. The beauty of their bright song and colour have inspired art, music and poetry. Their contemporary cultural relevance has even earned them an affectionate, absurdist internet nickname: “birbs”.
There’s something magical about catching a glimpse of a bird and hearing birdsong. For many urbanites, birds are our daily connection to wildlife and a gateway to nature. In fact, even if we don’t realize it, humans and birds are intertwined. Birds provide us with many essential services — controlling insects, dispersing seeds and pollinating our crops.
People have similarly intimate connections with trees. The terms tree of life, family trees, even tree-hugger all demonstrate the central cultural importance trees have in many communities around the world. In cities, trees are a staple of efforts to bring beauty and tranquility.
Contact with nature and greenspace have a suite of mental health benefits.
Natural spaces reduce stress and offer places for recreation and relaxation for urban dwellers, but natural diversity is key. A growing amount of research shows that the extent of these benefits may be related to the diversity of different natural features.
Finally, we compared both of these data sets to a long-standing health survey that has interviewed approximately 65,000 Canadians each year for over two decades.
We found that living in a neighbourhood with higher than average bird diversity increased reporting of good mental health by about seven per cent. While living in a neighbourhood with higher than average tree diversity increased good mental health by about five per cent.
Importance of urban birds and trees
The results of our study, and those of others, show a connection between urban bird and tree diversity, healthy ecosystems and people’s mental well-being. This underscores the importance of urban biodiversity conservation as part of healthy living promotion.
Protecting wild areas in parks, planting pollinator gardens and reducing pesticide use could all be key strategies to protect urban wildlife and promote people’s well-being. Urban planners should take note.
We’re at a critical juncture: just as we are beginning to understand the well-being benefits of birds and trees, we’re losing species at a faster rate than ever before. It’s estimated that there are three billion fewer birds in North America compared to the 1970s and invasive pests will kill 1.4 million street trees over the next 30 years.
By promoting urban biodiversity, we can ensure a sustainable and healthy future for all species, including ourselves.
Rachel Buxton receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, National Institutes of Health, and Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Emma J. Hudgins received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Nature et Technologies for this work. She currently receives funding from Plant Health Australia.
Stephanie Prince Ware has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
When most people think about caring for their mental health, they may think about getting more exercise, getting more sleep and making sure they’re eating healthy. Increasingly, research is showing that spending time in nature surrounded by plants and wildlife can also contribute to preventing and treating mental illness.
Our research focuses on the importance of birds and trees in urban neighbourhoods in promoting mental well-being. In our study, we combined more than a decade of health and ecological data across 36 Canadian cities and found a positive association between greater bird and tree diversity and self-rated mental health.
The well-being benefits of healthy ecosystems will probably not come as a great surprise to urban dwellers who relish days out in the park or hiking in a nearby nature reserve. Still, the findings of our study speak to the potential of a nature-based urbanism that promotes the health of its citizens.
Across cultures and societies, people have strong connections with birds. The beauty of their bright song and colour have inspired art, music and poetry. Their contemporary cultural relevance has even earned them an affectionate, absurdist internet nickname: “birbs”.
There’s something magical about catching a glimpse of a bird and hearing birdsong. For many urbanites, birds are our daily connection to wildlife and a gateway to nature. In fact, even if we don’t realize it, humans and birds are intertwined. Birds provide us with many essential services — controlling insects, dispersing seeds and pollinating our crops.
People have similarly intimate connections with trees. The terms tree of life, family trees, even tree-hugger all demonstrate the central cultural importance trees have in many communities around the world. In cities, trees are a staple of efforts to bring beauty and tranquility.
Contact with nature and greenspace have a suite of mental health benefits.
Natural spaces reduce stress and offer places for recreation and relaxation for urban dwellers, but natural diversity is key. A growing amount of research shows that the extent of these benefits may be related to the diversity of different natural features.
Finally, we compared both of these data sets to a long-standing health survey that has interviewed approximately 65,000 Canadians each year for over two decades.
We found that living in a neighbourhood with higher than average bird diversity increased reporting of good mental health by about seven per cent. While living in a neighbourhood with higher than average tree diversity increased good mental health by about five per cent.
Importance of urban birds and trees
The results of our study, and those of others, show a connection between urban bird and tree diversity, healthy ecosystems and people’s mental well-being. This underscores the importance of urban biodiversity conservation as part of healthy living promotion.
Protecting wild areas in parks, planting pollinator gardens and reducing pesticide use could all be key strategies to protect urban wildlife and promote people’s well-being. Urban planners should take note.
We’re at a critical juncture: just as we are beginning to understand the well-being benefits of birds and trees, we’re losing species at a faster rate than ever before. It’s estimated that there are three billion fewer birds in North America compared to the 1970s and invasive pests will kill 1.4 million street trees over the next 30 years.
By promoting urban biodiversity, we can ensure a sustainable and healthy future for all species, including ourselves.
Rachel Buxton receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, National Institutes of Health, and Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Emma J. Hudgins received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Nature et Technologies for this work. She currently receives funding from Plant Health Australia.
Stephanie Prince Ware has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
American businesses spend close to US$100 billion each year to secure top advertising spots in search engine results – even though it’s not exactly a secret that most online shoppers scroll right past them.
In fact, organic links – results that aren’t sponsored advertisements – can receive up to 10 times as many clicks as search ads, industry data shows.
I refer to this phenomenon as “search ad avoidance,” and it’s a big problem for the multibillion-dollar industry. But it turns out that not all groups are equally averse to clicking on sponsored search results.
According to my newly published peer-reviewed research, people with conservative political views are more likely to click on sponsored search results.
To explore the relationship between politics and search engine behavior, I conducted several studies.
First, I examined data from more than 500,000 visitors to a nationwide retailer’s website. I analyzed the percentage of visitors from each U.S. state who arrived at the website by clicking a search ad versus an organic link. Then I looked at the share of each state’s residents who describe themselves as conservative.
I found that more conservative states were associated with more clicks for search ads over organic links. Specifically, a 10% increase in a state’s conservative identity was associated with a 6.4% increase in search ad clicks.
Given that, on average, conservatives are older and have higher incomes than liberals, I also looked at each state’s median age and per-capita personal income. Again, the data confirmed the relationship between conservatism and search ad clicks. Neither age nor income had any significant impact.
To better understand what was going on, I conducted additional studies where I could monitor people’s searches in a more controlled setting using online surveys.
I asked online participants to search for a product the same way they would using Google. Then, I brought them to a search results page and asked them to indicate how likely they would be to click on a search ad versus an organic link.
I also measured their political orientation in two different ways: through self-identification and attitudes toward political issues. Once again, I found that regardless of age or income, more conservative people were more likely to click on search ads.
Why the promotional is political
The decision to click on an ad – or not – might seem quite minor. But I believe ad avoidance is strongly rooted in people’s core beliefs and values.
While conservatives tend to trust and justify the role of marketplace systems, liberals are more skeptical. Within the marketplace of online information search, I argue that conservatives are likely to be more trusting of sponsored communications than liberals, who lean toward organic content.
The importance of values becomes clear in a final analysis I conducted. In this real-world experiment, I created search ads for a website built specifically for this research and found that conservatives were more likely to click ads in response to broad searches, such as “Buy headphones.” But for more specific, detailed searches – for example, “Buy headphones with microphone that reduces background noise” – there was no relationship between politics and clicks.
I suspect this is because broad searches are less cognitively demanding – in other words, they require less brainpower. This allows our core beliefs to influence our decisions. In fact, this is consistent with research on information processing that shows broad thinking leads to stronger political attitudes.
On the other hand, I argue that specific searches require us to pay close attention to the information we are processing, which disables our core beliefs from being the primary influence on our decisions.
Why advertisers should take note
These findings have obvious benefits for advertisers who want to better understand who’s most likely to click on search ads. This can help them generate campaign strategies that account for consumers’ political orientations, which I have shown to be a better predictor of click behavior than typical segmentation variables such as age or income.
Given that liberals are less likely to click search ads, it also suggests advertisers should be thinking about alternative ways to reach them. It’s possible that liberals could be persuaded to click search ads through a greater inclusion of trust symbols in advertising communications, such as star ratings or endorsements from credible influencers.
Alexander Davidson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
