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Category: Features

  • MIL-Evening Report: The search for missing plane MH370 is back on. An underwater robotics expert explains what’s involved

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stefan B. Williams, Professor of Marine Robotics, Australian Centre for Robotics, University of Sydney

    Armada 7805, similar to the 7806 vessel that will support the new MH370 search. Ocean Infinity

    More than 11 years after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the Malaysian government has approved a new search for the missing debris of the aircraft.

    Malaysia announced the push for a renewed search last year, ten years after the tragedy that claimed the lives of 239 people.

    Seabed exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which conducted an unsuccessful search in 2018, prepared a new proposal to which Malaysia’s government agreed in principle in December last year.

    Now, the company has returned to the southern Indian Ocean 1,500 kilometres west of Perth – with a suite of new high-tech tools.

    A search area the size of Sydney

    Ocean Infinity is involved in projects surveying for offshore oil and gas reserves, and for suitable locations for offshore renewable energy projects.

    But it has also proved it is capable of locating underwater wreckage in the past. For example, in 2018, the company found a missing Argentinian navy submarine nearly 1,000 metres underwater in the Atlantic Ocean. And last October, it found the wreck of a US Navy ship that had been underwater for 78 years.

    The new search area for MH370 is roughly the size of metropolitan Sydney. It was identified in collaboration with experts based on refined analysis of information received after the aircraft disappeared. This information included weather, satellite data and the location of debris attributed to the aircraft which washed up along the coast of Africa and islands in the Indian Ocean.

    For this search, Ocean Infinity will be using a new 78 metre offshore support vessel, the Armada 7806. It was built by Norwegian shipbuilder Vard in 2023.

    Advanced sonar technology

    The Armada 7806 is equipped with a fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles manufactured by the Norwegian firm Kongsberg.

    These 6.2m long vehicles are capable of operating independently of the support vessel at depths of up to 6,000m for up to 100 hours at a time. They are equipped with advanced sonar technology, including sidescan, synthetic aperture, multibeam and sub-bottom profiling sonar.

    Sonar systems are essential for underwater mapping and object detection surveys. They use acoustic pulses to look for echoes from the seafloor.

    Sidescan sonar captures high-resolution images of the seafloor by sending out pulses of sound and detecting objects that reflect the sound pulses back.

    Synthetic aperture sonar is a technique for combining the results from multiple “pings” to effectively make the scanner bigger and more powerful, seeing further, and producing more detailed images.

    Multibeam sonar, in contrast, maps the seafloor topography by emitting multiple sonar beams in a fan-shaped pattern below the platform.

    Finally, sub-bottom profiling sonar operates at lower frequencies and penetrates the seabed to reveal underlying geological structures. This is useful for archaeological studies, sediment analysis and identifying buried objects.

    Together, these sonar technologies provide complementary data for underwater exploration, search and recovery, and geological assessments.

    Camera systems and lights on the vehicles may be used to confirm potential targets. Once a target of interest is detected using sonar, the vehicles would be programmed with missions designed to operate significantly closer to the seafloor. This would allow them to capture imagery of the search area with which to identify the targets.

    Such a search would only be conducted once a target of interest is identified, as the area covered by each image is significantly smaller than that covered by sonar, therefore requiring much denser survey tracks.

    Significant advancements in robotics

    Since its previous search in 2018, Ocean Infinity has made significant advancements in its marine robotics and data analytics capabilities. It has demonstrated its capacity to simultaneously deploy multiple vehicles at depths of up to 6,000m.

    This significantly increases the coverage area, as each vehicle covers its own patch of seafloor. This will allow for a more efficient and comprehensive survey of the designated search zone.

    The data being collected by the vehicles will be downloaded once the vehicles are brought back onboard, and stitched together to provide detailed maps of the search areas.

    Difficult conditions, above and below the surface

    Conditions in the search region are expected to be difficult. Weather on the surface will likely provide challenges for the support vessel and the crew. Underwater vehicles will have to contend with complex conditions on the seafloor, including steep slopes and rough terrain.

    The operation is expected to take up to 18 months. Weather conditions are most likely to be favourable between January and April.

    If Ocean Infinity succeeds in finding the wreckage of MH370, the Malaysian government will pay it US$70 million.

    The next steps would be trying to retrieve the plane’s black boxes, which would enable investigators to piece together what happened in the final moments before the plane plunged into the ocean. The Armada 7806 is likely to have remotely operated vehicles onboard equipped with cameras and manipulator systems, which may be used to verify the wreck site and in any future salvage operations.

    If Ocean Infinity fails, it will receive no payment. And the investigation into the location of the plane will essentially be back to square one.

    Stefan B. Williams receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), Australian Economic Accelerator (AEA) program and the Inkfish Foundation.

    – ref. The search for missing plane MH370 is back on. An underwater robotics expert explains what’s involved – https://theconversation.com/the-search-for-missing-plane-mh370-is-back-on-an-underwater-robotics-expert-explains-whats-involved-252732

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: We found a new wasp! Students are discovering insect species through citizen science

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andy G Howe, Research Fellow (Entomology), University of the Sunshine Coast

    Andy Howe, CC BY

    Playgrounds can host a variety of natural wonders – and, of course, kids! Now some students are not just learning about insects and spiders at school — they are putting them on the map and even discovering and naming new species.

    Studies indicate insect populations are declining, and species are going extinct every week in Australia. But scientists have only described about a third of Australia’s estimated total of insect species.

    This means around 150,000 of our insect species do not have formal scientific names. We know little about where they are and what they do in ecosystems — vital information for stopping biodiversity loss.

    So, our team developed the citizen science project Insect Investigators.

    We took scientists to 50 regional schools across three states to learn about insects and other arthropods such as spiders. Students of all ages got to survey insect diversity, search for new species, and engage with entomologists and taxonomists throughout the school year.

    Students helped name new species, including several species of parasitoid wasp.

    Some of the scientific names include Apanteles darthvaderi (Back Plains State School students thought the wasp had gone to the “dark side” because of the way the wasp “sucks the life out of caterpillars”), Mirax supremus (named after the pinnacle science class at Beerwah State High School), and Coccygidium mellosiheroine, which means “honey-coloured hero” (named by students collaborating from several Queensland schools, who considered the wasp a hero as it attacks a crop pest).

    Our latest paper on the project is now published. We learned hands-on citizen science increased students’ interests in insects, nature and science.

    Apanteles darthvaderi – the wasp that’s gone to the dark side.
    Katherine Oestmann & Olivia Portmann, CC BY

    How many insects?

    Around 1,800 students and more than 70 teachers collected insects in or near their schools.

    Teachers sent samples to the project team, which sorted and sent a selection of specimens to be DNA barcoded. This method involves sequencing a small section of the genome to tell different species apart.

    The specimens were then sent to experts around Australia, who are working to describe any new species collected.

    The students collected more than 12,000 insect specimens, including 5,465 different species – many of which are probably not described.

    It will take years to identify all the species and work out how many are new to science, but we already know 3,000 had not been recorded in the Barcode of Life DNA database (BOLD).

    Queensland Mount Molloy students and their Malaise trap.
    Andy Howe, CC BY

    Good for insects, good for learning

    Getting to know insects as part of this citizen science project was great for kids’ active learning and developing an appreciation of the natural world.

    Students said they felt more interested in insects, nature and science, and it inspired them to spend more time outdoors.

    “I learnt there are many insect and plant species… that I haven’t seen before and how in different ecosystems you can find different insects,” said a student from South Australia.

    When students are engaged, it’s no surprise teachers enjoy their jobs more too — and this is exactly what we found. The more enthusiastic the students were about nature and science experiences through the project, the more interested the teachers were in teaching these topics.

    One teacher reported “students gained an understanding of the work of scientists, how to participate in research, protocols to follow, and gained a huge interest in insects!”

    Insect Investigators won the 2024 Eureka Prize for Innovation in Citizen Science (Australian Museum)

    What did students get out of it?

    After the insect survey was completed, we asked 118 students and 22 teachers in nine of the schools about what they experienced, and how they see insects and nature now.

    Students said the chance to find a new species, as well as discovering and catching insects they had not seen before, were highlights of Insect Investigators.

    Experiencing a hands-on learning style, outside in nature, was also mentioned as a benefit of the program.

    Many students said they now wanted to spend more time outdoors, act and encourage others to protect nature, and pay more attention to insect conservation and science classes. This implies the experience and discovery associated with hands-on citizen science has motivated greater engagement with nature and science.

    Queensland Cameron Downs kids show off an insect they found.
    Andy Howe, CC BY

    The potential of school-based citizen science

    Insect surveys offer an accessible way for students to actively learn about science and nature. Insects are virtually everywhere and by photographing them, students can observe natural insect behaviour – without the need to collect them.

    The iNaturalist App and Atlas of Living Australia facilitate citizen scientists to explore nature around them. We’ve also created resources for teachers who want to introduce lessons on insects into their school homepage.

    It’s never too early to develop science literacy skills and give children the chance to develop their curiosity, critical thinking and problem solving.

    Connecting schools and scientists is a great way to engage young learners and foster connections to nature. It has the added bonus of inventorying our natural world which is vital to conserving Australia’s biodiversity.

    Andy G Howe receives funding from the Australian Government, Queensland Government and Forest & Wood Products Australia. Since 2019, he is active with CSIRO Stem Professionals in Schools.

    Erinn Fagan-Jeffries receives funding from the Australian Government and Queensland Government. She sits on scientific advisory committees for Invertebrates Australia and Earthwatch.

    Patrick O’Connor receives funding from the Australian Research Council, State and Commonwealth Government Agencies and he is a board director of the Nature Conservation Society of SA, a committee member of the Restoration Decade Alliance and a councilor of the Biodiversity Council.

    Trang Nguyen receives funding from the End Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre and the Australian Government.

    – ref. We found a new wasp! Students are discovering insect species through citizen science – https://theconversation.com/we-found-a-new-wasp-students-are-discovering-insect-species-through-citizen-science-244960

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: This anniversary wasn’t meant to be easy: Malcolm Fraser and the modern Liberal Party

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Visitor, School of History, Australian National University

    Fifty years ago, Liberal MPs chose Malcolm Fraser as their leader. Eight months later, he led them into power in extraordinary – some might say reprehensible – circumstances. He governed for seven and a half years, and remains our fourth-longest serving prime minister.

    This year marks some awkward anniversaries for the Liberal Party. But this particular one is awkward for multiple reasons. There is the ruthlessness of Fraser’s quest for power, within and beyond the party itself. There is also the ambivalence of the current Liberal generation towards the memory of one of the party’s more electorally successful leaders.

    After Fraser’s time in power, he and his party embarked on very different journeys that still shape our politics today.

    How Fraser became leader

    Australian politics was pretty febrile in March 1975. The Whitlam government, narrowly re-elected in 1974, was increasingly unpopular. Inflation ran at 17.7% in the 12 months to March, and unemployment was at a post-war high of nearly 5%.

    Billy Snedden, Liberal leader from December 1972, was poorly placed to capitalise on these conditions. He had surprised many in 1974 with his strategy to block the government’s budget in the Senate and force an early election.

    But having run a tight race, Snedden lost credibility with his post-election claim that he was “not defeated” but merely “did not win enough seats to form a government”. He won a leadership spill in November 1974 but not convincingly enough to prevent another one later on.

    Billy Snedden (left), pictured here with Andrew Peacock, was unable to capitalise on the weaknesses of the Whitlam Labor government.
    Wikicommons

    A series of “unfortunate public gaffes” and unclear policy statements (on public health insurance among other things) left him vulnerable.

    Fraser, who in 1971 sternly (and famously) warned that “life wasn’t meant to be easy”, was the obvious alternative. He was a well-known frontbencher and a former senior minister. His role in the downfall of Liberal prime minister John Gorton meant he had many enemies. But as the Governor-General explained to Queen Elizabeth II in one of his confidential letters, Fraser had “a reputation of being strong, intelligent, aggressive and tough-minded”.

    Fraser studiously befriended new MPs whose loyalties were malleable, and used his portfolio (after the 1974 election, this was industrial relations) to win friends among his other colleagues.

    According to one profile, he hired a public relations firm to help him solve his “image problems” and to counteract personal criticisms from his internal rival and fellow Victorian, Andrew Peacock.

    Fraser sought to keep a clean image while his supporters, armed with the latest opinion polls, ran a backgrounding campaign described by Liberal MP Jim Forbes as “devious, unscrupulous and utterly contemptible”.

    The crunch came in March. On March 14, Peacock, who hoped to flush Fraser out, dramatically called for a special party meeting to vote on the leadership question. At a Victorian Liberal state council meeting in Bendigo that weekend, Fraser and Peacock canvassed their supporters, while Snedden gave a speech blaming his woes on the media and the Labor Party. According to The Age, a group of MPs met in Toorak that night to shore up their own positions for the week ahead.

    Under pressure on Monday morning, Snedden announced a party room meeting for Friday to settle the issue. Fraser confirmed his candidacy the next day. During four days of campaigning in which MPs pressured each other and party operatives worried openly about fundraising capacity, Snedden’s chances seemed to improve. Fraser’s supporters grew increasingly nervous and Peacock prepared to stand if Snedden lost the spill motion. The latter need not have bothered. In the end, it was Snedden who stood against Fraser and lost by a margin of ten votes.

    In search of strong leaders

    The Liberal Party has a special need for strong leaders. Gerard Henderson once diagnosed the party with a “Messiah complex”, while the political psychologist Graham Little argued that strong leaders gave parties a veneer of philosophy that could “whet the edge of political combat”. As Frank Bongiorno has more recently put it, strong leaders are those who provide their followers “structure, order and discipline” as well as “stark moral alternatives”.

    The collective psychology of the Liberal Party worked in Fraser’s favour in March 1975. There were philosophical differences between the two candidates – Snedden later told his biographer that these contests were always driven by the “difference between conservatives and liberals” – but the vote really was about the styles of leadership they offered. As first-time MP John Howard recalled in his memoir, Fraser “sounded strong and looked like a winner”.

    Fraser played the role forcefully for eight years, easily seeing off a challenge from Peacock in the final year of his government. Howard certainly fit the bill for much of his second stint as leader, and especially from 2001 onward. These men offered their followers a combination of ideological doctrine and hard-edged political pragmatism.

    In the 1980s and post-2007, the party amassed an impressive history of leadership spills in their search for a strong leader. The current leader, Peter Dutton, made a spectacular contribution with his first leadership bid in August 2018. He eventually won the prize in 2022, not necessarily because he had the strongest claim to be a strong leader, but largely due to the lack of “viable alternatives”. That has made his position awkward at times, not least following the historic Aston by-election defeat in 2023.

    Worlds Apart

    Over time, Fraser became a trenchant critic of his former party, which hardly knew what to do with him. He failed in a bid for the party’s federal presidency in the 1990s, and was openly critical of its approach to race, asylum seekers and climate policy under Howard. He resigned his life membership shortly after Tony Abbott was elected leader in December 2009.

    When Fraser died in March 2015, Abbott and his treasurer Joe Hockey led the awkward parliamentary tributes celebrating the life of a “genuine liberal”, while immigration minister Peter Dutton sat silently.

    Dutton has played a key role in distancing the party from aspects of the Fraser legacy. Fraser abhorred racism, and his embrace of multiculturalism marks him out as different from several of his successors.

    In 2016, Dutton controversially said that Fraser’s decision to resettle migrants fleeing civil war in Lebanon had been “a mistake”. He claims to have since apologised, but only to one senior member of the Lebanese community.

    Fraser’s approach to Indigenous policy was also streets apart from that of Dutton. In the early 1980s Fraser’s government, on the advice of the National Aboriginal Council, considered a Makarrata commission to begin acknowledging the history of “Aboriginal occupation” and identifying areas for “increased Aboriginal involvement” in decision-making.

    In 2024, Dutton ruled out a Makarrata commission, promising instead a more paternalistic approach to Indigenous affairs.

    In 2008, Fraser attended the Apology to the Stolen Generations while Dutton, a senior Liberal MP at the time, boycotted it. (He has since apologised for this.) During the 2023 referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, Fraser’s former ministers for Aboriginal affairs supported the “yes” campaign. Dutton was its chief opponent.

    When he died, Fraser was reported to be working on a platform for a new political party that would advocate for a Republic, a treaty with First Nations people, “a more independent foreign policy and a post-carbon economy”. In his book Independents’ Day, journalist Brook Turner suggests that some of the individuals who spoke with Fraser then are now at the forefront of the campaigns supporting community independent candidates.

    This year, Dutton hopes to win back some of those seats from these independent MPs. The coming contest may indicate that the memory of Fraser’s version of liberalism still has a place in Australia’s politics.

    Dr Joshua Black is a former Palace Letters Fellow at the Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University, and a member of the University of Melbourne’s Malcolm Fraser Reference Group.

    – ref. This anniversary wasn’t meant to be easy: Malcolm Fraser and the modern Liberal Party – https://theconversation.com/this-anniversary-wasnt-meant-to-be-easy-malcolm-fraser-and-the-modern-liberal-party-250752

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Every generation thinks they had it the toughest, but for Gen Z, they’re probably right

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Intifar Chowdhury, Lecturer in Government, Flinders University

    Every generation thinks they had it tough, but evidence suggests young Australians today might have a case for saying they’ve drawn the short straw.

    Compared with young adults two or three decades ago, today’s 18–35-year-olds may earn more, but they also grapple with soaring living costs, rising education expenses, precarious employment and mounting debt.

    Shifts in the economy and labour market have restructured young adulthood, creating new barriers to financial security and delaying milestones such as home ownership, partnership and parenthood.

    How does this compare to what life was like for young Australians at the turn of the century?

    Increasing education, decreasing payoffs

    University participation has risen, but so has student debt. It’s now far beyond what was intended when HECS was introduced as a supposedly fair, income-contingent loan system.

    Indexation has outpaced wages, so much so that today’s 20-somethings carry debts that are more than $10,000 higher in real terms than their counterparts two decades ago.

    The Morrison government’s 2021 fee hikes only exacerbated the crisis, with some degrees nearly doubling in cost, leaving students with an even greater debt burden.

    University fees have increased over the past 25 years.
    Shutterstock

    Yet the financial return on education is increasingly uncertain.

    Credential inflation has reshaped the job market, with even low-wage positions now expecting a university degree.

    The widespread belief that a degree guarantees better pay is driving more students into higher education, yet there are many graduates saddled with debt and working in roles unrelated to their qualifications.

    In 1996, 28.5% of 21–25-year-olds found themselves in mismatched jobs.

    By 2019, that figure had climbed to 33% just among 25-year-olds.

    Salaries aren’t keeping up. Since 1996, graduate wages have risen by a factor of just 2.5, while student contributions have jumped between 1.7- and 6.2-fold. This leaves today’s graduates with debt that consumes a larger share of their income than ever before.

    The dwindling dream of home ownership

    Housing affordability has collapsed over the years.

    Twenty-five years ago, the average house cost nine years’ worth of the average household income.

    Now, it’s about 16.5 years.

    In 2001, property prices rose 1.3 times faster than incomes. Since then, they’ve surged at 2.3 times the rate.

    This is fuelled partly by tax incentive policies – for example, the Howard government’s 1999 capital gains tax changes – and, more recently, the COVID pandemic.

    Soaring prices have deepened the intergenerational housing wealth gap, reducing the home purchase opportunity for young people. While the First Home Owner Grant, introduced in 2000, provides some support, saving for a deposit remains a years-long struggle.

    That is, unless parents can help.

    For many young Australians, intergenerational wealth is now the key to home ownership. Inheritance is becoming nearly as important as employment.

    Since 2002, the total value of wealth transfers has more than doubled in real terms, with larger inheritances expected for younger generations due to rising parental wealth and fewer siblings.

    But parental wealth is far more unequally distributed than income – shaped by education and region.

    Therefore, inheritocracy is set to deepen economic inequality within today’s youth cohort.

    But this isn’t just about the ultra-wealthy passing down mansions. Most inheritances involve an ordinary home or proceeds from its sale.

    Housing, once central to middle-class stability, now determines who can build wealth and who will struggle financially for life.

    Mounting mental health pressures

    Meanwhile, Australians today are borrowing more than ever. Default risk is rising fastest among under-30s as soaring interest rates, rent hikes, and cost-of-living pressures squeeze finances.

    It’s then no surprise Gen Z is more concerned about finances than any other generation.

    Financial stress is taking a heavy toll on young people’s mental health. Between 2007 and 2022, the prevalence of mental health disorders among young Australians surged by nearly 50%.

    The burden of disease from non-fatal conditions – measured in years of healthy life lost – has risen 7% since 2003. This is largely due to mental health disorders and substance abuse, which disproportionately affect young people.

    Growing up Indigenous

    At the deepest end of these struggles are Indigenous youth, who face far greater challenges than their non-Indigenous peers.

    Across nearly every measure – education, employment, health and incarceration – outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people remain significantly worse.

    While today’s Indigenous youth have achieved better outcomes compared to previous generations – 39% of Indigenous Australians aged 20+ had completed Year 12 in 2021, up from 19.4% in 2001 – these gains still lag behind non-Indigenous youth.

    Systemic barriers, institutional racism and intergenerational trauma continue to limit fair access to opportunities. This compounds inequalities and contributes to higher rates of mental ill-health, stress and suicide among Indigenous youth.

    The changing politics of being young

    Undoubtedly, a continued period of instability and psychological distress in formative years is also shaping the youngest generation’s political attitudes and behaviours.

    With fewer assets to conserve compared to their parents or grandparents, they are more likely to lean more to the left politically, and this won’t change with age.

    Yet, they remain engaged, thanks in part to compulsory voting, but are also abandoning party loyalties.



    Read more:
    I looked at 35 years of data to see how Australians vote. Here’s what it tells us about the next election

    Australian Election Study data shows 18–30-year-olds were more interested in politics in 2022 than in 1998 (67% vs 63%). At the same time, they were more likely to change votes during campaigns (43% vs 30%) and less likely to consistently vote for the same party (28% vs 40%).

    Their right-wing identification has nearly halved since 1998, with the youth vote increasingly favouring left-wing parties (75% vs 61%).

    However, younger Australians’ diverse digital news habits add to their political unpredictability. With 60% of Gen Z relying short-form videos, podcasts, and social media platforms for news in 2024, they are increasingly exposed to fragmented, algorithm-driven content.

    This shift, coupled with rising concerns about misinformation, contributes to their volatility as voters.

    Overall, young Australians are coming of age in an era where hard work no longer guarantees security. How Australia adapts to this shifting economic and political reality will shape the country’s future for decades to come.

    This piece is part of a series on how Australia has changed since the year 2000. You can read other pieces in the series here.

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

    – ref. Every generation thinks they had it the toughest, but for Gen Z, they’re probably right – https://theconversation.com/every-generation-thinks-they-had-it-the-toughest-but-for-gen-z-theyre-probably-right-249604

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Antarctic bases are hotbeds of stress and violence. Space stations could face the same challenges

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Kaiser, PhD Candidate, School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania

    The South African National Antarctic Expedition research base, SANAE IV, at Vesleskarvet, Queen Maud Land, Antarctica.
     Dr Ross Hofmeyr/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

    Earlier this week, reports emerged that a scientist at South Africa’s SANAE IV Antarctic research base had accused a colleague of physical assault.

    We research Antarctic governance and crime in isolated, confined and extreme environments such as Antarctic and space stations. Rebecca specifically investigates how station cultures evolve in isolation and what factors significantly influence conflict – and what can be done to improve safety in these environments.

    What happened on SANAE IV?

    SANAE IV is located on the edge of a steep cliff in Vesleskarvet in east Antarctica. The alleged assault stemmed from a dispute over a task the team leader wanted the team to do. In an email published by the South African Sunday Times, the alleged victim said the alleged attacker had also:

    threatened to kill [name withheld], creating an environment of fear and intimidation. I remain deeply concerned about my own safety, constantly wondering if I might become the next victim.

    Psychologists are now in touch with the research team. They aren’t due to leave the extremely isolated and remote base until December.

    This latest incident fits within a broader pattern of crime and misconduct in Antarctica. Research stations on the icy continent are often portrayed as hubs of scientific cooperation. But history has shown they can also become pressure cookers of psychological strain and violence.

    Multiple cases of misconduct

    There have been multiple cases of misconduct in Antarctica over the years.

    In 1959, a scientist at Russia’s Vostok Station allegedly attacked his colleague with an ice axe after losing a game of chess. In 2018, another Russian research station became the site of a stabbing. The alleged cause? Spoiled book endings.

    In 1984, the leader of Argentina’s Almirante Brown Station set fire to the facility after being ordered to stay through the winter. This resulted in the station’s evacuation.

    The 2000 death of an astrophysicist at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station was a suspected murder.

    And recent investigations into sexual harassment at multiple Antarctic stations highlight ongoing safety concerns.

    Drivers of conflict

    Research suggests several psychological and social factors contribute to conflict in remote locations such as Antarctica. These include prolonged isolation, extreme environmental conditions, and the necessity of constant close contact.

    In combination, these factors can amplify even minor frustrations. And over time, the lack of external social support, the monotony of daily routines, and the psychological weight of confinement can lead to heightened emotional responses and conflict.

    Without structured outlets for stress relief and effective de-escalation mechanisms (such as gyms, libraries, or quiet spaces where mediation between people can happen), tensions can reach breaking points.

    Power dynamics also play a crucial role. With limited external oversight, leadership structures and informal hierarchies take on an outsized influence. Those in positions of authority have significant control over how disputes are resolved. This has the potential to exacerbate tensions rather than reducing them.

    The process for reporting and responding to incidents in these kinds of environments also remains inconsistent. There’s a lack of policing, and traditional justice systems are also largely absent. Many stations rely on administrative action and internal conflict resolution mechanisms, rather than legal enforcement.

    But these mechanisms can be biased or inadequate. In turn, this can leave victims of harassment or violence with few options. It can also lead to more conflict.



    Read more:
    Antarctic stations are plagued by sexual harassment – it’s time for things to change

    From Antarctica to space

    As Antarctica and space become more accessible for research and commercial ventures, proactive approaches to crime and conflict prevention in these remote and extreme environments is vital.

    The psychological and social challenges observed in Antarctic stations provide a valuable model for understanding potential conflicts in long-duration space missions. Lessons learned from incidents in Antarctica can inform astronaut selection, training, and onboard conflict resolution strategies.

    A key area requiring refinement is psychological screening for personnel.

    Current screening methods may not fully account for how individuals will react to the social shift that takes place in a remote environment. This includes the altering of attitudes, personal priorities and tolerances.

    More advanced stress tolerance assessments and social adaptability training could improve candidate selection. It could also reduce the likelihood of conflicts escalating to violence.

    It’s also vital that we gain a better understanding of the unique conflict dynamics that evolve in these equally unique environments.

    Research can help. So too can thorough investigations of incidents, such as the one that allegedly occurred at SANAE IV.

    This knowledge can be used to recognise early signs of potential conflicts. It can also be integrated into case study-based training modules for expeditioners prior to their deployment. These training modules should include role-playing scenarios, crisis intervention techniques, and integrating the lived experiences of past expeditioners.

    This would better equip personnel to navigate interpersonal challenges.

    Going to extremes

    The recent alleged events at SANAE IV are indicative of a broader pattern of human behaviour in extreme environments.

    If we are to successfully expand scientific exploration and habitation in these settings, we must acknowledge the realities of human conflict and develop strategies to ensure the safety and wellbeing of those who live and work in these challenging conditions.

    Studying crime and conflict in environments such as Antarctica is not just about understanding the past. It’s about safeguarding the future of exploration – whether on Earth’s harshest frontier or in the depths of space.

    Hanne E F Nielsen receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Dutch Research Council.

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

    – ref. Antarctic bases are hotbeds of stress and violence. Space stations could face the same challenges – https://theconversation.com/antarctic-bases-are-hotbeds-of-stress-and-violence-space-stations-could-face-the-same-challenges-252720

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: What’s the difference between baking powder and baking soda? It’s subtle, but significant

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nathan Kilah, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, University of Tasmania

    Karynf/Shutterstock

    There is something special about sharing baked goods with family, friends and colleagues. But I’ll never forget the disappointment of serving my colleagues rhubarb muffins that had failed to rise. They were dense, rubbery and an embarrassment to the reputation of chemists as good cooks (#ChemistsWhoCook feeds on social media are full of delicious food).

    The cause of my failure was an imbalance between the acidity of rhubarb and the chemical raising agents I used in baking.

    Both baking powder and baking soda can play a role in giving baked goods their bubble-filled texture and taste. They are sold side-by-side in the supermarket, and have similar uses. But what’s the difference between them and how can we use those differences to our advantage?

    What’s in the box?

    A quick look at the packaging shows the difference between the two products.

    Baking soda contains one ingredient: sodium hydrogen carbonate, also known as sodium bicarbonate or simply bicarb. Baking soda is well known for its uses in cleaning, cooking and deodorising.

    Baking powder is typically a mixture of three ingredients: baking soda, an acid, and a starch derived from corn, rice or wheat. The starch makes it easier to measure the powder and also prevents the acid and base from reacting prematurely in the pantry. Baking powder is used exclusively for cooking.

    The common ingredient in both products is the baking soda. This salt can be purified from natural sources, or can be prepared synthetically.

    The acid is the key

    Baking soda is a base, which means it can chemically react with acids. This fizzy reaction produces bubbles of carbon dioxide, water and a mix of new salts. Baking soda can also release carbon dioxide gas when it is heated at temperatures above 80°C.

    When you mix baking soda into a cake batter, you will see some initial chemical activation by food acids. This causes bubbles to form and the mixture to rise.

    The acids come from other ingredients in the mix, such as yogurt, buttermilk, or the rhubarb in my failed muffins. Too much acid, and the majority of the carbon dioxide will be released at this batter stage.

    Once you place the mixture in the hot oven, the high temperature will form further carbon dioxide bubbles. This thermal activation forms a new salt, sodium carbonate, which can give a residual taste and “soapy” mouthfeel if there’s too much of it left in the final product.

    Baking soda produces bubbles when mixed with acid, and when exposed to a high temperature in the oven.
    SergeyKlopotov/Shutterstock

    Mixing baking powder into a cake batter will also result in chemical activation to form bubbles. The baking soda in the mixture will react with the acid included in the baking powder mix, as well as any acidic ingredients in the batter.

    The type of acid included in the baking powder can subtly change the way the baking powder behaves. The more soluble the acid in the batter, the faster the carbon dioxide will form bubbles.

    Recipes that ask for both baking powder and baking soda are likely looking to do two things: neutralise an abundance of food acid from another ingredient, and provide time-delayed, temperature-activated rising.

    Baking soda can also increase the surface browning of food by enhancing the Maillard reaction. This class of reactions results in delicious chemical transformations in roasted coffee, seared steaks, baked bread and more.

    Meanwhile an excess of baking soda can change the appearance of foods, for example turning blueberry anthocyanins green in muffins or pancakes.

    Too much sodium carbonate left over during baking can contribute to a ‘soapy’ mouthfeel – a real risk for scones, for example.
    Zain Abba/Pexels

    Can I substitute baking powder and baking soda?

    Baking (like chemistry) is a precise science. It’s best not to substitute baking soda for baking powder or vice-versa: they have subtly different chemical effects.

    If you really need a substitution, the general rule is that you need three times the baking powder for the equivalent quantity of baking soda (so, if the recipe asks for a teaspoon of baking soda, you’d add three teaspoons of baking powder).

    But it’s not a precise conversion: it doesn’t take into account the key role of acid that’s already in the baking powder. This could affect the final acid-base balance in your recipe.

    You can compensate by adding an acid such as cream of tartar or citric acid. But it can be difficult to get the relative quantities of acid and base correct. These acids are also likely to promote immediate release of carbon dioxide, with less left to activate in the oven – potentially leading to a dense bake.

    You definitely shouldn’t substitute baking powder for baking soda when cleaning. The acid in the baking powder will neutralise any cleaning activity of the sodium bicarbonate, while the starch may leave a sticky, streaky mess.

    It’s best to keep both baking powder and baking soda in your pantry for their distinct uses. Be sure to share whatever delicious treats you bake with others, as well as sharing your new knowledge of the bubbly chemistry contained within.

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

    – ref. What’s the difference between baking powder and baking soda? It’s subtle, but significant – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-difference-between-baking-powder-and-baking-soda-its-subtle-but-significant-251050

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Vengeful ghost cat, divorce lizard, phantom horse: the animals that haunted Ancient Rome and Greece

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Willis, PhD Candidate, Classics and Ancient History, University of Newcastle

    djkett/Shutterstock

    You wake up at night sensing a weight on your legs that you thought was your pet dog – only to remember they died years ago. Or perhaps you know someone who swears they can still hear their childhood cat moving around the house, scratching at the door at night.

    Tales of ghost animals in our modern world are often framed as a comfort; the beloved pet returning to visit. But this has not always been the case.

    In ancient Greece and Rome, you might assume that the close relations between humans and animals would result in many tales of animal ghosts, but this is not the case. In fact, such stories are actually incredibly rare.

    And the handful of examples that do exist depict the ghostly animals not as friendly visitors but as mere tools for humans – often to do evil.

    1. Revenge of the ghost cat

    One such example comes from the Greek Magical Papyri, a document from Graeco-Roman Egypt that’s written mostly in ancient Greek.

    This handbook of spells and magic rituals was used by professional magicians dating from the second century BCE to the fifth century CE.

    It includes a spell that allows a practitioner of magic to use a ghost cat to get revenge on their enemy.

    This spell, listed in the document as “PGM III 1-164” does not have a specific goal but is described as suitable for:

    every ritual purpose: a charm to restrain charioteers in a race, a charm for sending dreams, a binding love charm, and a charm to cause separation and enmity.

    A translation note observes that all of these are forms of malicious magic.

    In this spell, the ghost cat is a mere tool of a nefarious human.
    Evgrafova Svetlana/Shutterstock

    The focus of this spell is the ritual drowning of a cat. While holding the cat’s body underwater, the magician recites an incantation and calls to the “cat-faced god[ess]” to inform them of the mistreatment that their sacred animal is suffering.

    However, the magician boldly lies to the god, claiming that it is their chosen human target who is responsible for the killing.

    The enterprising magician then offers a solution to this affront, asking the god to allow the cat to return as a ghost to serve them as a daimon (a supernatural being with mystical powers).

    With the god’s support the magician was then free to curse or bind their chosen victim, suitably reframing the action as the cat’s own revenge against its presumed murderer.

    2. The divorce lizard

    Our second example also comes from the Greek Magical Papyri (listed as “PGM LXI. 39-71”).

    Like many erotic spells of antiquity, this spell was designed to attract a chosen target to the magician.

    However, some targets were easier to attract than others.

    This text offers a ritual solution to would-be magicians whose chosen victim was already married. By harnessing the power of another ghostly animal daimon, this ritual aims to destroy the marriage.

    The text begins by instructing the magician to find a spotted lizard “from the place where bodies are mummified”, kill it with hot coals and make it into a ghostly daimon.

    Take one lizard ‘from the place where bodies are mummified’…
    Cheshir.002/Shutterstock

    While the lizard is dying, the magician recites an incantation. This spell aims to destroy the couple’s relationship by making them hate each other.

    Later, hiding outside the couple’s home with the lizard’s ashes, the magician calls upon the newly dead lizard to return as a ghost daimon and force the target to abandon her marital home using its supernatural powers.

    Once complete, the target would become especially vulnerable to an attraction spell.

    3. The ghostly cavalry

    The final example comes from a document known as Descriptions of Greece, written by Greek traveller and geographer Pausanias in the second century CE.

    The author recounts a local tale about a haunted field where the Battle of Marathon took place in 490 BCE.

    Here, Pausanias claims, the sounds of “horses neighing and men fighting” can be heard every night as the ghosts of fallen Greek and Persian soldiers continue to do battle.

    Interestingly, Pausanias is careful to warn his readers that those who deliberately seek out these ghosts will suffer their wrath. Thankfully, though, anyone that stumbles upon them by accident will remain safe.

    Unlike the first two examples, these ghost horses are not facilitated by magic or divine power. So, why were they believed to return as ghosts when other horses did not? Just as the ghosts of infantry men retained their swords and shields so they could continue to battle each night, the horses remained an essential tool for the ghosts of the cavalrymen.

    The sound of ‘horses neighing and men fighting’ can be heard at one battlefield, Greek traveller Pausanias reports.
    knight of silence/Shutterstock

    Animals with a ghostly purpose

    These examples provide a fascinating window into the perception of animals in antiquity.

    It is well evidenced that the Greeks and Romans adored their pets, and in everyday life animals were given many different roles in society.

    However, after death these roles are drastically narrowed. In ancient times, animals seem only to return as ghosts in situations where they exist as tools for human use.

    It remains to be seen what afterlife the ancients believed would be experienced by animals without a ghostly purpose.

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

    – ref. Vengeful ghost cat, divorce lizard, phantom horse: the animals that haunted Ancient Rome and Greece – https://theconversation.com/vengeful-ghost-cat-divorce-lizard-phantom-horse-the-animals-that-haunted-ancient-rome-and-greece-249482

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The viability of some charities could rest on how they’re taxed – we should be cautious about changing the rules

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Juliet Chevalier-Watts, Associate Professor, Law School, University of Waikato

    Ground Picture/Shutterstock

    There have long been calls for New Zealand’s charity-linked businesses to lose their tax exemption status. Under the current rules, companies such as Sanitarium, which is wholly owned by the Seventh-day Adventist church pay no income tax.

    This could all change very soon.

    Inland Revenue recently opened consultation on rule changes that would include taxing business income unrelated to a charity’s charitable purpose. The consultation period runs until the end of this month.

    But overhauling the tax rules could undermine the sustainability of some charities, making it harder for them to continue their work.

    Our ongoing research looks into the economic contribution of the sector and, in particular, focuses on religious charities. The total value of the services provided by these charities in 2018 alone was NZ$6.1 billion – the equivalent of around 3% of annual government expenditure.

    Other studies have shown the substantial contributions charities make to education, sports, the arts, the environment and other activities that don’t get enough support from the government.

    Making a profit

    There are more than 29,000 registered charities in New Zealand. To register as one, an entity must meet strict legal criteria entrenched in the Charities Act 2005.

    Charities have to fall within one of four legally-recognised charitable purposes: relief of poverty, advancement of education, advancement of religion, and any other purposes beneficial to the community.

    The government recognises the high bar charities have to meet by giving some tax exemptions. This allows the charities to focus on providing benefits to communities rather than having to divert funds to the government. The exemptions are on both passive income (stocks, for example) as well as business income.

    But the issue is not as simple as certain criticisms might imply.

    Charities need to sustain themselves over time – particularly as donations fluctuate. Untaxed profits from charity-linked businesses allow them to do this, and changing the rules could undermine future cash flow for these groups.

    This argument should not be overstated. Removing the exemption won’t completely wipe out a charity’s profits. But it takes a portion of income that would then need to be covered by an increase in donations.

    The Inland Revenue discussion paper also only offers examples of businesses in the primary industry (farming, for example) and manufacturing sectors. But it is silent about the financial and services sectors. It appears charities’ income from interest or financial assets will still be exempt.

    This is not necessarily a bad thing.

    Holding assets such as a portfolio of stocks or bonds can improve charities’ ability to plan for the long term. But the tax rules should remain consistent between financial assets and non-financial assets, such as a farm or business.

    The Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing Company, the manufacturer of Weet-Bix, Marmite and other well known grocery items, is wholly owned by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and doesn’t pay income tax.
    Adam Constanza/Shutterstock

    Will the gains be worth the cost?

    To better balance the contribution of charities to wider society with efforts to mak tax rules fair, there are a few points the government needs to consider.

    • Firstly, society benefits from having a wide variety of charities. Allowing them to build a stable financial base allows them to grow and continue to do their work.

    • There will always be gaps in what the government is able to provide. It’s arguably more efficient to address unmet need with charities than by leaving it to individuals to find donations themselves.

    • Charities should be able to structure themselves in ways that make them less dependent on donations.

    • The government needs to also consider what it would cost to overhaul the current tax rules when it comes to charities. Administrative costs for everyone could end up being greater than the revenue gained.

    • Finally, the impact of the proposed changes would extend beyond religious organisations to include gaming trusts, universities and asset-holding charities that provide significant funding for sports, arts, cultural and welfare organisations.

    Having public consultation on Inland Revenue’s proposed changes is a good start, but it is just that.

    More needs to be done to understand the implications for communities should tax changes occur – and what could be lost if charities are substantially less sustainable. So, if the government delivers a plan, let’s read and evaluate the small print.

    The authors thank Steven Moe, Partner at Parryfield Lawyers, for his significant help and mahi in contributing to this article.

    Juliet Chevalier-Watts receives funding from The Wilberforce Foundation and the InterChurch Bureau.

    Over four decades I have served as a volunteer and trustee for a range of development, educational, health and religious charities.

    – ref. The viability of some charities could rest on how they’re taxed – we should be cautious about changing the rules – https://theconversation.com/the-viability-of-some-charities-could-rest-on-how-theyre-taxed-we-should-be-cautious-about-changing-the-rules-251137

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Australia’s PBS means consumers pay less for expensive medicines. Here’s how this system works

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bonny Parkinson, Associate Professor, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University

    The United States pharmaceutical lobby has complained to US President Donald Trump that Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is damaging their profits and has urged Trump to put tariffs on pharmaceutical imports from Australia.

    Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defended the scheme, saying Australia’s pharmaceutical subsidy scheme was “not up for negotiation”. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he would also protect the PBS, which was the “envy of the world”.

    But what exactly is the PBS, and why does it matter?

    How did the PBS start?

    In the early 1900s, Australians had to pay for medicines out-of-pocket. Some could get free or cheap medicines at public hospitals or through Friendly Society Dispensaries, but otherwise access was restricted to those who could afford to pay.

    At the time, few effective medicines were available. But the development of insulin and penicillin in the 1920s made access to medicines much more important.

    The Constitution gave the federal government limited powers in the provision of health and welfare, which were largely the responsibility of the states. After World War II, the federal government wanted to expand these powers but it encountered several constitutional roadblocks.

    A rare successful referendum in 1946 changed that, enabling the National Health Act 1953 to pass. This established the PBS as we know it today.

    How does the PBS work in practice?

    The PBS covers the cost of medicines prescribed by doctors. Most are dispensed at community pharmacies (such as treatments for heart disease, the pill and antibiotics), but some more expensive ones are available at public hospitals or specialist treatment centres (such as chemotherapies and IVF medicines).

    In 2023–24 there were 930 different medicines and 5,164 brands listed on the PBS, costing the government $17.7 billion.

    The government negotiates the price of each medicine with the pharmaceutical company. Pharmacies then buy these medicines from wholesalers or companies.

    When a patient fills a prescription at a pharmacy, they pay a co-payment. The government pays the difference between the agreed price and the co-payment to the pharmacy – costs that may amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

    There are two co-payments: one for concession card holders ($7.70) and one for the general consumer ($31.60). When a patient hits the annual spending limit (safety net threshold), the co-payment falls to $0 for concession patients and $7.70 for the general consumer.

    Overall, patients contribute 8.4% to the total cost of the PBS, while the government pays the rest.

    How are medicine prices set?

    The PBS is split into two categories:

    – F1: new, patent-protected medicines with no competition

    – F2: medicines with multiple brands, including generics.

    F1 medicines

    To be listed on the PBS, a new medicine goes through the following process:

    1. It’s evaluated for safety, efficacy and quality.

    2. A panel of experts (including doctors, pharmacists, epidemiologists, health economists, health consumer advocates and a pharmaceutical industry representative) recommends which medicines should be listed on the PBS, based on effectiveness, safety, cost-effectiveness and the total cost on the budget of the medicine versus alternative treatments.

    3. If the panel recommends a medicine, the price and details of the listing may be further negotiated with the government. (If the panel rejects a medicine, companies may revise their application and re-submit.)

    4. Finally, the health minister, and subsequently the Cabinet, formally approves or rejects the panel’s recommendation. If approved, the medicine is listed on the PBS.

    F2 medicines

    Generic medicine companies may apply to list another brand on the PBS after a medicine loses patent protection. When this happens, the medicine moves from F1 to F2. Immediately, it incurs a mandatory price discount.

    Generic medicine companies may offer pharmacists discounts on the PBS list price (for example, ten for the price of nine). Pharmacists then encourage patients to switch to the cheaper medicine.

    Companies must disclose these discounts to the government, resulting in further price reductions.

    Is the PBS system unique?

    Australia is not special. Many countries use similar assessments to determine whether governments should subsidise new medicines, including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom, Canada’s Drug Agency, and Pharmac in New Zealand.

    Small differences exist, including whether the list of medicines is a positive (and they’re subsidised) or negative (meaning they’re not subsidised), whether the lists are established at the central level (such as the PBS in Australia) or local level (such as by province in Canada) or a mixture, and how co-payments are set.

    Generic medicine companies in Australia may offer pharmacists discounts on their products.
    National Cancer Institute/Unsplash

    The biggest outlier is the US. Similar to its health system, the medicines system is a complex and decentralised mix of public and private organisations, including government agencies, independent organisations, health-care providers and payers such as health insurers.

    What are the benefits of the PBS?

    The PBS ensures all Australian patients have access to highly effective medicines. This contributes to a high life expectancy, while keeping health-care costs low relative to other developed countries.

    This has been achieved by keeping prices down for both F1 and F2 medicines. By doing so, it creates room in the government budget to fund other new medicines.

    Without the PBS, either taxes or co-payments would have to increase, or fewer medicines funded.

    Other benefits include having a level playing field for all medicines, while maintaining flexibility to fund highly effective medicines for patients with unmet needs.

    What are the drawbacks of the PBS system?

    No system is without its drawbacks and risks. The PBS’s drawbacks include:

    • limited patient involvement in the process
    • the high frequency of re-submissions and delays to PBS listing
    • companies being unwilling to submit off-patent medicines for PBS listing due to high costs and low rewards
    • the ongoing lack of high-quality clinical evidence about medicines to treat rare diseases and certain patient populations, such as children.

    Another issue is medicine shortages. When PBS-listed brands aren’t available due to supply chain issues, other non-PBS listed brands may be available at full cost to the patient. Increased medicine costs can discourage patients from filling necessary prescriptions, which can have longer-term impacts on health and health expenditure.

    Finally, companies have argued Australia’s small market size plus low PBS prices can make it financially unviable to bring new medicines to Australia.

    The PBS is a crucial part of Australia’s health system, making essential medicines affordable, while keeping costs down. Like any system, it has its challenges and there is ongoing debate about whether and how the system should change.



    Read more:
    Will the US trade war push up the price of medicines in Australia? Will there be drug shortages?

    Bonny Parkinson receives funding from the Australian government to conduct evaluations of medicines to be listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. She also supervises students funded by PhD scholarships (received by the student, not Bonny Parkinson), including the Macquarie University Research Excellence Scholarship and Macquarie University Australian Pharmaceutical Scholarship, with support from six pharmaceutical companies: Amgen Australia, Janssen Australia, MSD Australia, Pfizer Australia, Roche Australia, and Abbvie Australia.

    – ref. Australia’s PBS means consumers pay less for expensive medicines. Here’s how this system works – https://theconversation.com/australias-pbs-means-consumers-pay-less-for-expensive-medicines-heres-how-this-system-works-252736

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Grattan on Friday: Dutton says he could handle Donald Trump, but can any Australian PM?

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

    In the Trump age, how the next government, whether Labor or Coalition, will handle foreign affairs, defence and trade is shaping as crucially important.

    It’s a weird time when your friends become almost as problematic as your potential enemies, but that’s the situation we face.

    As many have observed, Donald Trump’s long shadow hangs over our election, at a time of multiple other uncertainties. Australia, like other countries, has already felt the brunt of the president’s tariffs policy, and the government is bracing for what may be worse to come with the next round of Trump announcements in early April.

    So what face would a Peter Dutton government present to the world? And how would he handle Trump?

    On Thursday at the Lowy Institute, the opposition leader brought his international policies together. He presented a mix of bipartisanship and differences with the government. Some of the latter weren’t so much fundamental disagreements as claims Labor had failed and the Coalition would be more competent or effective.

    The most frustrating part of Dutton’s speech and answers to questions was the same old problem. For crucial details, particularly on defence spending but also on the future of foreign aid under the Coalition, we were told we’d have to wait for announcements that always seem over the horizon.

    Dutton says as prime minister he wouldn’t resile from taking on the United States when necessary. With fears about US drug companies spearheading a war on Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, he declared, “I will stand up and defend the PBS […] against any attempt to undermine its integrity, including by major pharmaceutical companies”.

    In arguing that, in general, he’d be able to deal with Trump, Dutton invoked the previous Coalition government’s success with Trump Mark 1 (though Mark 2 is very different), and the power of AUKUS to anchor relations. His early priority would be to visit Washington.

    The question Australians should ask themselves is this: “Who is better placed to manage the US relationship and engage with President Trump?” I believe that […] I will be able to work with the Trump administration Mark 2 to get better outcomes for Australia. I will talk to [Trump] about how our national interests are mutual interests.

    But, as he acknowledged, “Australia’s national interests do not always align perfectly with the interests of partners – even of our closest allies”. The way Trump is operating at the moment, it may be that a PM of either stripe will find him impossible on certain issues.

    Dutton was once an uncomplicated hawk on China. Now, he is a mix of hawkish and dovish. It’s true things have changed greatly in Australia-China relations in recent times, but another reason for Dutton’s more nuanced position is highlighted by the line in his speech that “Australia has a remarkable Chinese diaspora”. The opposition leader has an eye to the vote of Chinese-Australians.

    Dutton now walks a line that is critical of China militarily, but anxious to promote and expand the now-restored trading relationship.

    Currently, there are two major, hot conflicts in the world: the Ukraine war and the violence in the Middle East.

    On Ukraine, the Coalition and Labor are at one in their backing for President Volodymyr Zelensky, although Dutton criticises aspects of the government’s delivery of support. But they are at odds over Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s willingness to contribute to a peacekeeping force.

    “Australia can’t afford the multibillion-dollar sustainment price tag for having troops based in an ill-defined and endless European presence,” Dutton said.

    The “multibillion-dollar” price tag was overegged, but many would agree there are sound arguments for not deploying Australian forces on such a venture. On the other hand, if an Albanese government did so, you can bet the commitment would be relatively token.

    The big gulf between Labor and Coalition is over the Middle East. This has grown from a marginally different reaction after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israelis to a major disagreement now.

    Dutton claims Labor “has viewed our relationship with Israel through a domestic policy lens and with a view to its political imperatives” – that is, the Muslim vote.

    Based on what Dutton says, a change of government would bring a substantial recalibration of Australia’s Middle East policy. One of Dutton’s “first orders of business” would be to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “help rebuild the relationship Labor has trashed”. He added:

    Israel will be able to count on our support again in the United Nations. And given UNRWA [the Palestinian relief agency] has employed terrorists from Hamas who participated in the 7 October attacks, the organisation will no longer receive funding from a government I lead.

    The Coalition repeatedly says Australia needs to spend more on defence. It has announced $3 billion to reinstate the fourth squadron of F-35 joint strike fighters, but not said the size of the defence envelope it believes is required. Dutton said:

    We need to do nothing short of re-thinking defence, re-tooling the ADF, and re-energising our domestic defence industry, and that’s exactly what our government will do.

    That sounds like a massive task, and so it’s more than time we saw the plan and cost of it. Would the Coalition be willing to go to around 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence spending, as the Trump administration wants? That would require a lot of sacrifice in other policy areas.

    The Australian Financial Review this week reported Coalition sources saying it is weighing up boosting defence spending to at least 2.5% by 2029.

    When the Coalition talks up its record in defence, one should also remember the failures, chief among them the delays and chopping and changing in its submarine program. A sub-optimal performance has been bipartisan.

    Dutton was questioned on his position on aid to Pacific countries. Should Australia step up given the void left by the US shutting down aid? If a Dutton government did that, would it mean an overall aid increase, or cuts in the aid budget elsewhere?

    This was left as another black hole, although he did say the Australian government should make representations to the US for the reinstatement of particular aid programs the US had cut.

    I don’t agree with some of the funding that they’ve withdrawn, and I think it is detrimental to the collective interests in the region, and I hope that there can be a discussion between our governments about a sensible pathway forward in that regard.

    Good luck with that.

    It is hard to avoid the conclusion the overall aid program would be an easy target for the Coalition in the search for savings.

    When leaders talk, what they don’t say can be as important as what they do.

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

    – ref. Grattan on Friday: Dutton says he could handle Donald Trump, but can any Australian PM? – https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-dutton-says-he-could-handle-donald-trump-but-can-any-australian-pm-252511

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How can you tell if your child’s daycare is good quality?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Victoria Minson, Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education, Australian Catholic University

    PhotoMavenStock/Shutterstock

    This week, we heard claims of shocking abuse and neglect in Australian childcare centres on ABC’s Four Corners program.

    While 91% of services met or exceeded the national standards as of February 2025, there have also been reports of centres operating with unqualified staff, abusive practices and nutritionally substandard food.

    How can you tell if your child is going to a good quality childcare service?



    Read more:
    Amid claims of abuse, neglect and poor standards, what is going wrong with childcare in Australia?

    What are the standards?

    Australian’s childcare regulator – the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority or ACECQA – oversees national quality standards for early childhood education and care.

    Services are assessed and given a rating across seven areas including the staffing, children’s health and safety and the educational program. The ratings note whether services are “exceeding”, “meeting” or “working towards” the national standards. In some cases, they may note “significant improvement [is] required”.

    These ratings are public (you can search the national register of services) and are a useful starting point for parents.

    However, they may not reflect the current situation in a service. As the Productivity Commission noted, many services assessed as “meeting” the national standards (which
    comprise the bulk of the sector) have a gap of more than four years between assessments. Services with lower ratings are reassessed more frequently.

    But there are other ways for parents to assess the quality of their child’s early childhood education.



    Read more:
    We need more than police checks: how parents and educators can keep childcare services safe from abuse

    Do educators want to work there?

    If early childhood educators want to work at your childcare service, this is a strong sign it is a good quality service.

    One of the major issues in the early childhood sector is staff retention. Excessive workloads, not being valued by employers and poor pay are some of the reasons early childhood educators leave their jobs.

    This is a huge problem, because high-quality staff are key to providing high-quality education and care, built on strong, stable relationships with children.

    If you are considering a service, a key question to ask is how long educators have been working there? How often do they have to replace staff?

    If you are already at a service, ask yourself, are there consistent staff at drop off/pick up? Are there familiar relief educators to cover absences? Or is there unexplained high turnover?

    As a bottom line, all educators should be warm and caring and get to know every child and their family.

    Seeing the same educators when you drop off and pick up is a sign the service has a stable, committed workforce.
    PhotoMavenStock/Shutterstock

    What is the centre itself like?

    Some daycare centres market themselves to parents by offering a “barista made” coffee in the morning, yoga classes and designer interiors.

    While this might appeal to adult tastes, it is important to think about whether the centre is set up to be suitable and fun for children. For example:

    • is there space to play outside, with natural materials? It is recommended toddlers and preschoolers are physically active for at least three hours per day

    • are there plenty of different play options to appeal to different interests and different children? Or does nothing seem to be organised?

    • are toys and equipment in good condition? Are pencils sharpened and ready to use? Are there puzzle pieces missing?

    It’s important for children to have different options for play, both inside and outside.
    CrispyPork/Shutterstock



    Read more:
    Real dirt, no fake grass and low traffic – what to look for when choosing a childcare centre

    What about the activities and educational program?

    In Australia, centres need to provide play-based learning opportunities, which support children’s wellbeing, learning and development.

    This is not about teaching children to read and do algebra before they start school. It is about supporting children to have positive play experiences, so the associated learning is fun and leaves children wanting to know (and do) more.

    Services should provide children with lots of opportunities to explore in age-appropriate ways. For example, toddlers may have a sandpit with multiple tools and toys. Three- and four-year-olds may work on projects, such as building kites, or go on excursions in their local community.

    Educators should be involved in this play. Sometimes they may act as a partner, helping to extend children’s imaginations. Other times, they may support from the sideline, encouraging a child to climb to a higher part of the climbing frame than yesterday.

    They should not be telling children what to do all the time. It’s important for children to be given the time and space to test out their theories about how the world works.

    Some things to look out for include:

    • is there “cookie cutter” art (where every piece of children’s art looks the same) on the wall? Or are children given the chance to express their creativity?

    • can toys be used in more than one way, in different areas (to encourage children’s agency)? Or are toys required to be kept in certain places?

    • can educators talk about the different things they are doing to stimulate and extend children’s play and interests?

    Families should also receive clear, regular communication about their child’s development and progress. If there are issues with behaviour, the centre should provide evidence-based support that respects the rights and dignity of children (rather than punishing or shaming them).

    Finally, does your child seem to have fun at childcare? Provided there are no other issues (such as separation anxiety), do they want to go and see their educators and friends? This is a good sign of a quality service that is building children’s sense of belonging.

    Need more information?

    If you have any concerns or need more information, try talking to your centre director first. Alternatively, you can contact the regulatory authority in your state or territory.

    Victoria Minson is the Course Coordinator for the Bachelor of Early Childhood Education (Birth to Five Years) (Accelerated) at Australian Catholic University. The Victorian version of the course has received funding from the Victorian government and Victorian Department of Education

    – ref. How can you tell if your child’s daycare is good quality? – https://theconversation.com/how-can-you-tell-if-your-childs-daycare-is-good-quality-252613

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Adelaide Festival gives a hopeful vision for the future of Australian contemporary dance

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Erin Brannigan, Associate Professor Theatre and Performance, UNSW Sydney

    Mass Movement. Morgan Sette/Adelaide Festival

    I arrived at Stephanie Lake’s premiere of Mass Movement a little late on my first day at Adelaide Festival.

    Walking down the hill from King William road towards Elder Park, the Torrens River was lit up in oranges and golds by the setting sun. A river of people came into view, winding from a thin spread on the hillside nearest me to a thick block of settled-in picnicers, back up the opposite hill to the bank of institutional buildings along the river.

    In the centre of this river, a stage crowded with performers in black and white waved and flowed: movements that passed along individuals juxtaposed with sharper unison actions, vocalisations and free-for-alls.

    I missed the solo performance that opened this outdoor performance, and the procession of dancers winding down onto the stage. But what I saw left an impression of an excellent community activation with many performers of all ages and training backgrounds, and an audience of family, friends and strangers here to see this part-human part-natural spectacle.

    Mass Movement featured 1,000 dancers, the most Stephanie Lake has ever worked with.
    Morgan Sette/Adelaide Festival

    This work sits within Lake’s body of spectacle-scale works that have become a signature for this important new-generation Australian choreographer. With 1,000 performers, the most she has ever worked with, whether bigger is better may be neither here nor there when the emphasis is on spectacle and community.

    One Single Action in an Ocean of Everything

    Established Melbourne-based choreographer Lucy Guerin’s mastery of the duet, her use of unison and tight spatial delineations, gestural detail and intensely demanding timing are all there in her most recent work, One Single Action in an Ocean of Everything.

    Dancers and choreographic collaborators Amber McCartney and Geoffrey Watson are up to the task and perfectly matched. McCartney is compact, precise but playful. Watson is more measured yet somehow looser and more sensual.

    The first half of the piece works intricate movements along a diagonal across the stage to downstage right, where a moon-like sphere hangs at head height.

    Lucy Guerin plays with themes of destruction, orthodoxy, disobedience, care and empathy.
    Gregory Lorenzutti/Adelaide Festival

    The dancers’ trajectory, and often their gaze, are locked on this object. In the upper corner on the floor are mallets. Taken up by the dancers, they become part of a percussive choreography. The spectacle of the dancers making their mark on time within the complex choreography locks us all into a ride that we anticipate will end with a smashed sphere.

    Guerin’s experience is evident in how she shapes a work. The opening sections with their tightrope-like structure are physically, temporally and spatially smashed as the material from the sphere flies across the stage.

    A broom is introduced by Watson. This precipitates a new relationship between the two dancers. Experiential chaos versus spatial order replaces the teamwork of the first half, as the two become constantly at odds with each other.

    Themes of destruction, orthodoxy, disobedience, care and empathy are not hard to draw out of this microcosm. The sound, by CS + Kreme, does great support work with its mechanical complexities, pounding meter and a high synthetic sound like a tap running in the next hotel room. The lighting design by Paul Lim is also a star.

    A Quiet Language

    A Quiet Language asks a tall order of Daniel Riley and co-director Brianna Kell: to create a performance work that spoke to the 60th anniversary of Australian Dance Theatre (ADT).

    Riley, a Wiradjuri man from Western New South Wales, took on the directorship of ADT in 2022 following Garry Stewart’s 20-year plus tenure, with Kell as artistic associate. The introduction of Indigenous leadership for the company is welcome. There is a history of cultural appropriation across many Australian dance artists, from Beth Dean and Rex Reid in the 1950s, to the complex case of Jiri Kylian’s Stamping Ground (1983) later performed by Bangarra Dance Theatre in 2019.

    It is well overdue that the rich and deep choreographic practices of our First Nations people are now being represented by leadership in a major dance company outside Bangarra.

    In A Quiet Language, the names of artists associated with the company flicker as the years scroll past on the horizontal screens at either end of the space. But the real homage might be in the tone and style of this work.

    Tie-dyed costumes by Ailsa Paterson, featuring an occasional headband, speak to the genesis of the company under the direction of Elizabeth Cameron Dalman across 1965–75.

    A Quiet Language is a homage to the choreographic history of ADT.
    Morgan Sette/ADT

    Dalman is credited as collaborator, and the company spent four weeks of development with this extraordinary artist now in her 90s.

    A Quiet Language begins with two female dancers, Yilin Kong and Zoe Wozniak, walking from one bank of audience to the other, directing their bold and curious gaze at us. They are accompanied by composer and musician Adam Page who remains on stage throughout.

    Sebastian Geilings, Zachary Lopez and Patrick O’Luanaigh join them with more playful provocations for the audience, making the school group in the bank opposite me squirm.

    We have met the dancers first as individuals, and the full cavalcade of ADT’s historical casts rests, virtually, behind the five young artists.

    This breaking of the fourth wall speaks to the radical new approach that Dalman’s work represented in the 1960s when contemporary approaches to dance were still emerging locally.

    The dancers move into group work that dominates the many phases of the piece, memorably a stormy section representing protest in theatre dance around the world in the 1960s.

    This is followed by a dark solo by Wozniak that heaves itself off the floor in tense, cramping movements, resonating with the suffering behind current international headlines.

    The dancers are credited with choreographic collaboration and it shows in their commitment to, and comfort within, the movement. This is delivered at an intense and unrelenting pitch throughout, recalling Stewart’s signature high-impact work. But the way the choreography is drawn to the floor – through tenacious connection or a giving-in that slides joyfully across its surface – feels fresh.

    The Walking Track

    I end my time in Adelaide with Karul Projects’ The Walking Track, presented by Vitalstatistix in Port Adelaide, where six performance pieces were commissioned by local First Nations dance and performance artists.

    These are dispersed on site along a walk hosted by Karul Projects’ artistic director, Thomas E.S. Kelly, a Minjungbal, Wiradjuri and Ni-Vanuatu man.

    Kelly established Karul Projects alongside Taree Sansbury, a local Kaurna, Narungga and Ngarrindjeri woman, in 2017 in Queensland, making this a rare First Nations dance company existing outside Bangarra Dance Theatre.

    The Walking Track shows the future of Australian contemporary dance is bright.
    Heath Britton/Vitalstatistix

    The all-female cast of artists – Adrianne Semmens, Alexis West, Caleena Sansbury, Janelle Egan, Kirsty Williams, Lilla Berry, Mel Koolmatrie and Pearl Berry – offered works-in-development that told stories of family, loss, displacement and environmental destruction.

    Their careful framing by Kelly on Country gave assurance that the future of Australian contemporary dance is bright.

    Walking with the small audience around Port Adelaide, I kept an eye out for the dolphins Kelly informed us were just below the surface and imagined the local Kaurna people who had gathered on the banks there before being moved on. I could feel a slowly turning tide that will, no doubt, inspire fresh creative and critical gains for Australian contemporary dance.

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

    – ref. Adelaide Festival gives a hopeful vision for the future of Australian contemporary dance – https://theconversation.com/adelaide-festival-gives-a-hopeful-vision-for-the-future-of-australian-contemporary-dance-252300

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: If NZ wants to decarbonise energy, we need to know which renewables deliver the best payback

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Brent, Professor and Chair in Sustainable Energy Systems, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

    Getty Images

    A national energy strategy for Aotearoa New Zealand was meant to be ready at the end of last year. As it stands, we’re still waiting for a cohesive, all-encompassing plan to meet the country’s energy demand today and in the future.

    One would expect such a plan to first focus on reducing energy demand through improved energy efficiency across all sectors.

    The next step should be greater renewable electrification of all sectors. However, questions remain about the cradle-to-grave implications of investments in these renewable resources.

    We have conducted life-cycle assessments of several renewable electricity generation technologies, including wind and solar, that the country is investing in now. We found the carbon and energy footprints are quite small and favourably complement our current portfolio of renewable electricity generation assets.

    Meeting future demand

    The latest assessments provided by the Ministry of Business, Employment and Innovation echo earlier work by the grid operator Transpower. Both indicate that overall demand for electricity could nearly double by 2050.

    Many researchers believe these scenarios are an underestimate. One study suggests the power generation capacity will potentially need to increase threefold over this period. Other modelling efforts project current capacity will need to increase 13 times, especially if we want to decarbonise all sectors and export energy carriers such as hydrogen.

    This is, of course, because we want all new generation to come from renewable resources, with much lower capacity factors (the percentage of the year they deliver power) associated with their variability.

    Additional storage requirements will also be enormous. Following the termination of work on a proposed pumped hydro project, other options need investigating.

    Wind and solar are becoming the primary renewable technologies.
    Shutterstock/Kyohei Miyazaki

    Building renewable generation

    The latest World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that wind and solar, primarily photovoltaic panels, are quickly taking over as the primary renewable technologies.

    This is also true in Aotearoa New Zealand. An updated version of the generation investment survey, commissioned by the Electricity Authority, shows most of the committed and actively pursued projects (to be commissioned by 2030) are solar photovoltaic and onshore wind farms.

    Offshore wind projects are on the horizon, too, but have been facing challenges such as proposed seabed mining in the same area and a lack of price stabilisation measures typical in other jurisdictions. New legislation aims to address some of these challenges.

    Distributed solar power (small-scale systems to power homes, buildings and communities) has seen near-exponential growth. Our analysis indicates wind (onshore and offshore) and distributed solar will make an almost equal contribution to power generation by 2050, with a slightly larger share by utility-scale solar.

    Cradle-to-grave analyses

    The main goal is to maintain a stable grid with secure and affordable electricity supply. But there are other sustainability considerations associated with what happens at the end of renewable technologies’ use and where their components come from.

    The IEA’s Global Critical Minerals Outlook shows the fast-growing global demand for a suite of materials with complex supply chains. We have also investigated the materials intensity of taking up these technologies in Aotearoa New Zealand, and discussed the greater dependence on those supply chains.

    The challenges in securing these metals in a sustainable manner include environmental and social impacts associated with the mining and processing of the materials and the manufacturing of different components that need to be transported for implementation here. There are also operating and maintenance requirements, including the replacement of components, and the dismantling of the assets in a responsible manner.

    We have undertaken comprehensive life-cycle assessments, based on international standards, of the recently commissioned onshore Harapaki wind farm, a proposed offshore wind farm in the South Taranaki Bight, a utility-scale solar farm in Waikato and distributed solar photovoltaic systems, with and without batteries, across the country.

    The usual metrics are energy inputs and carbon emissions because they describe the efficiency of these technologies. They are considered a first proxy of whether a technology is appropriate for a given context.

    Beyond that, we used the following specific metrics, as summarised in the table below:

    • GWP: global warming potential (carbon emissions during a technology’s life cycle per energy unit delivered).

    • CPBT: carbon payback time (how long a technology needs to be operational before its life cycle emissions equal the avoided emissions, either using the grid and its associated emissions or conventional natural gas turbines).

    • CED: cumulative energy demand over the life cycle of a technology.

    • EPBT: energy payback time (how long a technology needs to be operational before the electricity it generates equals the CED).

    • EROI: energy return on investment (the amount of usable energy delivered from an energy source compared to the energy required to extract, process and distribute that source, essentially quantifying the “profit” from energy production).

    There is much debate about the minimum energy return on investment that makes an energy source acceptable. A value of more than ten is generally viewed as positive.

    Life cycle assessment metrics of wind and solar power in Aotearoa New Zealand.
    Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, CC BY-SA

    For all technologies we assessed, the overall greenhouse gas emissions are lower than the grid emissions factor. Because of New Zealand’s already low-emissions grid, the carbon payback time is around three to seven years for utility-scale generation. But for small-scale, distributed generation it can be up to 13 years. If the displacement of gas turbines is considered, the payback is halved.

    Energy return on investment is above ten for all technologies, but utility-scale generation is better than distributed solar, with values of between 30 and 75.

    To put this into perspective, the energy return on investment for hydropower, if operated for 100 years, is reported to be 110. Utility-scale wind and solar being commissioned now have an operational life of 30 years but are typically expected to be refurbished.

    This means their energy return on investment is becoming comparable to hydropower.

    The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. If NZ wants to decarbonise energy, we need to know which renewables deliver the best payback – https://theconversation.com/if-nz-wants-to-decarbonise-energy-we-need-to-know-which-renewables-deliver-the-best-payback-251819

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: You can catch the ‘nocebo’ effect from family, friends – even social media. But what is it, actually?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cosette Saunders, PhD candidate, Sydney Placebo Lab, University of Sydney

    Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock

    In 1998, shortly after arriving for work, a Tennessee high-school teacher reported a “gasoline-like smell” and feeling dizzy. Soon after, many students and staff began reporting symptoms of chemical poisoning. Some 38 people had such extreme symptoms they were kept in hospital overnight.

    Yet investigators didn’t find any evidence the school had been contaminated.

    How could staff and students of this United States high school have had such extreme reactions without being exposed to a toxic agent?

    The answer is the “nocebo effect”.

    What is the nocebo effect?

    Most people have heard of the placebo effect, where a fake treatment can improve someone’s health because they believe it will help them.

    The nocebo effect is the opposite. It occurs when someone expects a negative outcome from a harmless treatment or situation, and this triggers worse health.

    The staff and students at the Tennessee high school believed they had been exposed to a toxic gas leak and expected symptoms. These negative expectations caused them to feel sick even though there was no gas leak.

    How is this relevant today?

    When a doctor prescribes you a new medicine, they need to warn about possible side effects, as part of you giving your informed consent.

    But knowing the side effects can cause you to expect them, and therefore lead you to experience more side effects.

    A large-scale review found nearly 73% of people in drug trials given a placebo and told about possible side-effects reported side effects despite taking no active treatment – an example of the nocebo effect.

    Placebo and nocebo effects can also affect the efficacy of real medical treatments.

    For example, in one study, participants who were led to expect a powerful painkiller would give them
    strong pain relief reported roughly twice as much pain relief compared to those who received the same drug without being told it was a painkiller. However, when participants were led to expect the same painkiller would worsen their pain, they had no pain relief – as if they hadn’t received the drug at all.

    Knowing the side effects can cause you to expect side effects and therefore experience more side effects.
    SpeedKingz/Shutterstock

    How do nocebo effects develop?

    We already know that simply warning people about possible side effects can make them more likely. We also know that past experiences with treatments shape what we expect and experience. If we have experienced pain from a treatment in the past, this can cause us to expect and experience more pain when we receive that treatment again.

    Now there’s growing evidence nocebo effects can also be transmitted socially between peers. In other words, we can “catch” them from other people like a cold, except the transmission happens simply by observing others.

    Negative expectations can spread from person to person, as shown in one experiment. Observing someone experience more pain in response to a treatment made the observer feel more pain in response to the same treatment when it was their turn, even though the treatment the observer experienced was fake.

    Social media amplifies this, carrying personal tales of woe much further than once possible, regardless of the accuracy.

    For example, a tweet by singer Nicki Minaj in 2021 claimed “the vaccine” (presumably the COVID vaccine) gave her cousin’s friend swollen testicles and made him “impotent”. This went out to her millions of followers, and generated more than 100,000 likes. It was debunked days later.

    One study found that negative stories about COVID vaccine side effects – especially from friends or social media – were linked to stronger expectations of having those same symptoms. These expectations, in turn, predicted the actual side effects people reported after vaccination.

    An Australian study found this effect was amplified among individuals who already worried a lot about side effects, felt anxious or stressed, or looked primarily to social media (instead of mainstream sources) for health information.

    If you hear about COVID vaccine side effects on social media, you’re more likely to expect side effects and report you have them.
    Jo Panuwat D/Shutterstock

    The effects can be serious

    For individuals, nocebo effects can lead to unnecessary suffering with genuine pain and discomfort. Unpleasant side effects can also contribute to people not continuing their treatment as prescribed or abandoning it altogether.

    On a broader public health level, the nocebo effect can make it hard to evaluate the safety of new technologies and public health interventions. For example, health concerns have surfaced around the safety of electromagnetic fields from wireless signals and 5G towers, supposedly causing a range of physical symptoms like headache and insomnia.

    In the laboratory, these symptoms have been attributed to nocebo responses rather than properties of the technology itself.

    When unfounded negative information takes hold, people suffer genuine health effects, businesses face pushback, and the wider community may grow suspicious of technologies that are generally considered safe based on available evidence.

    What can we do about it?

    Individuals can reduce their likelihood of experiencing nocebo-driven symptoms by seeking reliable information from credible medical sources or reputable health organisations instead of relying on social media.

    But even the way side effect information is communicated contributes to the nocebo effect. So health professionals may be able to help by framing discussions of potential side effects in a more positive way and – when appropriate – emphasising that most patients experience no problems.

    Negative expectations can physically hurt us, and thanks to social media, they can spread widely, fast. However, by staying informed, being mindful of our own beliefs, and insisting on thoughtful communication from health professionals and public health campaigns, we can keep the nocebo effect in check.

    Ben Colagiuri receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

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

    – ref. You can catch the ‘nocebo’ effect from family, friends – even social media. But what is it, actually? – https://theconversation.com/you-can-catch-the-nocebo-effect-from-family-friends-even-social-media-but-what-is-it-actually-249844

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: More young people are caring for a loved one with dementia. It takes a unique toll

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katya Numbers, Postdoctoral Research Fellow & Lecturer, Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing, UNSW Sydney

    Miljan Zivkovic/Shutterstock

    Dementia is a growing health problem, affecting more than 55 million people around the world.

    In Australia, an estimated 433,300 people are living with dementia. This figure is projected to rise to 812,500 by 2054.

    Dementia refers to brain disorders that are not a normal part of ageing. These disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, cause a decline in cognitive function and changes in mood, memory, thinking and behaviour. Ultimately they affect a person’s ability to carry out everyday tasks.

    In Australia, around 75% of people with dementia live at home.

    While dementia care at home has traditionally been associated with older spouses or middle-aged children, it seems an increasing number of young adults in their 20s and 30s, and even teenagers, are stepping into this role to care for grandparents, parents or other loved ones.

    In Australia, 3 million people (11.9% of the population) are carers. This includes 391,300 under 25 – a sharp rise from 235,300 in 2018.

    How many young carers are specifically caring for a loved one with dementia is unclear, and something we need more data on. Young dementia carers remain largely invisible, with minimal recognition or support.

    Unique challenges and the burden of responsibility

    Unlike older carers, who may have more financial stability and free time, young carers often must balance caregiving with university, early-career pressures, and personal development, including maintaining social relationships, pursuing hobbies, and prioritising mental welling.

    In Australia, where 51% of men and 43% of women aged 20–24 still live with their parents, many young carers will have limited experience in managing a household independently.

    They’re often thrust into complex responsibilities such as cooking, housework, managing the family budget, coordinating medical appointments and administering medications.

    Beyond that, they may need to provide physical care such as lifting or helping their loved one move around, and personal care such as dressing, washing, and helping with toileting.

    Young carers often must balance caregiving with other responsibilities.
    Iris Wang/Unsplash

    All this can leave young carers feeling unprepared, overwhelmed and isolated.

    While general support groups exist for dementia carers and young carers more broadly, few cater specifically to young adults caring for someone with dementia.

    This lack of targeted support is likely to heighten feelings of isolation, as the young person’s friends struggle to relate to the emotional and practical burdens young carers face.

    The demanding nature of caregiving, combined with the difficulty of sharing these experiences with peers, means young dementia carers can become disconnected socially.

    The psychological toll

    These challenges take a profound psychological toll on young carers.

    Research shows young carers are 35% more likely to report mental health issues than their non-caregiving peers. These can include depression, anxiety and burnout.

    Again, we don’t have data on mental health outcomes among young dementia carers specifically. But in Australia, 75% of dementia carers reported being affected physically or emotionally by their caring role. Some 41% felt weary or lacked energy, and 31% felt worried or depressed.

    Also, there are negative stereotypes about ageing – that people turn forgetful, frail, and need constant care. For young carers whose loved ones have dementia, these stereotypes can be reinforced by their experience. This could shape young carers’ perceptions of their own future health and wellbeing and increase anxiety about ageing.

    Caregiving may also affect physical health. Research suggests carers often sacrifice healthy habits such as exercise and a balanced diet. What’s more, carers report symptoms including poor sleep, fatigue, headaches and back pain due to the physical demands of caregiving.

    Caring for a parent – a role reversal

    This emotional burden is particularly acute for those caring for a parent. These young carers are likely to experience the progressive loss of parental support, while simultaneously assuming the demanding role of caregiver.

    A significant portion of young dementia carers support parents with young-onset dementia, a form of dementia diagnosed before age 65. These young carers face the shock of a diagnosis that defies typical expectations of ageing.

    The burden may be compounded by fears of genetic inheritance. Young onset dementia often has a hereditary component.

    This means young carers may have a higher risk of developing the condition themselves – a concern spousal carers don’t have. This fear can fuel health anxiety, alter life planning, and create a pervasive sense of vulnerability.

    A significant portion of young dementia carers support parents with young-onset dementia.
    VisualProduction/Shutterstock

    How we can better support young dementia carers

    Despite their growing numbers, young dementia carers remain largely overlooked in research, policy and support services. This is partly due to the challenges in engaging this demographic in research, as these young people juggle busy lives balancing caregiving with education and work.

    Many young carers also don’t self-identify as carers, hindering their access to support and resources. This could be because of the stigmatising label, or a feeling they’re not doing enough to qualify as a carer. It could even be because of cultural norms which can frame caregiving as a family obligation, rather than a distinct role.

    Nonetheless, young dementia carers require targeted support beyond generic caregiving resources.

    This support might include specialised peer networks, educational programs, and practical skills training. Tailored programs and resources should ideally be co-designed with young dementia carers to ensure they meet their unique needs and preferences.

    With dementia cases in Australia and elsewhere projected to increase, the demand for informal carers – including young adults – will continue to grow.

    Without intervention, these young carers risk burnout, social isolation, and long-term health consequences. We must ensure flexible, age-appropriate support for this often invisible group. Investing in young dementia carers is not just a moral imperative – it’s a crucial step toward a sustainable, compassionate care system for the future.

    Dementia Australia offers a national helpline, information sessions, and a peer-to-peer connection platform for carers.

    The Young Carers Network, run by Carers Australia, offers mental health resources, financial guidance, and respite care information, plus bursaries young carers can apply for to reduce financial pressure.

    Katya is a co-founder of Y-Care of Dementia, a support network for Australians in their 20s and 30s who are caring for someone living with dementia.

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

    – ref. More young people are caring for a loved one with dementia. It takes a unique toll – https://theconversation.com/more-young-people-are-caring-for-a-loved-one-with-dementia-it-takes-a-unique-toll-249361

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Trump is ignoring the power of nationalism at his own peril

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Smith, Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney

    US President Donald Trump has exploited American nationalism as effectively as anyone in living memory. What sets him apart is his use of national humiliation as a political emotion. Any presidential candidate can talk their country up, but Trump knows how to talk his country down.

    Trump’s consistent message has been that American problems – trade deficits, job losses, illegal immigration, crime and even drug addiction – are the result of deliberate acts by other countries. The really humiliating part is that American politicians let it happen.

    Many Americans have welcomed Trump’s message that their country’s problems can be solved by reestablishing international dominance. They see this nationalist approach as an overdue corrective to the “globalist” foreign policies of the post-second world war era.

    But people in other countries also have feelings of national pride and aspire to be free from foreign domination. This should be obvious, but so far Trump is ignoring the power of nationalism in other countries even as he harnesses it in his own. This makes his foreign policy job a lot harder.

    How Canadians have rallied against Trump

    Take the example of Canada.

    When Trump was elected to his second term in November 2024, it seemed certain there would soon be a Canadian prime minister who was more aligned with him than Justin Trudeau. Trudeau’s unpopularity had dragged the Liberal Party down, and the populist Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre looked set to win the this year’s election.

    As he prepared for a trade war with Canada, Trump could have concentrated his fire on his enemies in the doomed Liberal government. Instead, he spent months insulting Canada’s national identity. He repeatedly said Canada should be the “51st state of the US”, calling Trudeau “governor”.

    Trump says ‘Canada was meant to be our 51st state’ in a Fox News interview.

    Americans can dismiss Trump’s talk of annexing Canada as a joke, but Canadians can’t. Regardless of whether Trump would ever follow through with attempting an annexation, his language is an attack on Canadian sovereignty. No one with any sense of national pride would tolerate it.

    An Angus Reid poll found the number of people saying they had a “deep emotional attachment” to Canada rose from 49% to 59% from December 2024 to February 2025. That emotional attachment is visible in everything from “buy Canadian” campaigns to Canadians booing the US national anthem at hockey games.

    The Liberals, under new leader Mark Carney, are also experiencing a remarkable bounce-back in the polls.

    Another Angus Reid poll shows that voting intention for the Liberals has surged from 16% in December to 42% now. They are now leading the Conservatives, who have 37% support. Some are now anticipating a snap election could be called in days.

    Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has sometimes been likened to Trump, has also led a ferocious pro-Canadian resistance to American tariffs, getting his own re-election boost.

    Trump’s defenders often claim his chaotic bluster is simply a negotiating tactic, a way of spooking others into accepting terms more favourable to him. If so, this tactic is backfiring in Canada.

    Trade wars require sacrifices. Citizens must pay more for the sake of protecting their countries’ industries. Canadians seem a lot more willing to make that sacrifice than Americans, who are mostly confused that their friendly neighbour has suddenly been recast as an enemy.

    The importance of national identity

    Other countries have shown they will not cave easily, either, as Trump puts their national identity at stake.

    Demanding to buy another country’s territory, as Trump keeps doing with Greenland, a self-governing territory under Danish control, may be even more insulting than threatening to take it, as he keeps doing with Panama. Each time Greenlanders, Danes and Panamanians refuse Trump, his credibility erodes further.

    Trump talks about the territory of other countries in terms of “real estate”, even suggesting the United States should “redevelop” Gaza after evicting the Palestinians.

    But sovereign land is not real estate. In a world of nation-states defined by territory, even sparsely inhabited territory has “sacred value”. This is particularly true for peoples seeking statehood on their land.

    “Sacred values” are things people see as non-negotiable because they are linked to their sense of identity and moral order in the world. Researchers warn that offering money in exchange for sacred values is deeply offensive, and likely to harm, rather than help, negotiations.

    There is a reason why governments hardly ever sell their territory to other countries anymore. Empires may have done in this in the past, but not nations. They view their lands, and the people who live on them, as inalienable from the nation.

    Trump clearly doesn’t understand this concept. He has shown no empathy for Ukraine, a country whose territory actually has been invaded. He accused Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy of wanting to prolong the war so he could “keep the gravy train going”, as if harvesting US aid dollars was the real reason Ukrainians were fighting for their country’s existence.

    Trump’s contempt for Ukraine, Canada, Greenland, Gaza, Denmark and Panama has reverberations far beyond these places. It signals that his brand of American nationalism has no place for anyone else’s national aspirations or sovereignty.

    This will not promote the deal-making Trump wants because no one trusts an unstable, imperial power to stick to its agreements. It would be painful for many countries to reduce their dependence on the United States, but it would be more painful to give away their national dignity.

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

    – ref. Trump is ignoring the power of nationalism at his own peril – https://theconversation.com/trump-is-ignoring-the-power-of-nationalism-at-his-own-peril-252299

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Rain gave Australia’s environment a fourth year of reprieve in 2024 – but this masks deepening problems: report

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University

    Lauren Henderson/Shutterstock

    For the fourth year running, the condition of Australia’s environment has been relatively good overall. Our national environment scorecard released today gives 2024 a mark of 7.7 out of 10.

    You might wonder how this can be. After all, climate change is intensifying and threatened species are still in decline.

    The main reason: good rainfall partly offset the impact of global warming. In many parts of Australia, rainfall, soil water and river flows were well above average, there were fewer large bushfires, and vegetation continued to grow. Overall, conditions were above average in the wetter north and east of Australia, although parts of the south and west were very dry.

    But this is no cause for complacency. Australia’s environment remains under intense pressure. Favourable conditions have simply offered a welcome but temporary reprieve. As a nation we must grasp the opportunity now to implement lasting solutions before the next cycle of drought and fire comes around.

    This snapshot shows the environmental score for a range of indicators in Australia.
    Australia’s Environment Report 2024, CC BY-NC-ND

    Preparing the national scorecard

    For the tenth year running, we have trawled through a huge amount of data from satellites, weather and water measuring stations, and ecological surveys.

    We gathered information about climate change, oceans, people, weather, water, soils, plants, fire and biodiversity.

    Then we analysed the data and summarised it all in a report that includes an overall score for the environment. This score (between zero and ten) gives a relative measure of how favourable conditions were for nature, agriculture and our way of life over the past year in comparison to all years since 2000. This is the period we have reliable records for.

    While it is a national report, conditions vary enormously between regions and so we also prepare regional scorecards. You can download the scorecard for your region at our website.

    Different jurisdictions had quite different environmental scores in 2024.
    Australia’s Environment Report 2024, CC BY-NC-ND

    Welcome news, but alarming trends continue

    Globally, 2024 was the world’s hottest year on record. It was Australia’s second hottest year, with the record warmest sea surface temperatures. As a result, the Great Barrier Reef experienced its fifth mass bleaching event since 2016, while Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia also experienced bleaching.

    Yet bushfire activity was low despite high temperatures, thanks to regular rainfall.

    National rainfall was 18% above average, improving soil condition and increasing tree canopy cover.

    States such as New South Wales saw notable improvements in environmental conditions, while conditions also improved somewhat in Western Australia. Others experienced declines, particularly South Australia, Victoria, and Tasmania. These regional contrasts were largely driven by rainfall – good rains can hide some underlying environmental degradation trends.

    Favourable weather conditions bumped up the nation’s score this year, rather than sustained environmental improvements.

    Mapping the environmental condition score to local government areas reveals poor (red) conditions in the west and the south, with good scores (blue) in the east and north. White is neutral.
    Australia’s Environment Explorer, CC BY-NC-ND

    A temporary respite?

    The past four years show Australia’s environment is capable of bouncing back from drought and fire when conditions are right.

    But the global climate crisis continues to escalate, and Australia remains highly vulnerable. Rising sea levels, more extreme weather and fire events continue to threaten our environment and livelihoods. The consequences of extreme events can persist for many years, like we have seen for the Black Summer of 2019–20.

    To play our part in limiting global warming, Australia needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Progress is stalling: last year, national emissions fell slightly (0.6%) below 2023 levels but were still higher than in 2022. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions per person remain among the highest in the world.

    Biodiversity loss remains an urgent issue. The national threatened species list grew by 41 species in 2024. While this figure is much lower than the record of 130 species added in 2023, it remains well above the long-term average of 25 species added per year.

    More than half of the newly listed or uplisted species were directly affected by the Black Summer fires. Meanwhile, habitat destruction and invasive species continue to put pressure on native ecosystems and species.

    The Threatened Species Index captures data from long-term threatened species monitoring. The index is updated annually but with a three-year lag due largely to delays in data processing and sharing. This means the 2024 index includes data up to 2021.

    The index revealed the abundance of threatened birds, mammals, plants, and frogs has fallen an average of 58% since 2000.

    But there may be some good news. Between 2020 and 2021, the overall index increased slightly (2%) suggesting the decline has stabilised and some recovery is evident across species groups. We’ll need further monitoring to confirm whether this represents a lasting turnaround or a temporary pause in declines.

    This graph shows the relative abundance of different categories of species listed as threatened under the EPBC Act since 2000, as collated by the Threatened Species Index.
    Australia’s Environment Report 2024, CC BY-NC-ND

    What needs to happen?

    The 2024 Australia’s Environment Report offers a cautiously optimistic picture of the present. Without intervention, the future will look a lot worse.

    Australia must act decisively to secure our nation’s environmental future. This includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions, introducing stronger land management policies and increasing conservation efforts to maintain and restore our ecosystems.

    Without redoubling our efforts, the apparent environmental improvements will not be more than a temporary pause in a long-term downward trend.

    Australia’s Environment Report is produced by the ANU Fenner School for Environment & Society and the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), which is enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.

    Albert Van Dijk receives or has previously received funding from several government-funded agencies, grant schemes and programs.

    Shoshana Rapley is a Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the Australian National University and has received funding from the Ecological Society of Australia and BirdLife Australia.

    Tayla Lawrie is a current employee of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), funded by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy.

    – ref. Rain gave Australia’s environment a fourth year of reprieve in 2024 – but this masks deepening problems: report – https://theconversation.com/rain-gave-australias-environment-a-fourth-year-of-reprieve-in-2024-but-this-masks-deepening-problems-report-252183

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Southern elephant seals are adaptable – but they struggle when faced with both rapid climate change and human impacts

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nic Rawlence, Associate Professor in Ancient DNA, University of Otago

    Wikimedia Commons/Antoine Lamielle, CC BY-SA

    Southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) are an iconic species of the Southern Ocean. But with rapid environmental changes in their ocean home, the seals’ population range has been shifting.

    Once spread across vast areas of the southern hemisphere, these apex predators are facing challenges from both climate shifts and human activities.

    Our new research examines ancient and modern DNA, archaeological records and ecological data.

    It reveals how these large marine mammals have adapted – and sometimes failed to adapt – to such pressures since the height of the last Ice Age thousands of years ago.

    A dynamic evolutionary history

    Today, the largest southern elephant seal populations are found on subantarctic islands, including South Georgia, Macquarie Island and the Falkland Islands. These colonies act as global strongholds for the species.

    Yet in the past, until just a few hundred years ago, many smaller populations existed on the Victoria Land Coast in Antarctica and closer to temperate zones, on mainland Australia and New Zealand.

    Our study focused on the Australasian lineage of southern elephant seals, drawing on samples from these ancient colonies. By analysing their genetic makeup, we pieced together a timeline of their biological heritage, including population expansions and contractions.

    This has crucial implications for understanding the resilience of elephant seals in the face of climate change.

    Subantarctic islands such as the Kerguelen islands remain strongholds for southern elephant seals.
    Antoine Lamielle, CC BY-SA

    From genetic clues in subfossil and archaeological remains, some thousands of years old, we found evidence of repeated population cycles. Expanding sea ice during cold glacial periods forced the seals northward, only for them to recolonise the Southern Ocean as sea ice retreated during warm interglacials.

    This history was particularly dynamic after the height of the last Ice Age 21,000 years ago. The planet started warming then, which led to dramatic ecological shifts.

    A mummified southern elephant seal found on the Victoria Land Coast in Antarctica.
    Brenda Hall, CC BY-SA

    Elephant seals likely expanded from ice-free refuges in temperate regions such as Tasmania and New Zealand into newly available subantarctic and Antarctic coastlines.

    However, this range expansion wasn’t permanent. As the current warm interglacial (the Holocene) progressed, new challenges arose: Indigenous hunting and, later, extensive European industrial sealing.

    For Indigenous communities in New Zealand and Australia, elephant seals were a part of their diet.

    We know this from seal remains in middens (rubbish dumps) and material culture, including necklaces made from elephant seal teeth which have been found in early Māori archaeological sites.

    Archaeological remains from coastal sites in New Zealand and Tasmania indicate significant hunting and reliance on seals by Indigenous populations. Along with human-driven environmental changes, this led to local extinctions.

    Impacts of humans and climate change

    Genetically, the seals from these ancient Australasian and Antarctic colonies were distinct but related. They formed a unique lineage in the Pacific that included Macquarie Island. This genetic diversity likely resulted from periods of isolation in separate refuges at the height of the last Ice Age.

    However, with modern climate shifts and human exploitation, much of this genetic diversity has been lost. The colonies that once thrived on the Victoria Land Coast in Antarctica are now extinct.

    Meanwhile, Macquarie Island is home to a significant breeding colony facing its own challenges. Changes in Antarctic sea ice are increasing the distance between breeding grounds on the island and feeding grounds at sea. This has affected the colony’s stability in recent decades.

    One of the most striking outcomes of our research is how quickly these large, long-lived animals can respond to environmental pressures. Seals adapted to a shifting climate by expanding their range in response to new habitats and retracting when conditions became unsuitable.

    This ability to move and adapt, however, was limited when confronted by the dual pressures of rapid climate change and human exploitation, which reduced their numbers and genetic diversity drastically over a short period.

    This schematic shows living (solid circles) and extinct (opaque circles) southern elephant seal populations and the extent of sea ice around Antarctica (opaque blue-grey) at the height of the last Ice Age.
    Berg et al (2025), CC BY-SA

    Can the Southern Ocean ecosystem adapt?

    As human-driven climate change continues, the Southern Ocean is expected to continue warming. This will cause further habitat loss for species that depend on sea ice and are affected by shifts in the availability of prey.

    The elephant seals’ history offers a window into how marine mammals may respond to these changes. But it also serves as a warning: human impacts, coupled with environmental pressures, can lead to swift, sometimes irreversible declines.

    Our research underscores the importance of conserving the genetic diversity and habitats of southern elephant seals. These seals are not just a testament to adaptability in a changing world; they are reminders of the vulnerability of even the most resilient species.

    Protecting their remaining strongholds and minimising human impacts on their food sources and breeding grounds will be crucial if we hope to avoid further contractions in their population.

    The story of the southern elephant seal is one of survival, adaptation and loss. As we face our own climate challenges, we must consider the lessons embedded in their genetic and ecological history.

    It’s a reminder that while nature often adapts to change and can weather some ecosystem threats, human-driven impacts can push even the most adaptable species beyond the point of recovery.

    Nic Rawlence receives funding from the Marsden Fund.

    Mark de Bruyn received funding from a Griffith University New Investigator grant.

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

    – ref. Southern elephant seals are adaptable – but they struggle when faced with both rapid climate change and human impacts – https://theconversation.com/southern-elephant-seals-are-adaptable-but-they-struggle-when-faced-with-both-rapid-climate-change-and-human-impacts-251820

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Figs, meat – and not too much sex. A good diet in ancient times was more than what you ate

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

    The Feast of Acheloüs by Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, ca. 1615 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

    In the modern world, we know good nutrition is essential for our health.

    Doctors in ancient Greece and Rome knew this too – in fact diet advice was a mainstay of medical practice and health routines. There were extensive and intricate discussions of how to regulate food and drink to stay healthy.

    Some of their ideas – such as eating fish and vegetables as a healthy way to lose weight – make sense today. But others may raise eyebrows, such a fig-only diet for Olympic athletes.

    So, what did diet and nutrition look like in ancient times? And is there anything we can learn today?

    An expansive diet

    In modern times, diet refers to food and drink. In ancient times, however, the idea of diet was more expansive.

    Our word “diet” comes from the ancient Greek word diaita. This could refer to what we eat and drink, but it could also refer to our lifestyle as a whole – including exercise, sleep, sex and other activities.

    When prescribing a diaita, ancient doctors did not just tell patients what to eat and drink. They also advised them on what sorts of other activities they should be doing, like exercising or even going to the theatre.

    For instance, in the sixth book of the Epidemics, a medical text written in the late fifth century BC, the author calls for moderation not just in what we eat and drink, but also in exercise, sleep and sex.

    Ancient doctors believed balance was important for health.

    Extreme dieting

    However, not all ancient texts advocate moderation. There are some extreme cases of dieting. For example, the historian Hegesander of Delphi (2nd century BC) wrote:

    Anchimolus and Moschus, who were sophistic teachers in Elis, drank nothing but water all their lives and ate nothing but figs, but were no less physically vigorous than anyone else. Their sweat, however, smelled so bad that everyone tried to avoid them in the baths.

    Some ancient athletes swore by a fig-only diet.
    Wikimedia Commons

    In the seventh century BC, athletic trainers also focused on diet as a way to improve their athletes’ physical condition. Trainers such as Iccus of Tarentum introduced strict diets for their athletes to try and gain a competitive edge.

    However, their methods were often questionable, according to today’s standards and our knowledge about nutrition.

    For example, the Olympic runner Chionis of Laconia apparently also had a strict diet of figs when he was training for his competitions. He won in his event at the Olympics in 668, 664, 660, and 656BC, a remarkable record. Other athletes, such as Eurymenes of Samos (sixth century BC), opted for a diet entirely comprised of meat.

    However, there is no evidence to show these restricted diets would have improved athletic performance – and would not be recommended today.

    The physician Galen.
    Pierre-Roch Vigneron/Wikimedia Commons

    An ancient doctor’s perspective

    Greek and Roman doctors could not conduct controlled trials as scientists do today.

    Nevertheless, they were keen observers of the effects of certain foods on their patients – and saw with their own eyes that a bad diet is not good for us.

    For example, the physician Galen of Pergamum (129-216AD) in his work Hygiene attributes his patients’ ill health to poor diet.

    He observed

    some who are continuously diseased, not due to the intrinsic constitution of the body, but through a bad regimen, or living an idle life, or working too hard, or being in error regarding the qualities, quantities or times of foods, or practicing some exercise that is harmful, or erring in regard to the amount of sleep, or excessive indulgence in sex, or needlessly tormenting themselves with grief and anxiety. Every year I see very many who are sick through such a cause.

    Galen thought hard about how certain foods and drinks affect our health and wrote various books on the subject, such as On the Powers of Foods.

    This work contains many anecdotes. For instance, one young man drank the juice of the scammony plant, “to cleanse his system” (presumably as a laxative). However

    five hours after the dose no evacuation had taken place, and he complained that his stomach felt compressed, his belly was heavy and swollen, consequently he was pale and anxious.

    Galen also recognised different diets affect people in different ways:

    some people are harmed and some are benefited by the same things and similarly with opposites. […] I know of some who immediately become sick, if they remain three days without exercise, and others who continue indefinitely without exercise and yet are healthy.

    Nutrition and balance

    Galen’s advice for overweight or obese patients may sound familiar: a “thinning” diet and a lot of fast running. So, exercise, combined with foods that fill you up but don’t make you gain weight.

    According to Galen this meant eating vegetables and fish and avoiding wheat, red meat, fruit and wine.

    A lot has changed in the world of diet and nutrition. We now have professional dietiticians and empirical methods to measure the nutritional values of foods.

    However in their broader definition of “diet”, ancient doctors identified something that remains as true today: the importance of eating well as part of a healthy lifestyle, one that takes care of body and mind and includes exercise, sleep and pleasure.

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

    – ref. Figs, meat – and not too much sex. A good diet in ancient times was more than what you ate – https://theconversation.com/figs-meat-and-not-too-much-sex-a-good-diet-in-ancient-times-was-more-than-what-you-ate-249571

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Long before debates over ‘wokeness’, Epicurus built a philosophy that welcomed slaves, women and outsiders

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Moran, Lecturer in the Department of English, Creative Writing and Film, University of Adelaide

    German Vizulis/Shutterstock

    If you peruse the philosophy section of your local bookshop, you’ll probably find a number of books on Stoicism – an ancient philosophy enjoying a renaissance today. But where are the Epicureans?

    Both philosophical schools were popular in the ancient world. However, while stoic works such as Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and Seneca’s letters still fill the shelves, alongside contemporary takes such as The Daily Stoic (2016), Epicureanism largely remains a historical curiosity.

    Today, the Greek thinker Epicurus (341–270 BCE) is mostly remembered as the originator of the term “epicurean”, which describes someone devoted to sensual enjoyment, particularly of fine food and drink.

    And while it’s true Epicurus argued pleasure is the highest human good, there’s a lot more to Epicureanism than merely savouring a glass of Shiraz with haute cuisine.

    Philosophers in the garden

    Epicurus was born on the island of Samos to Athenian parents. He studied philosophy in Athens before travelling to the island of Lesbos to establish a philosophical academy.

    Epicurus was born on the island Samos, a birthplace he shares with the famous polymath Pythagoras.
    Wikimedia

    Upon returning to Athens in 306 BCE, he bought a tract of land and began a philosophical community known as the Garden.

    The Garden was radically different from other philosophical communities at the time. While Plato’s Academy generally trained the children of the Athenian elite, and Aristotle tutored nobles such as Alexander the Great, Epicurus’ Garden was far more inclusive. Women and slaves were welcome to join the dialogue.

    The community led a frugal life and practised total equality between men and women, which was uncommon at the time. In this atmosphere, noblewomen and courtesans, senators and slaves, all engaged in philosophical debate.

    While many early Epicureans have disappeared from the annals of history, we know of some women, such as Leontion and Nikidion, who were early proponents of Epicurean thought.

    Away from the main city of Athens, Epicurus’ Garden became a space for his followers to seek relief.
    gka photo/Shutterstock

    Philosophy as a way of life

    It isn’t just the Garden’s inclusivity that gives it contemporary appeal, but its entirely unique notion of what constitutes a philosophical life.

    According to Epicurus, a philosopher wasn’t someone who taught or wrote philosophical tracts. A philosopher was someone who practised what the French philosopher Pierre Hadot describes, in his work on Epicureanism, as “a certain style of life”.

    Epicureanism was a daily practice, rather than an academic discipline. Anyone who strove to live a philosophical life was part of the Epicurean community and was considered a philosopher.

    The concept of philosophy Epicurus promoted was more egalitarian and all-encompassing than the narrow definition we often see used today.

    The pursuit of pleasure

    But what did it mean to be a practising Epicurean? Epicurus conceived of philosophy as a therapeutic practice. “We must concern ourselves with the healing of our own lives,” he wrote.

    This process of healing involves developing an inner attitude of relaxation and tranquillity known as anesis in Ancient Greek. To do this, Epicureans sought to turn their minds away from the worries of life and focus instead on the simple joy of existence.

    Epicurus distinguished between different types of pleasure and advocated for a life of moderate pleasure, rather than excessive indulgence.
    Wikimedia

    According to Epicurus, unhappiness comes because we are afraid of things which should not be feared, and desire things which are not necessary and are beyond our control.

    Most notably, he rejected the idea of an afterlife, arguing the soul did not continue to exist after death. He also argued it was wrong to fear death as it

    gives no trouble when it comes [and] is but an empty pain in anticipation.

    Instead of fearing punishment in the beyond, he said we should focus on the possibilities for pleasure in the here and now. But that doesn’t mean chasing every pleasure which comes our way; the task of the Epicurean is to understand which pleasures are worth pursuing.

    The highest pleasures are not those which yield the highest intensity or last the longest, but those which are the least mixed with worry and the most likely to ensure peace of mind. In this vein, Epicurus sought to cultivate feelings of gratitude and appreciation for even the simplest everyday experiences.

    While his critics cast him and his followers as unrestrained hedonists, he wrote in one letter that a single piece of cheese was as pleasurable as an entire feast.

    For Epicureans, it is precisely the brevity of life that gives us such an exquisite capacity for pleasure. As one Epicurean Philodemus wrote:

    Receive each additional moment of time in a manner appropriate to its value; as if one were having an incredible stroke of luck.

    A philosophy for outsiders

    Epicurus’ perennial appeal resides in how his philosophy gave strength and inspiration to outsiders. In the late 19th century, aesthetes such as critic Walter Pater and playwright Oscar Wilde praised Epicureanism as a way of life.

    In Wilde’s letter De Profundis (From the depths) – written in 1897 while imprisoned in Reading Gaol on charges of indecency – he wrote that Pater’s novel Marius the Epicurean (1885) had given him both intellectual and spiritual solace during his trial.

    Pater, too, had faced discrimination at Oxford for having homosexual relationships. His novel is an evocative celebration of the possibilities of a life lived in the pursuit of sensual and spiritual beauty.

    In one of his earlier texts, The Renaissance (1873), Pater paraphrases Victor Hugo, writing

    we are all under a sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve […] we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. […] Our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time.

    This profoundly Epicurean sentiment, of a life lived in the interval, remains appealing to those who seek to turn their lives into a work of art.

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

    – ref. Long before debates over ‘wokeness’, Epicurus built a philosophy that welcomed slaves, women and outsiders – https://theconversation.com/long-before-debates-over-wokeness-epicurus-built-a-philosophy-that-welcomed-slaves-women-and-outsiders-250772

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The Australian economy has changed dramatically since 2000 – the way we work now is radically different

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of Queensland

    The most striking feature of the Australian economy in the 21st century has been the exceptionally long period of fairly steady, though not rapid, economic growth.

    The deep recession of 1989–91, and the painfully slow recovery that followed, led most observers to assume another recession was inevitable sooner or later.

    And nearly everywhere in the developed world, the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–08 did lead to recessions comparable in length and severity to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

    Through a combination of good luck and good management, Australia avoided recession, at least as measured by the commonly used criterion of two successive quarters of negative GDP growth.

    Recessions cause unemployment to rise in the short run. Even after recessions end, the economy often remains on a permanently lower growth path.

    Good management – and good luck

    The crucial example of good management was the use of expansionary fiscal policy in response to both the financial crisis and the COVID pandemic. Governments supported households with cash payments as well as increasing their own spending.

    The most important piece of good luck was the rise of China and its appetite for Australian mineral exports, most notably iron ore.

    This demand removed the concerns about trade deficits that had driven policy in the 1990s, and has continued to provide an important source of export income. Mining is also an important source of government revenue, though this is often overstated.

    Still more fortunately, the Chinese response to the Global Financial Crisis, like that in Australia, was one of massive fiscal stimulus. The result was that both domestic demand and export demand were sustained through the crisis.

    The shift to an information economy

    The other big change, shared with other developed countries, has been the replacement of the 20th century industrial economy with an economy dominated by information and information-intensive services.

    The change in the industrial makeup of the economy can be seen in occupational data.

    In the 20th century, professional and managerial workers were a rarefied elite. Now they are the largest single occupational group at nearly 40% of all workers. Clerical, sales and other service workers account for 33% and manual workers (trades, labourers, drivers and so on) for only 28%.

    The results are evident in the labour market. First, the decline in the relative share of the male-dominated manual occupations has been reflected in a gradual convergence in the labour force participation rates of men (declining) and women (increasing).

    Suddenly, work from home was possible

    Much more striking than this gradual trend was the (literally) overnight shift to remote work that took place with the arrival of COVID lockdowns.

    Despite the absence of any preparation, it turned out the great majority of information work could be done anywhere workers could find a desk and an internet connection.

    The result was a massive benefit to workers. They were freed from their daily commute, which has been estimated as equivalent to an 8–10% increase in wages, and better able to juggle work and family commitments.

    Despite strenuous efforts by managers, remote or hybrid work has remained common among information workers.

    CEOs regularly demand a return to full-time office work. But few if any have been prepared to pay the wage premium that would be required to retain their most valuable (and mobile) employees without the flexibility of hybrid or remote work.

    The employment miracle

    The confluence of all these trends has produced an outcome that seemed unimaginable in the year 2000: a sustained period of near-full employment. That is defined by a situation in which almost anyone who wants a job can get one.

    The unemployment rate has dropped from 6.8% in 2000 to around 4%. While this is higher than in the post-war boom of the 1950s and 1960s, this is probably inevitable given the greater diversity of both the workforce and the range of jobs available.

    Matching workers to jobs was relatively easy in an industrial economy where large factories employed thousands of workers. It’s much harder in an information economy where job categories include “Instagram influencer” and “search engine optimiser”.

    As we progress through 2025, it is possible all this may change rapidly, for better or for worse.

    The chaos injected into the global economy by the Trump Administration will radically reshape patterns of trade.

    Meanwhile the rise of artificial intelligence holds out the promise of greatly increased productivity – but also the threat of massive job destruction. Economists, at least, will be busy for quite a while to come.

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

    – ref. The Australian economy has changed dramatically since 2000 – the way we work now is radically different – https://theconversation.com/the-australian-economy-has-changed-dramatically-since-2000-the-way-we-work-now-is-radically-different-249942

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: In 2000, Australia was defined by the Olympics, border politics and reconciliation. So what really has changed?

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Visitor, School of History, Australian National University

    The world had its eyes on Sydney in 2000. A million people lined the harbour to ring in the new millennium (though some said it was actually the final year of the old one) on January 1.

    US television reporters called it “the biggest party in Australian history”. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, whose corporation seemed to represent the coming age, was among those watching on.

    Sydney offered not only a world-leading party, but also a litmus test for the much-feared Y2K bug, which threatened to knock planes out of the sky and bring the global economy to a halt. Australia and New Zealand were said to be the “tripwire for the world’s computer systems”.

    It was fine in the end, although plenty of work had in fact been undertaken behind the scenes to make Australia’s systems more millennium-proof than they might have been.

    This was arguably the defining feature of Australia in the year 2000: a confident display for the world concealing a lot of angst and uncertainty. Australia was the “oldest continent on Earth”, the US broadcasters told their viewers, but it was “much more of an Asian nation”, and much closer to the rest of the world “thanks to technology”.

    Those confident claims would probably have surprised many Australians. Theirs was an old country trying to keep up with a new, interconnected world, and also a relatively young one trying to reconcile itself with the ancient cultures that its settler forebears had dispossessed.

    A curated Australia

    In September, the world’s sporting and political elite, followed by a train of journalists, arrived in Sydney for the 2000 Olympic Games. It had been years in the making, and every level of government was involved. There were no fewer than 47,000 volunteers.

    There was something for everyone in the well-curated opening ceremony. The event opened with the crack of a stockman’s whip and a fleet of flag-waving bushmen on horseback. There were highly sanitised displays of European arrival, pastoral settlement and a tribute to an armour-clad colonial Victorian bushranger that must have baffled those viewers watching from abroad who had not seen a Sidney Nolan painting before.

    Ancient stories and new cultural sensibilities were on display too. There were stylised performances of the Dreaming, striking First Nations dances and the distinctive sounds of the didgeridoo. A section entitled “Arrivals” recognised the importance of migration in the nation’s story.

    A young Aboriginal sprinter, Cathy Freeman, lit the cauldron in what became one of the iconic images of the year. The cauldron’s hydraulics unfortunately got stuck as it ascended, and the flame was mere seconds from snuffing out in what could have been a global embarrassment. But big ambitions incur big risks.

    This global performance of Australian-ness was arrestingly simple: that of a nation confident in its own diversity and capable of catering to everyone’s tastes.

    Even the musical selections seemed to reconcile the needs of the youth (with performances from a young Vanessa Amorosi and even younger Nikki Webster), and the more mature (represented by John Farnham and Olivia Newton-John).

    Australia’s athletes had their best ever showing with 58 medals, including Freeman’s own gold.

    Not quite comfortable, not quite relaxed

    The Olympics masked as much as they revealed.

    In 2000, many white Australians still weren’t sure if theirs was, or should be, a multicultural society.

    The reactionary Pauline Hanson was out of parliament for the time being, but her One Nation Party had won 7.5% of the vote in New South Wales in the March 1999 state election, and nearly 23% of the vote in Queensland the year before.

    Eight weeks before millennium day, Australians had roundly rejected two referendum proposals, one to become a republic, and for a Constitutional preamble that, among other things, recognised Indigenous Australians as “the nation’s first people”.

    But whether Hanson liked it or not, her lifetime had coincided with great demographic and social change.

    In 1976, roughly 1.8% of the population said they were born in Asia or the Middle East. In the 2001 census, 1.6% of the population were born in China or Vietnam alone, and many more were the descendants of migrants from these places.

    The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population had more than doubled over the same period, while those identifying as Christian decreased from nearly 79% in 1976 to 56% in 2001.

    This increasingly diverse Australia claimed to be on a journey to “reconciliation”. That process had been sorely tested during the nasty debates about land rights and the Stolen Generations.

    Corroboree 2000, held on May 27 in Sydney, saw the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and the nation’s political leaders present their visions for the next phase of national healing. The leaders symbolically left their handprints on a “reconciliation canvas”.

    The following day, 250,000 Australians walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in a moving display of togetherness. John Howard, the prime minister, declined to participate.

    But his treasurer, Peter Costello, made a point of showing up for a similar event in Melbourne that December, leading Victorian Liberals and another 200,000 or so Australians.

    Their different approaches showed that the past was still a troubling present. Howard rebuffed suggestions of a treaty between Indigenous and settler Australians and maintained his refusal to apologise on behalf of the Commonwealth to the Stolen Generations, though all the states had done so by this time.

    The idea of such an apology was not as popular then as it seemed later on. The prime minister was sensitive to the fact that his was “an unpopular view with a lot of people”, but an opinion poll in The Australian newspaper showed a majority of voters were opposed to a national apology.

    Two survivors of the Stolen Generations, Peter Gunner and Lorna Cubillo, sued the Commonwealth for damages in 2000, giving their opponents the chance to challenge the legitimacy of their experiences. None of this looked like a nation that was as “comfortable and relaxed” as Howard had hoped it would be under his watch.

    Border politics

    Australian collective memory often gravitates toward 2001, the year of the Tampa affair and the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York.

    But Australia’s border was already highly politicised in 2000.

    In January, a boat arrived from Indonesia carrying 54 Christians fleeing religious conflict. They spent ten weeks at Port Hedland Immigration Detention facility, from which 39 went back to Indonesia and only 15 moved on to Adelaide to build new lives.

    Port Hedland and other detention centres made the news for all the wrong reasons. There were riots, hunger strikes and multiple breakouts. Authorities responded with upgraded security perimeters, character checks, and strip searches without warrants.

    Frustrated refugees set fire to South Australia’s Woomera facility, which former prime minister Malcolm Fraser publicly condemned as a “hell-hole”.

    In an end-of-year reflection for The Age newspaper, Gary Tippet said there had been a “touch of mean-spiritedness” about the handling of it all. Chris Wallace rightly suggests 2000 was a crucial moment in the “march towards an absolute offshore, extraterritorial approach” to refugees in Australia.

    In the intervening quarter-century, Australian officials have made mean-spiritedness an art form at the border and on the seas.

    First-rate democracy, third-rate economy

    Compared to the many legal challenges that came out of the US presidential contest in November 2000, Australia’s elections looked pretty smooth and sensible. The US seemed to have a backward democracy grafted onto its world-leading, information-age economy.

    Australia looked the opposite: a first-rate democracy with what looked increasingly like a “branch-office economy”.

    Reformers had tried for 20 years to make Australia efficient and competitive, but as one editorial in The Australian Financial Review explained, the country still suffered from its “old economy image”.

    The tech boom would soon become the tech wreck.
    Robert Cianflone/Getty Images

    Certainly, Australia still sold its minerals and farm products to the world in exchange for quality cars and cutting-edge computers.

    With global capitalists still enthralled by the global tech boom (though it was soon to become the “tech wreck”), they had little need for the Aussie dollar.

    The currency’s value declined through the year to just 50 US cents, and it would fall further in the following months. On its own, this mattered little, but a quarter of negative growth at the end of the year meant, as Paul Kelly later wrote, an “election-year recession” seemed a “real threat”.

    In the meantime, the much-debated Goods and Services Tax took effect around midnight on June 30 (a few hours later for businesses trading through the night).

    The 10% consumption tax was a big deal. Costello said in his memoir the “prices of three billion products were to change all at the same time”.

    The measure was politically brave, but soon became unpopular, helping raise petrol prices and alienate small business owners.

    The punters were pretty confident the Howard government was heading for defeat in 2001. They were wrong.

    Between the old and new

    The pace of social change accelerated from 2000.

    In the 2021 census, 2.6% of the population said they were born in India, and a further 3.2% in China and Vietnam. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians had more than doubled over two decades, such that they made up 3.2% of the total population in 2021.

    People increasingly related to their economy differently, too. Half of the workforce had been unionised in the 1980s, but coverage fell to roughly a quarter in 2000 and just 12.5% in 2022.

    These and other changes make our politics look different from that of 25 years ago. Nailbiter elections are now more common than thumping majorities and attitudes toward the once-feared “minority government” have softened.

    For all that, many of the challenges of 2000 are still with us.

    Many Australians are less tolerant of overt racism than they once were, but the 2023 Voice referendum and our offshore detention regime remind us that race still matters in this country.

    Kevin Rudd apologised to the Stolen Generations in 2008, but Treaty and Truth-Telling are left unresolved.

    And for all our talk about human capital and the digital economy, resources make up a much higher share of our total export mix today than in 2000.

    A quarter-century on, Australia is still caught between the old and the new.

    Dr Joshua Black is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Australia Institute.

    – ref. In 2000, Australia was defined by the Olympics, border politics and reconciliation. So what really has changed? – https://theconversation.com/in-2000-australia-was-defined-by-the-olympics-border-politics-and-reconciliation-so-what-really-has-changed-250791

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: We found the only kangaroo that doesn’t hop – and it can teach us how roos evolved their quirky gait

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Aaron Camens, Lecturer in Palaeontology, Flinders University

    Musky rat-kangaroo. Amy Tschirn

    In the remnant rainforests of coastal far-north Queensland, bushwalkers may be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a diminutive marsupial that’s the last living representative of its family.

    The musky rat-kangaroo (Hypsiprymnodon moschatus) weighs only 500 grams and looks a bit like a potoroo. It’s part of a lineage that extends back to before kangaroos evolved their distinctive hopping gait.

    Unlike their bigger relatives, muskies can be seen out and about during the day, foraging in the forest litter for fruits, fungi and invertebrates.

    As the only living macropodoid (the group that includes kangaroos, wallabies, potoroos and bettongs) that doesn’t hop, they can provide a crucial insight into how and when this iconic form of locomotion evolved in Australia.

    Our study, published in Australian Mammalogy today, aimed to observe muskies in their native habitat in order to better understand how they move.

    Muskies can shed light on the evolution of kangaroo hops, but they haven’t been studied in detail.
    Amy Tschirn

    Why kangaroos are special

    If we look around the world, hopping animals are quite rare. Hopping evolved once in macropodoids, four times in rodents, and probably once in an extinct group of South American marsupials known as argyrolagids.

    In animals heavier than five kilograms, hopping is an incredibly efficient form of locomotion, in large part thanks to energy being stored in the Achilles tendon at the back of the heel.

    However, the vast majority of animals that hop are really small. The only hopping animals with body masses over 500 grams are kangaroos. And Australia used to have a lot more kangaroo species, many of them quite large.

    Despite the abundance of fossil kangaroos, we still don’t really know why they evolved their hopping gait, especially given it only really becomes more efficient at body masses over five kilograms. Hypotheses range from predator escape, to energy preservation, to the opening of vegetation as Australia shifted to a drier climate.

    Researchers looking at limb proportions have suggested that fossil kangaroos also hopped. But it’s likely the ways that extinct roos moved were much more diverse than has previously been suggested.

    Muskies can sometimes be seen foraging for fallen fruit in the leaf litter in the dense rainforests of far northern Queensland.
    Aaron Camens

    Why muskies are key in roo evolution

    Muskies are the last living member of the Hypsiprymnodontidae, a macropodoid family that branched off early in kangaroo evolution. For this reason, it is thought muskies may move in a similar way to early kangaroo ancestors.

    Studies on kangaroo evolution will often mention locomotion in muskies, but only in passing. And only a single, brief, first-hand description of locomotor behaviour in muskies has actually been published, in 1982. The authors observed that muskies moved their hindlimbs together in a bound and that all four limbs were used, even at fast speeds.

    So, we set out to answer the question: can H. moschatus hop? And if not, what form of locomotion does it use?

    Using high-speed video recordings, we studied the sequence in which muskies place their four feet on the ground, and the relative timing and duration of each footfall.

    The musky rat-kangaroo (Hypsiprymnodon moschatus) is the only macropodoid not to hop; instead, it bounds over obstacles on the forest floor.
    Amy Tschirn

    Through this gait analysis, we determined that muskies predominantly use what is called a “bound” or “half-bound” gait. Bounding gaits are characterised by the hindfeet moving together in synchrony – just like when bipedal kangaroos hop. In the case of muskies, the forefeet (or “hands”) also generally move together in close synchrony.

    No other marsupial that moves on all fours is known to use this distinctive style of movement to the same extent as muskies. Rather, other species tend to use a combination of the half-bound and some form of galloping (the gait that horses, cats and dogs use) or hopping.

    From all fours to hopping

    We were also able to confirm that tantalisingly brief observation from the 1980s: even when travelling at high speeds, muskies always use quadrupedal gaits, never rearing up on just their back legs.

    They are, therefore, the only living kangaroo that doesn’t hop.

    Combined with further investigation of their anatomy, these observations help us get closer to understanding how and why kangaroos adopted their distinctive bipedal hopping behaviours.

    These results also signal a potential pathway to how bipedal hopping evolved in kangaroos. Perhaps it started with an ancestor that moved about on all fours like other marsupials, such as brush-tail possums, then an animal that bounded like the muskies, and finally evolved into the iconic hopping kangaroos we see in Australia today.

    However, we are no clearer on how the remarkable energy economy of kangaroo movement evolved, or why hopping kangaroos got so much bigger than hopping rodents.

    The next part of the research needs to focus on that and will be informed by key fossil discoveries from early periods in kangaroo evolution.

    There’s more research to be done, but understanding musky gait in detail is a great first step.
    Amy Tschirn

    Amy Tschirn received funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (to G.J.P) during this project.

    Aaron Camens and Peter Bishop do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. We found the only kangaroo that doesn’t hop – and it can teach us how roos evolved their quirky gait – https://theconversation.com/we-found-the-only-kangaroo-that-doesnt-hop-and-it-can-teach-us-how-roos-evolved-their-quirky-gait-251373

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Labor promises PBS scripts will cost no more than $25, under latest health pitch for election

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

    The Albanese government will make another pre-election offer in health, promising that if re-elected it will legislate to ensure people pay no more than $25 for a script under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

    The measure, to be announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday, would start on January 1 next year.

    The government says it represents a cut of more than 20% in the maximum cost of PBS medicines, and would save Australians more than $200 million a year. Four out of five medicines would become cheaper.

    The measure, included in next week’s budget, costs the government $689 million over the forward estimates.

    Pensioners and concession card holders will continue to have the cost of their PBS medicines frozen at $7.70 until 2030.

    This is the latest in a range of initiatives the government has taken in health, including promising billions of dollars to expand bulk billing and adding a number of drugs for women’s health to the PBS. The opposition, which matched the government’s bulk billing policy, will be under pressure to do the same with this latest measure.

    Anthony Albanese said: “With cheaper medicines, more free GP visits and a stronger Medicare, we say to Australians, we’ve got your back”.

    Health Minister Mark Butler said the last time Australians paid no more than $25 for a PBS medicine was more than 20 years ago.

    Butler said when Peter Dutton was health minister in the Abbott government “he tried to make medicines cost more”.

    “The contrast in this election is clear: cheaper medicines with a re-elected Albanese government or the frankly terrifying legacy of Peter Dutton, who wants medicines to cost more, not less.”

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

    – ref. Labor promises PBS scripts will cost no more than $25, under latest health pitch for election – https://theconversation.com/labor-promises-pbs-scripts-will-cost-no-more-than-25-under-latest-health-pitch-for-election-252510

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: If your tween or teen doesn’t know how to swim, it’s not too late for lessons

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Peden, NHMRC Research Fellow, School of Population Health & co-founder UNSW Beach Safety Research Group, UNSW Sydney

    Marcos Castillo/ Shutterstock

    New figures show shocking numbers of Australian kids are not achieving basic swimming skills.

    Royal Life Saving Australia data estimates 48% of Year 6 students cannot swim 50 metres and tread water for two minutes. For those in high school, the results are even more worrying. Teachers estimate 39% of Year 10 students still cannot meet the same benchmark.

    These skills are based on minimum swimming and water safety standards children should achieve to have fun and stay safe in the water. They are a key strategy to reduce the risk of drowning.

    While this research indicates we may no longer be a nation of swimmers, there’s still plenty parents, schools and governments can do. And if your child’s lessons have fallen behind, it is not too late to catch up.



    Read more:
    Thinking of quitting your child’s swimming lessons over winter? Read this first

    Why are we seeing this?

    This latest research builds on previous worries about Australian children’s swimming skills. During COVID, there were concerns children would not come back to lessons after lockdowns.

    While participation in lessons post-lockdowns has been promising, some pools have had difficulty finding qualified staff.

    In 2023, Royal Life Saving Australia also cautioned about 100,000 children in late primary school were unlikely to return to swimming lessons before they started high school.

    It’s not too late

    If you have stopped lessons with your children – or if you never started – it is not too late to go to the pool.

    Research comparing children between the ages of three and eight indicates the optimum age to begin formal swimming lessons is around five to seven years.

    But children can still learn to become safe and competent swimmers in later primary years and into high school. We know this because adults can, and do learn to swim later in life.

    Research also suggests older children may learn to swim more quickly than younger children, so they may need fewer lessons to attain skills than their younger counterparts.

    Children can learn to swim in later primary school and beyond.
    Andrii Medvednikov/ Shutterstock

    Make sure lessons are regular

    If you have an older child starting swimming lessons it’s important to maintain regular classes.

    For example, a 2018 study on a group of 149 Latino children in the United States aged three to 14 showed those who had learned the most skills had the highest attendance – attending at least ten lessons over an eight-week period.

    If weekly lessons are too difficult, you could consider holiday intensive programs and supplement this with informal practice in the water. Research shows informal swimming – such as playing – can help children build their swimming skills if they are also having lessons.

    There are barriers to regular lessons

    We know some families find it difficult to commit to swimming lessons. On top of the cost, there may not be a local pool available or enough instructors.

    These barriers disproportionately impact people from low-socioeconomic backgrounds and those living in rural and remote areas. Royal Life Saving survey respondents from these groups were more likely to report their school-aged children had never attended swimming lessons.

    Some communities don’t have easy access to a local pool.
    CoolR/Shutterstock

    Schools also find it hard

    Schools can help by offering swimming lessons at key points. For example, two weeks of daily lessons when children are in Year 2 is a common model in New South Wales public schools.

    In Tasmania, children in Years 3, 4 and 5 have a mandatory requirement to attend swimming lessons. There is optional attendance for those in Year 6 if they are identified as being at high risk.

    But schools also report challenges in teaching kids how to swim.

    Swimming lessons are expensive, schools are short-staffed and dealing with a crowded curriculum. This is why 31% of surveyed schools don’t offer swimming education.

    For some children, who are behind in their swimming skills – or who cannot swim at all – a short burst of school lessons may not be enough to catch them up.

    We need to do more

    Schools still have a vital role to play in ensuring children are not missing out on developing these minimum, lifesaving skills. So Australian governments need to prioritise swimming as one of the few sports you can learn that will help to save your life.

    Royal Life Saving Australia says the following four measures would help prevent drownings:

    1. increased funding for existing school and vacation swimming programs

    2. increased grants targeting people with vulnerabilities to drowning, including those from refugee, migrant, and regional communities, as well as for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples

    3. increased access to lifesaving programs in high schools

    4. building and refurbishing public swimming pools and swim schools.

    Rates of fatal drowning in Australia are increasing. They were up 16% on the ten-year average in 2024. We have just had a particularly horrific summer where 104 people drowned, a number that is higher than both last summer and the five-year average. Swimming skills are more important than ever.

    Amy Peden receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council. She maintains an honorary affiliation as a Senior Research Fellow with Royal Life Saving Society – Australia.

    – ref. If your tween or teen doesn’t know how to swim, it’s not too late for lessons – https://theconversation.com/if-your-tween-or-teen-doesnt-know-how-to-swim-its-not-too-late-for-lessons-252504

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Putin made Trump wait, then strung him along – it’s clear his war aims in Ukraine have not changed

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jon Richardson, Visiting Fellow, Centre for European Studies, Australian National University

    US President Donald Trump’s phone call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, didn’t take a tangible step towards ending the hostilities in Ukraine, let alone finding an enduring peace. Rather, it provided further evidence of Putin’s ability to string along and outsmart Trump.

    For starters, Putin sent a signal by making Trump wait for more than an hour to talk. Putin was speaking at a televised conference with Russian businesspeople and even made a joke about the delay when told the time for his call was approaching.

    This was clearly designed to show his alpha status, both to Trump and the Russian public. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, was reportedly made to wait eight hours by Putin when he arrived in Moscow last week for talks.

    And after Tuesday’s call, Putin only agreed to pause attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for 30 days, rather than the total ceasefire proposed by Trump and agreed to by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

    And even this agreement lacked clarity. The lengthy Kremlin statement on the call said the pause would only apply to attacks on energy infrastructure, while the vaguer White House read-out said it included a much broader “energy and infrastructure” agreement. The Kremlin will doubtless stick to the narrow concept.

    The Kremlin’s statement also said Trump proposed this idea and Putin reacted positively. This seems implausible given that pausing attacks on energy infrastructure would be the least costly partial ceasefire for Russia to agree to.

    It seems more likely this proposal came from Putin as a “compromise”, even though Trump was earlier threatening fire and brimstone if Russia did not agree to a proper ceasefire.

    Russia will still be able to continue its ground offensive in Ukraine, where it has the upper hand thanks to Ukrainian manpower shortages (despite its own horrendous losses). It will also be able to maintain its bombardment of Ukrainian civilian targets that has already cost possibly as many as 100,000 civilian lives and half a trillion US dollars in mooted reconstruction costs.

    Ukraine, meanwhile, has only rarely hit residential areas in Russia. However, it has achieved considerable success with long-distance drone attacks on Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure, threatening one of the main funding sources of Moscow’s war effort.

    Putin’s war aims remain unchanged

    The Kremlin’s read-out of the call also noted that various sticking points remain to achieve a full ceasefire in Ukraine.

    These included the Kyiv regime’s “inability to negotiate in good faith”, which has “repeatedly sabotaged and violated the agreements reached.” The Kremlin also accused Ukrainian militants of “barbaric terrorist crimes” in the Kursk region of Russia that Ukraine briefly occupied.

    This is not new language, but shows breathtaking chutzpah. It’s Russia, in fact, that has broken several agreements vowing to respect Ukraine’s borders, as well as numerous provisions of the Geneva Conventions on treatment of civilian populations and prisoners of war. It has even violated the Genocide Convention in the eyes of some scholars.

    That a US president could let this kind of statement go unchallenged underscores the extent of the White House’s volte-face on Ukraine.

    The Kremlin also asserted that a “key principle” for further negotiations must be the cessation of foreign military aid and intelligence to Ukraine.

    Given Trump has already frozen arms and intelligence support to Ukraine to make Zelensky more compliant, Putin no doubt thinks he might do so again. This, in turn, would strengthen Russia’s leverage in negotiations.

    Trump has already given away huge bargaining chips that could have been used to pressure Russia towards a just and enduring outcome. These include:

    • holding talks with Russia without Ukraine present
    • ruling out security guarantees for Ukraine and NATO membership in the longer term, and
    • foreshadowing that Ukraine should cede its sovereign territory in defiance of international law.

    Putin may be content to string out the ceasefire talks as long as he can in the hopes Russian troops can consolidate their hold on Ukrainian territory and completely expel Ukrainian forces from the Kursk region inside Russia.

    He shows no sign of resiling from his key aims since the beginning of the war – to reimpose Russian dominance over Ukraine and its foreign and domestic policies, and to retain the territories it has illegally annexed.

    The fact Moscow has signed treaties to formally incorporate and assimilate these Ukrainian regions fully into Russia – rather than merely occupying them – underlines how this has always been a war of imperial reconquest rather than a response to perceived military threat.

    At the same time, if he can get much of what he wants, Putin may just be tempted to end the war to further a more business-as-usual relationship with the US. Trump has dangled various carrots to encourage Putin to do this, from renewed US investment in Russia to easing sanctions to ice hockey games.

    Ukraine’s lines in the sand

    Ukraine’s immediate reaction to the Trump-Putin call appears to be cautiously accepting of a limited ceasefire on energy infrastructure. This is no doubt to avoid incurring Trump’s wrath.

    At the same time, Ukraine’s bottom line remains firm:

    • Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty are non-negotiable
    • it must be able to choose its own foreign alliances and partnerships, and
    • it must be able to defend itself, without limits on the size of its army or its weaponry.

    The only way to square the circle would be to freeze the conflict at the current front lines in Ukraine and leave the status of the annexed Ukrainian regions to be resolved in future negotiations.

    But even this would have little credibility unless Russia revoked its annexations and allowed international organisations and observers to enter the region to encourage a modicum of compliance with international law.

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

    – ref. Putin made Trump wait, then strung him along – it’s clear his war aims in Ukraine have not changed – https://theconversation.com/putin-made-trump-wait-then-strung-him-along-its-clear-his-war-aims-in-ukraine-have-not-changed-252497

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Do eggs really make you constipated? A gut expert on what the evidence says

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Associate Professor and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University

    Popovo Bros/Shutterstock

    You might’ve heard too many eggs make you constipated. Influencers on Instagram claim it too. The United Kingdom has slang for it – being “egg bound”.

    Eggs were once blamed for raising blood cholesterol levels, which turned out to be false. Did we get it wrong about eggs and constipation too?

    Here’s what the mixed bag of evidence tells us.

    Starting with constipation

    Constipation means different things to different people, and there are many different types.

    Let’s focus on “functional constipation”, when people have hard, infrequent and often difficult-to-pass bowel movements. This constipation isn’t due to a physical blockage of the bowel or from disease.

    Functional constipation is very common. Globally, about one in ten adults (10.1%) and one in seven children (14.4%) have it at any one time.

    Is eating eggs to blame?

    Several studies link eating eggs with constipation, but not necessarily how you’d think.

    A 2002 study of 1,699 Japanese residents over 40 found Japanese women who ate eggs at least five times a week were less likely to be constipated. Eating eggs didn’t affect constipation rates in men. The researchers couldn’t explain the difference.

    A later study involved 3,770 female Japanese university students who filled in a questionnaire about what they’d eaten over the past month. A Western diet high in foods such as processed meats and eggs was linked to more constipation than a traditional Japanese diet (which has lots of rice but not much bread or confectionary).

    Another study looked at middle-aged adults in southern China who ate duck or chicken eggs as part of a Western diet. This was linked to a higher risk of constipation compared with the traditional southern Chinese diet, which has lots of refined grains, vegetables, fruits, pickled vegetables, fish and prawns.

    However, such dietary studies mostly rely on participants remembering what they ate. People also don’t always fill in dietary questionnaires truthfully, and tend to under-report eating unhealthy food and over-report eating healthy food. So dietary questionnaires aren’t always accurate.

    They also rarely look at a single food item (such as eggs) in isolation.

    Even if these studies mention eggs, the population studied can vary in age, gender and ethnicity. So the findings may not apply universally.

    How about other evidence?

    Laboratory based experiments looking at how egg proteins are digested in the bowel may offer some clues.

    When researchers fed constipated rats protein from egg yolk, their constipation improved. This could be due to an egg yolk protein called phosvitin. This retains water around itself in the colon (the large intestine) and makes the stool bulkier and easier to pass.

    We’re learning more about how the gut handles eggs.
    Christos Georghiou/Shutterstock

    How about humans? As far as I’m aware, no specific research involved feeding people eggs to see if this cured their constipation or made it worse. But we know a little about what happens in the gut when people eat eggs.

    Although eggs are quite a digestible food for humans, research shows even cooked egg proteins are not completely digested and absorbed in the small intestine.

    A small amount reaches the colon where it is linked to increased numbers of good bacteria, such as Bifidobacterium and Prevotella. There’s often more Prevotella, in particular, in people with looser stools.

    So some research supports the idea eating eggs improves constipation.

    What about eating lots of protein?

    Eggs are rich in protein. Could a diet with lots of protein cause constipation?

    No, protein itself is not to blame, according to research involving adults and children in the United States.

    That study found someone eating a diet low in carbohydrate was more likely to be constipated after eating extra protein (the equivalent of an extra two small eggs a day). That’s compared with someone eating a moderate amount of carbohydrate.

    Why the difference? The researchers said low carbohydrate intake could be linked to less Prevotella in their stools, potentially making the stools firmer.

    This makes sense. Fibre is a type of carbohydrate the body can’t readily digest. Low dietary fibre is linked to constipation.

    If we have adequate fibre in our diet then eat extra protein, this won’t worsen constipation. It may actually improve it.

    However, not eating enough fibre on a high-protein diet is very likely to increase the risk of constipation.

    Adding fibre to your high-protein diet could help.
    Daniil Demin/Shutterstock

    Kids with allergies

    There’s also a type of functional constipation associated with kids’ food allergies.

    A study from Greece tested children with chronic (long-term) constipation to see if they had food allergies.

    The children found to have food allergies ate a diet without these foods (including eggs) for eight weeks. Constipation improved in most of these children.

    How are food allergies in children and constipation related? A type of immune cell found in people with allergies – known as mast cells – can affect the bowels. These cells can contribute to bowel muscles not contracting well. Food is less able to move along, leading to constipation.

    So if all other causes of a child’s constipation have been ruled out, and they have a food allergy, their constipation may be allergy-related.

    However, it’s recommended to try healthy eating, with enough fluid and fibre first. If that doesn’t resolve the constipation, the child could try an elimination diet, under medical supervision.

    What are we to make of all this?

    Overall, there’s no firm evidence that eating more eggs leads to constipation.

    Provided you eat a diverse diet containing fibre along with your eggs there should be no increased risk of constipation.

    If chronic constipation doesn’t get better with extra fluids and fibre, talk to your doctor.

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

    – ref. Do eggs really make you constipated? A gut expert on what the evidence says – https://theconversation.com/do-eggs-really-make-you-constipated-a-gut-expert-on-what-the-evidence-says-249370

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Flooding in the Sahara, Amazon tributaries drying and warming tipping over 1.5°C – 2024 broke all the wrong records

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew King, Associate Professor in Climate Science, ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather, The University of Melbourne

    Climate change is the most pressing problem humanity will face this century. Tracking how the climate is actually changing has never been more critical.

    Today, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published its annual State of the Climate report, which found heat records kept being broken in 2024. It’s likely 2024 was the first year to be more than 1.5°C above the Earth’s pre-industrial average temperature. In 2024, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit the highest point in the last 800,000 years.

    The combination of heat and unchecked emissions, the organisation points out, had serious consequences. Attribution studies found a link between climate change and disasters such as Hurricane Helene, which left a trail of destruction in the southeastern United States, and the unprecedented flooding in Africa’s arid Sahel region.

    Slowing these increasingly dangerous changes to Earth’s climate will require a rapid shift from fossil fuels to clean energy.

    The record heat of 2024

    From the North Pole to the South Pole, the oceans and our land masses, the report catalogues alarm bells ringing ever louder for Earth’s vital signs.

    Steadily rising global average temperatures show us the influence of the extra heat we are trapping by emitting greenhouse gases. The ten warmest years on record have all happened in the past ten years.

    The report shows 2024 was the warmest year since comprehensive global records began 175 years ago. The planet was an estimated 1.55°C (plus or minus 0.13°C) warmer than it was between 1850 and 1900.

    Together, 2023 and 2024 marked a jump in global mean temperature from previous years. There was a jump of about 0.15°C between the previous record year (2016 or 2020 depending on the dataset) and 2023. Last year was even warmer – about 0.1°C above 2023.

    Last year was the first year the planet was likely more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This doesn’t mean we have broken the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of holding warming under 1.5°C – temperatures would need to be sustained over a number of years to formally lose that fight. But it’s not good news.

    There are a few extra factors at play in this record-breaking global temperature, including an El Niño event boosting eastern Pacific Ocean temperatures in the first part of 2024, falling pollution from shipping leading to less cloud over the ocean, and a more active sun as well.

    Researchers are hard at work unpicking why the Earth’s average temperature jumped in 2023 and 2024. But it is clear the 2024 record-breaking warmth and most other damning statistics in the report would not have occurred if it wasn’t for human-induced climate change.

    Much of the Northern Hemisphere was more than 2°C warmer in 2024 than 1951-1980 levels and many equatorial areas saw new annual temperature records.
    NASA GISS, CC BY-NC-ND

    Carbon dioxide up, glacial melt up, sea ice down

    It’s not just global temperatures breaking records.

    Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere reached 427 parts per million last year. Sea level rise has accelerated and is now about 11 centimetres above early 1990s levels, and the oceans are at their highest temperatures on record.

    Seasonal sea-ice in the Arctic and around Antarctica shrank to low levels (albeit short of record lows) in 2024, while preliminary data shows glacial melt and ocean acidification continued at a rapid pace.

    Almost all parts of the world were much warmer in 2024 than even recent averages (1991–2020) and much of the tropics experienced record heat.

    From cyclones to heatwaves, another year of extreme events

    In the English-speaking media, extreme events affecting North America, Europe and Australia are well covered, such as the devastating Hurricane Helene in the US and the lethal flash flooding in Spain.

    By contrast, extreme weather and its fallout in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia get less coverage.

    In September 2024, Super Typhoon Yagi killed hundreds and caused widespread damage through the Philippines, China and Vietnam. Later in the year, Cyclone Chido struck Mayotte and Mozambique causing more than 100,000 people to be displaced. Hundreds died in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan due to spring floods following an unusual cold wave.

    Unusual flooding hit parts of the arid Sahel and even the Sahara Desert. Meanwhile the worst drought in a century hit southern Africa, devastating small farmers and leading to rising hunger.

    Much of South and Central America was hit by significant drought. Huge tributaries to the Amazon River all but dried up for the first time on record. Severe summer heat hit much of the Northern Hemisphere, while more than 1,300 pilgrims died during the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca as heat and humidity pushed past survivable limits.

    Globally, extreme weather forced more people from their homes than any other year since 2008, which had widespread floods and fires.

    Did climate change play a role in these extreme events? The answer ranges from a resounding yes in some cases to a likely small role in others.

    Scientists at World Weather Attribution found the fingerprints of climate change in Hurricane Helene’s large-scale rain and winds as well as the flooding rains in the eastern Sahel.

    Paying the price for decades of inaction

    This report is a dire score card. The numbers are sobering, scary but sadly, not surprising.

    We have known the basic mechanism by which greenhouse gases warm the planet for over 100 years. The science behind climate change has been around a long time.

    But our response is still not up to the task.

    Currently, our activities are producing ever more greenhouse gas emissions, trapping more heat and causing more and more problems for people and the planet. Every fraction of a degree of global warming matters. The damage done will keep worsening until we end our reliance on fossil fuels and reach net zero.

    Andrew King receives funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather and the National Environmental Science Program.

    Linden Ashcroft has received funding from the Australian Research Council and is affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for 21st Century Weather

    – ref. Flooding in the Sahara, Amazon tributaries drying and warming tipping over 1.5°C – 2024 broke all the wrong records – https://theconversation.com/flooding-in-the-sahara-amazon-tributaries-drying-and-warming-tipping-over-1-5-c-2024-broke-all-the-wrong-records-252490

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: How Jia Zhangke’s film Caught by the Tides uses 20 years of footage to capture a changing China

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Moran, Lecturer in the Department of English, Creative Writing and Film, University of Adelaide

    MK2 Films

    Chinese independent director Jia Zhangke’s new film Caught by the Tides, now in select Australian cinemas, provides a unique vision of China’s rapid social transformation in the 21st century.

    Using a combination of documentary footage and scenes shot by Jia over the past 20 years during the making of his earlier films, Caught by the Tides follows Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao) and her boyfriend, small-time hustler Bin (Li Zhubin).

    Bin leaves their small town to make his fortune working on the Three Gorges Dam and Qiaoqiao goes to find him, taking her on a journey through the changing landscape of contemporary China.

    The film not only registers monumental changes, like the building of the dam, but the minutiae of everyday details from changing fashion to altered streetscapes.

    Jia’s film is a quiet and meditative affair which dwells on the passage of time in a fast-paced world. The film not only captures 20 years in a rapidly changing China, but also offers a reflection on Jia’s career as a filmmaker.

    Framing the provinces

    Jia was born in 1970. He grew up in the city of Fenyang, Shanxi province, and came of age during Deng Xiaoping’s economic liberalisation and “opening up” of the 1980s.

    He studied at the Beijing Film Academy before returning home to shoot his first feature Xiao Wu (Pickpocket) in 1997.

    The films he made in Shanxi – Xiao Wu, Platform (2000) and Unknown Pleasures (2002) – have been dubbed his “hometown trilogy”.

    Shanxi is known for its notoriously dangerous coal mining industry. Jia focused on the lives of those left behind by China’s “economic miracle” and life outside of the metropolis. His use of non-actors, preference for street shooting and slow minimalist style set his work apart from commercial Chinese cinema.

    The second film in the trilogy, Platform, includes a mesmerising performance from Zhao Tao, then an unknown actor who has since starred in all of Jia’s later films. Zhao and Jia were married in 2012. Zhao is a key artistic collaborator whose portrayal of strong female protagonists is central to all the director’s later work.

    Cinema and cultural memory

    Jia’s international breakthrough came with Still Life (2006), shot in the ancient area of Fengjie on the banks of the Yangtze while cities were being demolished and thousands displaced to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.

    Working on Still Life confirmed Jia’s belief in “cinema’s function as memory” which captures the present before it disappears. Still Life combined Jia’s early realist style with a new surreal approach, including a building taking off and a mysterious flying saucer zooming into the distance.

    To Jia, this blend of realism and surrealism is essential for portraying China’s rapid historical transformation. He says the speed of development in China “has had an unsettling surreal effect”.

    To represent this, he has experimented with all the possibilities of cinema blending documentary, fiction, animation, pop music, Chinese opera and digital images to create a stunning body of work.

    Caught by the tides of history

    Caught by the Tides continues Jia’s experimentation with cinema and history in his most ambitious work to date.

    Production was influenced by the COVID pandemic, when Jia was unable to start work on a new film. Instead, he began to review footage he and his director of photography Yu Lik-Wai had shot since 2001.

    Jia describes the process of reviewing the footage as “like time-travelling” as he returned to the beginning of the 21st century and his youth.

    The film is partly composed of a collage of documentary footage which Jia and his collaborators spent over two years editing. We see excitement in the streets when Beijing is announced as the host city of the 2008 Olympic Games, before cutting to a montage of young people dancing in strobe-lit underground nightclubs.

    This kaleidoscope of documentary footage is combined with scenes shot during the making of Jia’s earlier films. From this combination of archival footage featuring Jia’s regular stars Zhao and Li Zubin, a story emerges about China’s rapid change.

    Jia began work on Caught by the Tides during COVID.
    MK2 Films

    As Qiaoqiao guides the viewer through the chaotic transformations taking place in the country, there is something particularly arresting about seeing places and actors change before our very eyes.

    The final scenes, shot with modern digital cameras, have a sleek and cold aesthetic in contrast to the pixelated early footage. It is in part a reflection of Jia’s own melancholic view of historical change in which the past is forgotten, and the everyday lives of ordinary people disappear from view. Yet as a whole, the film suggests cinema can preserve the past and give dignity and beauty to everyday experiences.

    Caught By the Tides provides viewers with a refreshing glimpse of Chinese life from within. Cinema like Jia’s remains in a unique position to promote a more nuanced view of China’s complex and ever-evolving history.

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

    – ref. How Jia Zhangke’s film Caught by the Tides uses 20 years of footage to capture a changing China – https://theconversation.com/how-jia-zhangkes-film-caught-by-the-tides-uses-20-years-of-footage-to-capture-a-changing-china-252392

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Cardio and strength training boost health as you age. But don’t forget balance exercises to reduce your chance of falls

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anne Tiedemann, Professor of Physical Activity and Health, University of Sydney

    shurkin_son/Shutterstock

    We all recognise the benefits of regular aerobic or cardiovascular exercise to support our heart and lung health. Being active is also good for our social and mental health. And strength training promotes strong bones and muscles.

    But as we age, we also need to train our balance to avoid falls.

    Around one in three people aged 65 and over have a fall each year.

    Falls are a common cause of disability and loss of independence in older age and can lead to an older person moving from living independently into living in a residential aged care facility. More than 6,000 older Australians die each year from falls.

    But many falls are preventable. So exercise that targets balance and strength is crucial.

    How much do we need to do?

    International guidelines recommend all older people exercise to prevent falls, even if they’ve never fallen. Prevention is far better than cure.

    Other guidelines recommend people aged 65 and over do “functional balance and strength training” on three or more days a week, to improve their ability to do day-to-day activities, stay independent, and prevent falls.

    Since balance starts to decline at around age 50, it’s even better to start training balance before the age of 65.

    In order to increase our muscle strength, we need to progressively lift heavier weights. Similarly, to boost our balance, we need to practise activities that progressively challenge it. This improves our ability to stay steady in difficult situations and avoid falling.

    Functional training means doing a physical activity that imitates everyday activities, such as standing up out of a chair, or stepping onto a step.

    When you practise the everyday activities necessary for living independently, you improve your ability to perform them. This reduces the likelihood of falling when doing those activities, and therefore helps you maintain your independence for longer.

    What exercises can you do?

    The best exercises to challenge our balance system and reduce the risk of falling are performed while standing, rather than seated.

    For example, you can stand with your feet close together or on one leg (if it’s safe to do so) while also performing controlled upper-body movements, such as leaning and reaching. This is a functional balance exercise and it can be made progressively more challenging as your balance improves.

    Here are some exercises you can practise at home:

    Sit to stand

    Practise standing up from a seated position ten times every hour or so. See if you can do it without using your arms for support. To increase the balance challenge, place a cushion under the feet.

    Heel-raises

    Rise up onto your toes and hold the position for a few seconds. Hold on to a bench or wall for support if you need to but gradually remove the support as your balance improves. To increase the balance challenge, try doing this with your eyes closed.

    You can make heel-raises progressively harder.
    Mary Rice/Shutterstock

    Heel-toe walking

    Practise walking along an imaginary line, with one foot placed in front of the other. Hold on to a bench or wall for support if you need to but gradually remove the support as your balance improves.

    Stepping in different directions

    Practise quickly stepping forwards, sideways and backwards. Being able to move our feet quickly can help avoid a fall if you trip on something. If you are able, more challenging activities include stepping up or jumping onto a box.

    Squats and lunges

    Squats and lunges improve balance and leg strength. Add some hand weights to increase the challenge.

    Squats improve balance and leg strength.
    LightField Studios/Shutterstock

    These examples and others can be found on the Safe Exercise at Home website.

    Make it regular – and tailor it to your needs

    It’s important that balance challenging exercises are performed regularly, at least three times per week. The benefits of exercise are lost if you stop doing them, so ongoing practice is important.

    People of all abilities can safely undertake balance training exercise, however extra guidance and support is recommended for people who have physical limitations, are frail, or who are at a higher risk of falls.

    For younger or fitter people, agility activities such as rapid stepping, dancing and running are likely to improve co-ordination and balance too.

    So next time you are carrying out your exercise routine, ask yourself: what am I doing to improve my balance? Investing in balance training now can help you avoid falls, and lead to greater independence in older age.

    Anne Tiedemann receives research funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and from the Medical Research Future Fund of Australia. She has voluntary roles with the World Falls Prevention Society and with the Australia and New Zealand Falls Prevention Society.

    Cathie Sherrington receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Medical Research Future Fund of Australia. She has voluntary roles with the Australian and New Zealand Fall Prevention Society, the International Society for Physical Activity and Health, the International Society for Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity, the Fragility Fracture Network.

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

    – ref. Cardio and strength training boost health as you age. But don’t forget balance exercises to reduce your chance of falls – https://theconversation.com/cardio-and-strength-training-boost-health-as-you-age-but-dont-forget-balance-exercises-to-reduce-your-chance-of-falls-249375

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –