We are social beings. So, within every group, decisions must be made about how to live together, preserving wellbeing and relations with others. Historically, those decisions were made by tribal leaders, or monarchs and their courts. Yet the ancient states of Greece, needing collective commitment to the battles in which they engaged, realised it would be generated by giving the people, the demos, a voice in what had to be done. From this issued the idea of “democracy”: a particular form of social organisation in which citizens participate in the decisions that affect them.

Small communities can practise direct democracy: people meet and decide, or vote, on decisions concerning them all. In large modern societies, it operates instead as representative democracy within nation-states: citizens elect representatives to act for them in a forum where collective policies are determined.

Every state has its own history. As a result, each has unique features that differentiate it from all the others. But what is common to liberal democracies, of which Australia is one, is that the idea of self-government has, since the 17th century, been linked with a commitment to the freedom of individuals within the state. Yet ideas of freedom differ, as closer attention to arguments within any state, and how states differ, reveals.

Australia: a settler society

Australia is a settler society, created by immigrants from Europe from 1788 onwards. They settled on a continent inhabited by one of the oldest civilisations on earth: 131 distinct language groups, girdling the entire continent, with means of land management, harbouring resources, and investment in ways of living and spiritual connection with their own country over millennia.

European settlers knew nothing of this. They saw First Nations people as primitive tribes, could not understand how they operated collectively, and failed to recognise the Indigenous economy.

It seemed incomprehensible to European settlers that relationships in Indigenous communities were governed by knowledge linked with ancestors, kinship obligations and country, passed down by elders from generation to generation and disseminated through shared stories, ritual and practical action. With ideas of farming, resource exploitation, and development alien to the light touch of Indigenous people, settlers took over this large “undeveloped” continent, unaware of how it had been shaped by Indigenous practices and possession.

The result, inevitably, was conflict. Attempts on each side to come to terms were confounded by incommensurate ways of understanding the world. Frontier wars ensued. It was an uneven battle, propelled by increasing numbers of settlers. Dispossession and massacres of Indigenous peoples stretched right through to the 20th century.

Settler democracy

The settler state was established at the high point of “the age of revolution”, when battles against monarchical control (the American Revolution) and hereditary elites (the French revolution) spurred the adoption of this new form of democracy: government “of the people, by the people and for the people” on one hand, and “liberty, equality and fraternity” on the other.

Yet the first European settlements were convict colonies, repositories for the criminal, marginal and unwanted from Britain. Among them were convicts who had been transported because of their advocacy of the new politics, readers of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. In conjunction, as the source of essential labour in the new colonies, convicts had leverage to assume roles and demand rights never granted to their ilk in Britain. Their persistent demands seeded colonial democracy.

Since liberal precepts carried here by successive waves of settlers faced none of the barriers of an established ruling class, such ideas flourished in Australia. As more radical exponents of social liberalism arrived, such as the Chartists who had fought for working class political and civil rights, they played a leading role in events such as the Eureka rebellion, the emergence of mass union movements, and the foundation of the Australian Labor Party (ALP).

By the late 19th century, “new liberals” were arguing that freedom could not be assured unless the state intervened to solve problems – poverty, unemployment, lack of education – that disadvantaged individuals could not solve for themselves.

In Australia, some among the emerging middle class (small businessmen, entrepreneurs, journalists and professionals), seized on such views in forming loose reformist alliances with the labour movement to forestall the conservative inclinations of the big landholders who dominated colonial upper houses. The result: Australian colonies took the lead in developing progressive democratic measures: allowing all men to vote, payment of parliamentarians, the secret ballot and in South Australia and Western Australia votes for women.

A ‘talent for bureaucracy’

Australia was a striking incarnation of modern social organisation. It was historically perhaps the most developed instance of the harnessing of democracy with bureaucracy, for two reasons.

First, its settlement and development were documented in detail. Instructions to and reports from colonial governors, the manifests of convict ships, the documentation of immigrant arrivals — all were resources for those managing colonial development.

Second, as population increased, colonial governments needed to raise loans from the mother country to develop the infrastructure necessary for private enterprise to flourish. Public officials became the essential intermediaries in what Noel Butlin called “colonial socialism”. Alan Davies saw these historical contingencies as the origin of an Australian “talent for bureaucracy”.

The influence of these progressive ideas and a “colonial socialism” encouraged in Australia a particular form of liberal polity, one less fervently individualistic than the United States. The dark side of settler liberalism was that its commitment to individualistic liberal freedom rendered it blind to collective forms of social relations, and to the consequences of colonisation for First Nations.

The federal experiment

Negotiation between the colonies in the late 19th century aimed to unify the disparate colonial settlements. It was driven both by lofty ambitions — to create a nation with a common purpose — and by a series of anxieties. A capacity for defence against the other imperial powers making claims in the Pacific; concern to maintain racial purity and protect British civilisation in the antipodes; and worries about promoting economic recovery given class fragmentation following a depression and strikes in the 1890s.

It was brought about through a series of conventions largely comprising colonial politicians. Together they hammered out a constitutional contract to satisfy their interests, driven by lawyers, carefully designating which powers were to be transferred to the Commonwealth, and which were retained by the states. It was, despite the absence of a formal bureaucracy, a profoundly bureaucratic process.

The compact at which they arrived retained British parliamentarianism. It mandated the formation of majority government with fiscal power in the House of Representatives, but borrowed from the United States in establishing a states house of review – the Senate.

The American adoption of a Bill of Rights was proposed but not accepted: British parliamentarism was thought sufficient to ensure the rights of “freeborn Britons”. Liberal preoccupation with checks and balances on government was evident in the constitution of the Senate, in which all states (formerly colonies) have equal representation regardless of population size. More restrictive still was the stipulation that referendums to change the constitution required the support of a majority of people in a majority of states to succeed.

The new federal parliament moved quickly to safeguard “White Australia” with the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. This set a dictation test (in European languages) for immigrants designed to exclude those of non-European origin. There was contention over women’s suffrage, but women had the vote in South Australia and a constitutional clause stipulated that rights already granted in any colony should be accepted federally. Women’s voting rights were recognised in the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902. Not so the rights of Indigenous peoples, however, who were deemed not to meet the standard of “civilisation” necessary to vote.

Bureaucracy and democracy

The major battles in the first decade of federation were between developing anti-Labor parties representing two faces of liberalism: those convinced freedom was sustained by state intervention when necessary (Protectionists) and those believing freedom was secured by limiting the ability of others to interfere in individual choice (the Free Trade Party).

Initially the baton passed rapidly to and fro between Protectionist and Free-Trade governments. But adroit management by the Protectionist leader, Alfred Deakin, facilitated the election (with Protectionist support) of the first (albeit short-lived) national Labor government in the world. It also ensured that Protectionists’ ambitions governed “the Australian settlement”: tariff protection, White Australia, wage arbitration and targeted welfare overseen by an educated governing class.

The social liberalism of the Australian settlement encouraged further electoral innovation. Preferential voting was introduced in 1918. Compulsory voting was enacted federally in 1924, having been introduced in Queensland in 1915. Other states soon followed. This was foundational to the citizens’ bargain: the state as responsible for collective wellbeing, with citizens obliged to engage seriously with democratic government. It necessitated voter registration, and electoral rolls, administered under state and federal franchise acts. Eventually national electoral rolls were developed, administered within Commonwealth departments, then in an Australian Electoral Office (1973) and ultimately by an independent statutory authority, the Australian Electoral Commission (1984).

It was not politicians or political agencies but Commonwealth public servants charged with achieving voting equivalence who initially determined electoral boundaries. Later the AEC took that role, along with the supervision of elections from the 1980s. This forestalled the gerrymandering that cruelled equality of representation in other jurisdictions.

Many of these measures were unique to Australia. And the heroes in their achievement? Bureaucrats. The interaction of progressive politicians, committed public servants and community activists was also integral to the transition from “White Australia” race-based “homogeneity” to civic identity and multiculturalism in the 1960s and 1970s; the introduction of voting rights for First Nations at state and then federal level and the 1967 referendum that recognised them as citizens; Indigenous land rights; and the incremental elaboration of health insurance, educational accessibility and civic entitlements. It was not perfect, and much remains to be done, especially in addressing the damage, trauma and continuing marginalisation inflicted on Indigenous communities by settler liberalism.

Democracy in question?

In the 1980s, governments of both stripes adopted an international current of thought driven by economists and technocrats — neoliberal economics — as a counter to “stagflation”: high inflation, low growth and high unemployment. What now was needed was more efficiency, to be achieved by opening markets to competition and rolling back state action: social democracy had failed. The state’s role should be limited to oversight, “steering, not rowing”, with provision of infrastructure and services to be outsourced to private enterprise.

For 30 years, it produced the prosperity reformers had promised. But the rewards were distributed unevenly, with riches accruing to an ever-smaller proportion of the population. Individual precarity was by imputation a failure of effort rather than of market failure, structural disadvantage or the “creative destruction” expected of unbridled capitalism.

As one prime minister argued, “if you have a go, you’ll get a go”. It took no account of the communities destroyed as their jobs vanished and new enterprise failed to arrive.

Surveys suggest the public was never persuaded, and the democratic impact was apparent. Party disengagement ensued. The major parties of the 20th century, in which the need to reach agreement among many voices ensured that extreme positions were rare, were reduced to rumps of committed partisans whose views were typically not representative of the people they served.

Partisan polarisation made achieving policy consensus increasingly difficult. The public service was hollowed out as functions were outsourced, consultants were brought in, organisational knowledge was lost, and governments repeatedly legislated to induce compliance rather than frank and fearless advice.

The result was policy stasis and startling national scandals when the damage of ingenious schemes by consultants to reduce entitlements and shift risk from service providers to their clients was revealed.

High levels of trust in politicians and public officials plummeted, and with this belief in liberal democracy itself was eroded. When a COVID pandemic induced governments to act, invest and cooperate in public provision, and in 2022 a Labor government was elected promising to be responsible, consultative and collaborative, polls bounced back.

Was the Australian tradition of social democracy resurgent? Support for change was soon shown to be tenuous. The bitter campaign against the Albanese government’s initiation of a referendum giving First Nations a constitutional “Voice” on policies affecting them showed how easily the politics of partisan division, race, resentment and negative campaigning can be mobilised to defeat democracy’s promise of fair life chances.

This is an edited extract from How Australian Democracy Works, a new collection of essays from The Conversation on all aspects of the country’s political landscape.

James Walter, Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Google’s search engine handles the vast majority of online searches worldwide. By one estimate, it fields 6.3 million queries every second.

Because of the search engine’s enormous scale, its outputs can have outsized effects. And, while Google’s search results are shaped by ostensibly neutral rules and processes, research has shown these algorithms often produce biased results.

This problem of algorithmic bias is again being highlighted by recent escalating tensions between India and Bangladesh and cases of violence against Bangladeshi citizens in India and violence against Hindus in Bangladesh. A pro-Indian misinformation and disinformation campaign is exploiting this algorithmic bias to further its agenda – an agenda that has been described as Islamophobic and alarmist.

This kind of misinformation has been implicated in several riots and violent incidents in Bangladesh.

All of this serves as an important reminder of the power Google’s search engine has in shaping public perceptions of any event – and its vulnerability to being exploited. It’s also an important reminder to anyone who uses Google’s search engine to engage critically with the results it dishes up, rather than accepting them at face value.

What is algorithmic bias?

The algorithms that power Google’s search engine are trained on massive amounts of data. This data is gathered by computer bots which crawl billions of pages on the Internet and automatically analyse their content and quality. This information is stored in a large database, which Google’s search engine relies on to serve up relevant results whenever it receives a query.

But this process doesn’t capture every website on the Internet. It is also governed by predetermined rules about what is high quality and what is low quality, and reflects existing biases in data. For example, even though only 16% of the world’s population speaks English, it accounts for 55% of all written content online.

This means the reality of life on the ground in non-English speaking countries is often not reflected in Google search results. This is especially true for those countries located in the Global South.

This lack of representation perpetuates real-world biases. It can also hinder a nuanced public understanding of global issues.

What’s happening between Bangladesh and India?

Relations between Muslim-majority Bangladesh and neighbouring India, which is currently led by the Hindu nationalist BJP government, have deteriorated recently.

In August last year, youth-led anti-government protests erupted in Bangladesh.

These protests resulted in the downfall of prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s long-lasting autocratic regime, which had been supported by the Indian government.

An interim government filled the void. But certain Indian media outlets have leveraged sensitive issues such as Hindu minority rights to undermine its legitimacy.

In November, Bangladeshi authorities arrested Hindu leader Chinmoy Krishna Das on sedition charges over allegations he had disrespected the Bangladeshi flag. This triggered violent clashes between his supporters and police. These clashes resulted in the death of a Muslim lawyer.

Hindu activists also attacked a Bangladeshi consulate in India.

There have also been verified instances of mob violence against Hindus in Bangladesh. However, the Bangladeshi government claims these incidents are politically motivated rather than communal attacks.

The unrest intensified earlier this month, with thousands of protestors destroying the family home of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.

Boosting a disinformation campaign

A disinformation campaign based in India has exaggerated some cases of religious violence against Hindus in Bangladesh.

This campaign has been boosted by Google’s algorithmic bias.

For example, an analysis by the Tech Global Institute of Google search results about Chinmoy Krishna Das’s arrest between November 25 and December 20 last year found a “consistent pattern of bias”.

Specifically, Indian news outlets – including Hindu ultranationalist news outlets – “disproportionately” dominated the top search results. This overshadowed

factual reporting from credible Bangladeshi media outlets […] despite the search originating from within Bangladesh, the country where the incident originally occurred.

This bias was also evident in search queries coming from overseas. For example, roughly 90% of the top results about Chinmoy Krishna Das were from Indian outlets when searched from Australia and the United States. Bangladeshi news outlets featured on the thirteenth and fourteenth pages of results.

Indian news outlets – unlike their Bangladeshi counterparts – produce a substantial amount of content in English. They also employ more advanced search engine optimisation – or SEO – techniques, such as using effective keywords and sensationalist headlines. This gives them an advantage in Google search results compared to their Bangladeshi counterparts.

Another investigation by Bangladeshi fact-checking outlet Rumor Scanner in December 2024 found 72% of social media accounts spreading fake and misinformation are located in India.

The Conversation asked Google a series of questions about its search engine. It did not receive a response.

An illustrative case of a global problem

Bangladesh is an illustrative case of the global problem of algorithmic bias. It highlights how search engines can be exploited to promote disinformation and misinformation and powerfully shape people’s perceptions about what’s happening in the world.

It also highlights how everybody should think critically about the information they find online about the current situation in Bangladesh. Or about any news event, for that matter.

The case also reinforces the urgent need for policymakers, tech companies and governments to work together to effectively address algorithmic bias. This is especially urgent in the Global South, where marginal voices remain silenced.

Abdul Aziz, Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies, School of Arts and Social Sciences, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Are you feeling worn out? Struggling with lingering sadness, anxiety or feelings of indifference? If so, you might be stuck in a funk.

There are many reasons you might find yourself in a funk – including returning home after a holiday, not being sure what your goals in life are and a lack of meaning and purpose driving you forward. Sometimes, there’s no clear reason why we find ourselves in a funk.

Whatever the cause, don’t lose hope. There are many things you can do to turn the way you’re feeling around.

Ready to make a change? The Quarter Life Glow-up is a new, six-week newsletter course from The Conversation’s UK and Canada editions.

Every week, we’ll bring you research-backed advice and tools to help improve your relationships, your career, your free time and your mental health – no supplements or skincare required. Sign up here to start your glow-up at any time.

1. Express yourself

As obvious as it sounds, one of the best ways to get out of a funk is exploring the reasons you’re feeling this way.

Try writing down your deepest thoughts and feelings without judgement – no matter how disjointed they are. Or, grab a paintbrush, spray paint, pencil or chalk and express your emotions through art. You might even choose to dance, letting your movements convey what you’re feeling and help you get to the root of your funk.

Whatever form of self-expression works for you, all that matters is getting your feelings out. This will help you make sense of what’s causing your funk, and may make it easier to overcome.

2. Remember the good times

When we’re in a funk, we’re often overwhelmed by feelings of sadness or indifference. It can be hard to reduce these negative emotions – especially since negative feelings serve a purpose, by helping us understand what’s going on inside.

Instead of trying to banish bad feelings, try instead to layer positive emotions on top of them. This may help balance your emotions out.

You can do this by closing your eyes and savouring a happy moment from the past when you felt alive, vibrant and fulfilled. Use every sense as you relive those joyful memories.

3. Connect with someone

Research shows the most fulfilled people don’t bury themselves in their thoughts when feeling down. Instead, they look outward – engaging with others and their surroundings.

So when you’re in a funk, try finding ways of connecting, even briefly, with the people around you. Even a simple conversation with a stranger might lift your spirits.

Or take it a step further if you can and do something kind for someone – or try volunteering. This may help break you out of your low mood by giving you a sense of fulfilment?

4. Heal in nature

Nature is shown to improve wellbeing in many ways – such as lowering blood pressure, refreshing your mind and reminding you that you’re part of something larger than yourself.

If you’ve been feeling down, try going for a walk in the park or find a quiet place to stop on a hike. Lift your head to the sky, listen for the birds singing, immerse yourself in the foliage and let the sound of water wash over you. All of these things are linked with better mental health.

Preventing a funk

Doing any of these activities even just once can make a difference to the way your feeling. The more often you do them, the better.

And once you’ve broken out of your funk, there are things you can do to avoid slipping into one in the future.

1. Build resilience

Resilience isn’t just about bouncing back. It’s more about finding the right resources to help you get out of a funk – and knowing how to use these resources effectively.

For example, if connecting with your friends helps boost your wellbeing, this would be considered one of your “resources” that can help break you out of a funk. Of course, schedules can get in the way, so you’ll need to to find a time that works best for everyone.

This is what resilience is all about. Identifying your go-to resources for preventing those low feelings can help you create a ready-made toolkit to draw from whenever you feel a funk coming on. To build your tool-kit, think about the things that made the biggest difference in pulling you out of a funk the last time.

2. Cultivate hope

Hope isn’t just wishful thinking. It’s about cultivating the will to keep moving forward and finding a way to get there. It’s a pathway to a better life, keeping us focused on growth.

But one of the challenges in building hope is the lack of a clear vision of where we want to be. To overcome this, take some time to imagine your best-case scenario – what your life would look like ten years from now if everything you’ve ever hoped for came true.

Spend 20 minutes writing it down. Don’t stop to worry about spelling or grammar (this is just for you). Repeat this exercise as often as needed to create your ideal future.

When you’re finished, write down how you can achieve what you hope for. Having a well-defined vision of your best possible self can help keep you motivated and prevent you from feeling stuck – and will also give you a reserve of hope to draw upon when facing hard times.

3. Practise self-acceptance

Most importantly, focus on practising self-acceptance. Everyone experiences rough patches, so don’t be hard on yourself for being in a funk — it’s just a temporary state.

Embrace where you are and accept yourself fully, regardless of your current situation. And remember that self-acceptance doesn’t mean resignation. It’s about acknowledging, “It’s okay to be me,” while also envisioning how you want “me” to evolve in the future. With this mindset, you can work towards becoming the person you aspire to be.

Unlike trees, which are rooted in place, we have the flexibility to grow and change. Remember this the next time you start feeling stuck.

Jolanta Burke, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Positive Health Sciences, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The world’s biggest video sharing platform, YouTube, has just turned 20.

It was started inauspiciously in February 2005 by former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim – with a 19-second video of Karim exploring San Diego Zoo.

That year, YouTube’s disruption of the media timeline was minimal enough for there to be no mention of it in The Guardian’s coverage of TV’s Digital Revolution at the Edinburgh TV Festival.

Twenty years on, it’s a different story.

YouTube is a massive competitor to TV, an engagement beast, uploading as much new video every five minutes as the 2,400 hours BBC Studios produces in a whole year. The 26-year-old YouTube star Mr Beast earned US$85 million (£67 million) in 2024 from videos – ranging from live Call of Duty play-alongs to handing out 1,000 free cataract operations.

As a business, YouTube is now worth some US$455 billion (2024 Bloomberg estimate). That is a spectacular 275 times return on the US$1.65 billion Google paid for it in 2006. For the current YouTube value, Google could today buy British broadcaster ITV about 127 times.

YouTube has similar gross revenue (US$36.1 billion in 2024) to the streaming giant Netflix – but without the financial inconvenience of making shows, since most of the content is uploaded for free.

YouTube has 2.7 billion monthly active users, or 40% of the entire global population outside China, where it is blocked. It is also now one of the biggest music streaming sites, and the second biggest social network (to Facebook), plus a paid broadcast channel for 100 million subscribers.

YouTube has built a video Library of Babel, its expansive shelves lined eclectically with Baby Shark Dance, how to fix septic tanks, who would win a shooting war between Britain and France … and quantum physics.

The site has taken over global children’s programming to the point where Wired magazine pointed out that the future of this genre actually “isn’t television”. But there are flaws, too: it has been described as a conduit for disinformation by fact checkers.

So how did all that happen? Eight key innovations have helped YouTube achieve its success.

1. How new creativity is paid for

Traditional broadcast and print uses either the risk-on, fixed cost of hiring an office full of staff producers and writers, or the variable but risky approach of one-off commissioning from freelancers. Either way, the channel goes out of pocket, and if the content fails to score with viewers, it loses money.

YouTube did away with all that, flipping the risk profile entirely to the creator, and not paying upfront at all. It doesn’t have to deal with the key talent going out clubbing all night and being late to the set, not to mention other boring aspects of production like insurance, cash flow or contracts.

2. The revenue model of media

YouTube innovated by dividing any earnings with the creator, via an advertising income split of roughly 50% (the exact amount varies in practice). This incentivises creators to study the science of engagement, since it makes them more money. Mr Beast has a team employed just to optimise the thumbnails for his videos.

3. Advertising

Alongside parent company Google/Alphabet, and especially with the introduction (March 2007) of YouTube Analytics and other technologies, the site adrenalised programmatic video advertising, where ad space around a particular viewer is digitally auctioned off to the highest buyer, in real time.

That means when you land on a high-rating Beyoncé video and see a pre-roll ad for Grammarly, the advertiser algorithmically liked the look of your profile, so bid money to show you the ad. When that system works, it is ultra efficient, the key reason why the broad, demographics-based broadcast TV advertising market is so challenged.

4. Who makes content

About 50 million people now think they are professional creators, many of them on YouTube. Influencers have used the site to build businesses without mediation from (usually white and male) executives in legacy media.

This has driven, at its best, a major move towards the democratisation and globalisation of content production. Brazil and Kenya both have huge, eponymous YouTube creator economies, giving global distribution to diverse voices that realistically would been disintermediated in the 20th century media ecology.

5. The way we tell stories

Traditional TV ads and films start slow and build to a climax. Not so YouTube videos – and even more, YouTube Shorts – which prioritise a big emotive hit in the first few seconds for engagement, and regular further hits to keep people there. Mr Beast’s leaked internal notes describe how to do sequential escalation, meaning moving to more elaborate or extreme details as a video goes on: “An example of a one thru three minute tactic we would use is crazy progression,” he says, reflecting his deep homework. “I spent basically five years of my life studying virality on YouTube.”

6. Copyright

Back in 2015, if someone stole your intellectual property – say, old episodes of Mr Bean - and re-broadcast it on their own channel, you would call a media lawyer and sue. Now there is a better option – Content ID – to take the money instead. Through digital rights monetisation (DRM), owners can algorithmically discover their own content and claim the ad revenue, a material new income stream for producers.

7. Video technicalities

Most technical innovations in video production have found their way to the mainstream via YouTube, such as 360-degree, 4k, VR (virtual reality) and other tech acronyms. And now YouTube has started to integrate generative AI into its programme-producing suite for creators, with tight integration of Google’s Veo tools.

These will offer, according to CEO Neal Mohan, “billions of people around the world access to AI”. This is another competitive threat to traditional producers, because bedroom creators can now make their own visual effects-heavy fan-fiction episodes of Star Wars.

8. News

YouTube became a rabbit hole of disinformation, misinformation and conspiracy, via a reinforcement-learning algorithm that prioritises view time but not editorial accuracy. Covid conspiracy fans got to see “5G health risk” or “chemtrail” videos, because the algorithm knew they might like them too.

How can the big, legacy media brands respond? Simple. By meeting the audience where the viewers are, and putting their content on YouTube. The BBC has 14.7 million YouTube subscribers. ITV is exploiting its catalogue to put old episodes of Thunderbirds on there. Meanwhile in February 2025, Channel 4 also announced success in reaching young viewers via YouTube. Full episode views were “up 169% year-on-year, surpassing 110 million organic views in the UK”.

Alex Connock, Senior Fellow, Said Business School, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australian school students’ civics knowledge is the lowest it has been since testing began 20 years ago, according to new national data.

Results have fallen since the last assessment in 2019 and to the lowest levels since the national civics test began in 2004.

This follows a federal parliamentary report earlier this month, calling for mandatory civics education in Australian schools (it is currently part of the curriculum but not compulsory). The report cited fears young people are “poorly equipped” to participate in Australian democracy.

The latest results are certainly concerning. But as a researcher of the political lives of young people, I would caution against assuming young people “don’t care” about politics, or are unable to engage in it.

We also need to think about how civics education can engage meaningfully with young people and meet their needs.

What does the new report say?

This report from the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority is based on a national sample of Year 6 and Year 10 students, who are tested on their civics and citizenship skills. It includes knowledge of democratic principles, the Australian political system and related history.

The test is supposed to run every three years, but the most recent one was delayed by COVID. In 2024:

• 43% of Year 6 students attained the “proficient standard”, compared with 53% in 2019

• 28% of Australian Year 10 students met the proficient standard, compared with 38% in 2019.

Young people care about history and community

Alongside their civics skills, students were also asked about their support for a range of “citizenship behaviours”. While these figures have dropped from previous years, they nevertheless indicate most students are engaged in civic issues.

• 81% of Year 6 students and 75% of Year 10 students thought learning about Australa’s history was “very or quite” important

• 77% of Year 6 students and 70% of Year 10 students thought participating in activities to benefit the local community was “very or quite” important

• 85% of Year 6 students and 68% of Year 10 students thought taking part in activities to protect the environment was “very or quite important”.

Young people are knowledgable and active

My research with young Australians shows they are interested, knowledgeable and active on civic and political issues in many different ways.

This includes getting involved in or creating their own organisations, campaigns and online content. The issues range from bullying to mental health, climate change and ending gender-based violence.

My research also shows even children as young as six have views on how to address complex issues such as climate change.

When provided with platforms that respect their views, young people show they can research, deliberate and problem-solve. Many have clear opinions on what makes for a good life for themselves, Australia and the world. Initiatives such as a children’s parliament can connect their views directly with those who govern.

Young people don’t feel included

But governments and other authorities are historically poor at meaningfully engaging with young people.

In my work and other research, we continue to hear many students feel they don’t have a genuine voice in the community.

For example, in the climate movement, young female activists have said they do not feel feel their views are taken seriously by decision-makers because they are under 18.

This suggests children’s interest and confidence in democracy could be supported by giving them meaningful opportunities to participate before they can vote.

For example, creating governance mechanisms that include and are accountable to young people on matters that affect them. This should extend to issues which will significantly impact them into the future, such as housing and tax.

Technology and critical media literacy matter

We also have to make sure students are supported to get good quality information about issues relevant to them. And that they have the skills and resources to navigate information online.

Research suggests engagement with news and strong media literacy skills are linked to civic participation.

Studies have also found many Australian children who have high interest in the news are also involved in social issues online. Research shows social media is a key source for this news (as opposed to traditional sources such as newspapers or television).

At the same time, just 41% of children aged 8–16 are confident they can tell fake news stories from real ones (which is is similar to survey results for adults).

We also know some students, particularly from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, lack access to the technology they need for their schooling and everyday lives.

How can civics and citizenship knowledge be improved?

The new data certainly indicates the current system for civics education is not working for Australian students.

As we work to improve young people’s civics knowledge, research indicates any new approach in schools should be created in conjunction with young people themselves. If young people are given a say in how their civics education is designed, they will be more engaged and the lessons will be more effective, especially for students who face disadvantage.

Other studies we have co-designed and co-researched with young people have resulted in recommendations to trust young people and give them responsibilities and real-world learning opportunities, outside of school. They prioritised self-efficacy (people’s belief they can can control events that affect their lives) and a sense of belonging.

If civics education is going to be effective, it should acknowledge young people already have an interest and a stake in politics, focus on where they get their information, and involve them in how civics education is designed and delivered.

We might then have a model for supporting civics and citizenship learning across the community and across people’s lives.

Philippa Collin, Professor, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What makes something quantum? This question has kept a small but dedicated fraction of the world’s population – most of them quantum physicists – up at night for decades.

At very small scales, we know the universe is made up of waves and energy fields ruled by the laws of quantum mechanics, but at the scale of the everyday world around us we mostly see solid objects following the older rules of classical mechanics. When we ask what makes something quantum, we are asking where the line is between these two realms and how it can be drawn.

In a new study published in Newton, we answer this question in a previously undiscovered way. We show that a single spinning particle can show indubitable evidence of quantum behaviour.

The discovery of spin

One hundred years ago, Dutch physicists Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck proposed the idea that most tiny particles never really stand still. Instead, they suggested, electrons – elementary particles that form the outer shell of atoms – behave like minuscule spinning tops.

The spin can be either clockwise or anticlockwise, or what physicists call “spin up” and “spin down”. This binary nature of spinning electrons means that they can be used as building blocks for quantum computers.

However, in 1925 Goudsmit and Uhlenbeck’s spinning electron proposal caused an uproar in the physics establishment. At this time, physics was shaped by illustrious names such as Albert Einstein, Max Planck and Paul Ehrenfest, who laid the groundwork for the grand theories of relativity and quantum mechanics that transformed our understanding of the universe.

After eminent physicist and Nobel laureate Hendrik Lorentz criticised the spin theory, Uhlenbeck got cold feet and wanted to retract the paper. Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit’s mentor Ehrenfest told them to persist, writing: “You are both young enough to be able to afford a stupidity!”

Old ideas still remain

This kind of resistance to new ideas is not unusual in physics. As Planck put it, science progresses one funeral at a time.

Much like the scepticism about the discovery of spinning electrons, today many physicists are educated with a misconception about how spin works. Conventional wisdom, still taught in standard textbooks, tells us that spin is a quantum property that is essential to understanding the behaviour of electrons and nuclei. But at the same time, the textbooks say the rotation of the particle is still somehow perfectly described by classical physics.

Tsirelson’s forgotten protocol

A similar consideration applies to another textbook system, the harmonic oscillator (e.g. a pendulum). According to a 1927 theorem by Paul Ehrenfest, the way a quantum pendulum swings is indistinguishable from a swing in the park.

Strikingly, almost 80 years later the Russian-Israeli physicist Boris Tsirelson had an idea showing that it is possible to discern a quantum pendulum from a swing in the park, provided the quantum system is prepared in a truly quantum state. At the time, Tsirelson’s paper attracted little notice.

Another 15 years later, the research team of Valerio Scarani in Singapore resurfaced Tsirelson’s paper from the depths of the internet. Scarani’s student Zaw Lin Htoo extended Tsirelson’s idea, proving theoretically that it actually was possible to detect quantumness in the rotation of a spin.

Bigger particles and Schrödinger’s cat

Our team at the University of New South Wales decided to take on the challenge and prove the quantumness of a spin in a real experiment. However, we couldn’t do it with a simple spin like an electron. Because an electron is so small, it only has two possible spin states: up and down. Again defying widespread intuition, it turns out that an electron spin can only be prepared in quasi-classical states, which obey the old textbook predictions.

Instead we used a much larger particle, the nucleus of an antimony atom. The spin of this particle can point in eight different directions, instead of just two.

We were able to place the atom in a so-called “Schrödinger’s cat” state, in which it is in a superposition of two widely different spin directions at once.

We then performed the Tsirelson-Scarani protocol, which involves measuring not just the average orientation of the spin, but the positivity of it – a very different kind of measurement to what is done in standard spin resonance setups. This experiment showed unquestionable evidence for the quantumness of the antimony’s spin.

What’s next?

Our study is important for discovering fundamental truths about the universe, and for providing clarity on what it means to “be quantum”. However, it may also have real-life applications.

The states that we demonstrated to be quantum with the Tsirelson-Scarani protocol are exactly the kind of thing that give quantum computation and quantum sensing an advantage over classical counterparts. In the future we will focus making the most of these systems for use in technological applications.

Arjen Vaartjes, PhD Student, Quantum Physics, UNSW Sydney and Andrea Morello, Professor, Quantum Nanosystems, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Between 122 and 108 million years ago, the Australian landmass was much farther south than today. Victoria was positioned within the Antarctic Circle, separated from Tasmania by a vast rift valley rather than open sea.

This was the Early Cretaceous, and lush forests filled with dinosaurs dominated the landscape. We still find traces of these animals in Victoria’s fossil record.

Most of the dinosaur fossils found in Victoria belong to small plant-eaters called ornithopods. But there are also a few theropod fossils — a diverse group that includes all known carnivorous dinosaurs, as well as modern birds.

More than 250 theropod bones have been found in the Victorian Cretaceous. In the palaeontology collections of Museums Victoria, we have now identified five theropod fossils of particular importance. Our work on these bones has been published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Shinbones and tail bones

Research over the past decade has revealed striking similarities between Australian and South American dinosaurs. These include megaraptorids with claws shaped like scythes, and small, fleet-footed elasmarian ornithopods. There were also armoured parankylosaurians and colossal sauropods with long necks and small heads.

These parallels may seem surprising at first, but both continents retained a connection to Antarctica throughout much of the Cretaceous Period.

Our newly described fossils show that a bunch of different carnivorous dinosaurs seen in South America also thrived in the Cretaceous of southeastern Australia.

Two shinbones provide the first evidence of carcharodontosaurs (“shark-toothed lizards”) in Australia. A third shinbone provides strong evidence for the presence of unenlagiines, a southern group of dromaeosaurs (“running lizards”).

A fourth shinbone and two tail vertebrae with their chevrons, which are from a megaraptorid, represent one of Australia’s largest-known carnivorous dinosaurs.

A first for Australia

Carcharodontosaurs were apex predators in South America and Africa for much of the mid-Cretaceous. This group of theropods had large skulls, massive teeth and small arms. They were some of the largest predators to ever walk the Earth.

Despite their success in South America and Africa, carcharodontosaur fossils had never been found in Australia – until now. With the two shinbones, we now have the first evidence of the group on this continent.

Curiously, these Australian carcharodontosaurs are much smaller than their African and South American cousins, and the bones we have most closely resemble a carcharodontosaur from Thailand.

One of the Victorian carcharodontosaur shinbones was found on the Otway Coast. The other was found on the Bass Coast, in rocks nearly 10 million years older. This demonstrates these predators were successful in this area for at least 10 million years. It’s a notable find.

The large-bodied carcharodontosaurs of Africa and South America were seemingly specialised for hunting long-necked sauropods. However, this food source was likely not available to the Victorian polar carcharodontosaurs: sauropod fossils have never been found in Victoria.

The Australian ‘raptors’

Unenlagiines were lightly built (and likely feathered) predatory dinosaurs, related to Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame.

Most unenlagiine fossil remains have been found in South America. Historically, Australia had limited evidence for their presence, as well.

Our description of a new unenlagiine shinbone from Victoria provides robust evidence for their success in polar Australia during the Early Cretaceous.

The snouts of unenlagiines were relatively longer, and their arms relatively shorter than those of their dromaeosaur cousins from the Northern Hemisphere. This implies they had a rather different diet. The Victorian unenlagiine presumably ate fish or small land-dwelling animals. One possibility is the small mammals for which the Victorian Cretaceous is perhaps most famous – more than 50 mammal jaws have been found to date, and some are from ancient relatives of platypus and echidna.

The apex predators of Victoria

Large predatory dinosaurs – on the scale of Tyrannosaurus – are notably absent from the Australian fossil record. Instead, Australian dinosaur populations seem to have been dominated by medium-sized carnivores called megaraptorids.

Megaraptorid fossils are only known from South America and Australia. The most complete skeletons are from South America, including a relatively large one – roughly nine metres long. Australia’s only reasonably complete megaraptorid is Australovenator wintonensis from Winton, central Queensland.

The shinbone and tail vertebrae we describe provide evidence for a large megaraptorid in southeast Australia. Despite being almost 30 million years older than the roughly five- to six-metre-long Australovenator, the Bass Coast megaraptorid was at least 5% larger: approaching the size of its South American relatives.

The large, muscular arms and fingers tipped with fearsome scythe-like claws were presumably the primary weapons of megaraptorids. In contrast to almost every other group of medium-sized carnivorous dinosaurs, megaraptorids had elongated snouts with small teeth.

The abundance of ornithopods in Victoria presumably made this region more suited to smaller prey specialists like megaraptorids, rather than sauropod-stalking carcharodontosaurs.

More discoveries yet to come

We have much to learn about Australia’s Cretaceous dinosaurs. Our study shows how even five isolated and incomplete bones can improve our understanding of our continent’s fossil heritage.

Carcharodontosaurs might have been the apex predators in South America, but megaraptorids ruled the roost in the land down under.

The fantastic dinosaur fossil record of Victoria has grown over nearly 40 years thanks to the efforts of Dinosaur Dreaming, an ongoing volunteer palaeontology project, and citizen scientists like Melissa Lowery. Thanks to their efforts, our window into Victoria’s ancient past continues to become ever clearer.

Jake Kotevski, PhD Candidate, School of Biological Sciences, Monash University and PhD Candidate, Museums Victoria Research Institute and Stephen Poropat, Research Associate, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Six decades after Nat King Cole’s death in 1965, his music is still some of the most played in the world, and his celebrity transcends generational and racial divides. His smooth voice, captivating piano skills and enduring charisma earned him international acclaim.

One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Cole was not only a groundbreaking musician but also a quiet, yet resolute, advocate for social justice.

As an African American sacred music scholar, I have been immersed in the inseparable link between music, culture and social change for over 40 years. Examining Cole through the lens of his activism uncovers the nuanced ways in which he challenged the status quo and contributed to the Civil Rights Movement.

Beneath the polished veneer of his public image lay a deeply personal commitment to confronting racism and advocating for equality that is often overlooked.

Formative years

Nathaniel Adams Coles was born on March 17, 1919, in Montgomery, Alabama, to Perlina Adams Coles and Edward James Coles. Perlina served as the organist at the True Light Baptist Church and later the First Baptist Church of North Chicago, both pastored by Nathaniel’s father. She passed her love for music to her children, teaching them to play the piano and organ. Cole’s formative years were spent in church; gospel songs, hymns and spirituals formed the foundation of his musical education.

Though Cole is primarily remembered for his jazz and pop hits, the emotive power, communal emphasis and uplifting nature of Black sacred music profoundly shaped his artistry throughout his career, despite his single sacred album, “Every Time I Feel The Spirit,” released in 1959. The influence of gospel music, in particular, can be heard in his soulful phrasing and heartfelt delivery, contributing to his remarkable ability to connect with audiences.

Growing up in Chicago, he was also exposed to a rich tapestry of musical genres, including blues, classical and jazz. This eclectic upbringing laid the foundation for his versatile musical style and commercial success.

While Cole’s music was not overtly political, his very presence in the mainstream was a statement. In an era of racial segregation, he was a Black man achieving unprecedented success in a predominantly white music industry. His impeccable diction, tailored suits and sophisticated performances countered the prevailing stereotypes of African Americans as uncouth or subservient.

By embodying a poised and dignified persona, Cole communicated a powerful message: Black excellence and humanity could not be denied. As race scholar George Lipsitz writes in “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness,” “The cultural field … is a site of struggle where meanings are contested and power relations are negotiated.”

Cole’s success challenged the structural racism that sought to confine Black artists to the margins and opened doors for future generations. He acknowledged the significance of his presence on national television, recognizing it as a potential turning point for Black representation. While hesitant to explicitly label himself an activist, he contemplated the impact of his success on breaking down barriers, believing that “when you’ve got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.”

Confronting racism

In response to critics who dismiss Cole’s legacy as apolitical, I argue that they overlook the complexity of his resistance. Several scholars have stated that in a society where overt defiance often resulted in violence or economic ruin, Cole’s ability to navigate the entertainment industry while maintaining his dignity was itself a form of activism.

Though Cole never referred to himself as an activist, he confronted racism in both overt and quiet ways. Scholars such as cultural theorist Stuart Hall and researcher Laura Pottinger define “quiet activism” as modest, everyday acts of resistance – either implicitly or explicitly political – that challenge dominant ideologies and power structures. These acts often entail processes of production or creativity.

Despite his commercial success, Cole faced relentless systemic and personal racism. In 1948, he purchased a home in the affluent Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, a move met with hostility; the local homeowners association attempted to expel him, and he endured threats and acts of vandalism.

Yet Cole refused to be intimidated. His resolve was a courageous act of resistance that highlighted the pervasive inequalities of the time.

Cole faced blatant discrimination in Las Vegas. He was often denied access to the same hotels and restaurants where he performed, forced to stay in segregated accommodations. One particularly notable incident occurred at the Sands Hotel. in Las Vegas. When the maitre d’ tried to deny service to Cole’s Black bandmates in the dining room, Cole threatened to cancel his performance and leave. This forced the hotel management to back down, setting a precedent for other Black entertainers and patrons.

Cole quietly sued hotels and negotiated contracts that guaranteed his right to stay in the hotels where he performed, a significant step toward desegregation. He also made it a point to bring his entire entourage, including Black musicians and friends, to these establishments, challenging their “whites only” policies.

‘We Are Americans Too’

Cole’s impact extended beyond the realm of music. In 1956, he became the first African American to host a national network television show, “The Nat King Cole Show.” This was a groundbreaking moment, as it brought a Black man into the living rooms of millions of white Americans every week.

Though the show faced challenges with sponsorship due to racial prejudice, it marked a significant step toward greater representation and acceptance. As historian Donald Bogle notes in his 2001 book “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks,” “Television … became a new battleground for the image of the black performer.” Cole’s show, despite its short run, was a crucial battle in this war.

When Cole was attacked onstage by white supremacists during a concert in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1956, it underscored the physical danger Black public figures faced and galvanized Cole’s commitment to the Civil Rights Movement.

It is important to note that Cole’s support for the Civil Rights Movement was often quiet and behind the scenes. He faced criticism from some who felt he should have been more outspoken. However, his actions demonstrate his commitment to the cause of racial equality. Cole, who died in 1965 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, was a member of his local NAACP branch. He also performed at benefit concerts for the organization, raising money to support their efforts in fighting racial discrimination.

Shortly after the attack in Birmingham, Cole recorded his only song that is specifically political, “We Are Americans Too.” Recorded in 1956, the song was a powerful statement of belonging and a challenge to racial exclusion. Though it would not come close to reaching commercial success, it did serve as a powerful reminder that African Americans were, in fact, Americans. Over a half-century later, this song still resonates and speaks to the ongoing struggle for full inclusion and recognition for marginalized groups.

The juxtaposition of the refrain “We are Americans too” against the backdrop of the treatment of Black people during the Civil Rights Movement gives this song emotional weight. The very act of having to assert “We are Americans too” highlights the injustice of the situation.

It underscores the disconnect between the ideals of American democracy and the reality of racial inequality. In this context, the refrain “We are Americans too” is an act of resistance, a challenge to the prevailing social order. It highlights the hypocrisy of a nation founded on principles of liberty while denying those same liberties to a significant portion of its population. It’s a call for America to finally recognize the full humanity and citizenship of its Black citizens.

Great art, and great artists, are powerful witnesses of the times in which they live, love, work and play. Their commentary, both artistically and humanly, leaves an important record for generations. This is clearly evident in Nat King Cole.

Donna M. Cox, Professor of Music, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When we see objects in museum display cases, it often doesn’t tell their whole story. One thing that tends to get ignored or even lost in the conservation process is the smell. We lose a lot of valuable information as a result, such as how the object was produced or how it functioned.

My field is called sensory heritage, which relates to how we engage with heritage objects with senses other than vision. As part of this, I develop methods to identify and preserve culturally significant smells.

For example, I have worked with St Paul’s Cathedral to recreate the scent of its library, to ensure that it can be experienced by future generations. I was also part of an EU-funded project called Odeuropa, which worked with computer scientists and historians to tell the stories of smells from 300 years of European history.

With help from some perfumers, we brought back smells such as 17th-century Amsterdam, with its canals and linden trees. As a result, for example, visitors to Museum Ulm in southern Germany can experience our olfactory interpretations for ten of the paintings on display.

My latest project delves much further into the past. I was asked by the University of Ljubljana, in association with the University of Krakow and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, to help with a study of mummified bodies. Ljubljana was studying a mummified body in the national museum in Slovenia, and had been invited to extend its research to some mummified bodies in Cairo.

The strict guidelines about studying these bodies stipulate that researchers must use techniques that are not destructive. One way is to see what can be learned by smelling, which is why I joined the project, led by Professor Matija Strlič and PhD researcher Emma Paolin.

We studied nine mummified bodies at the Egyptian Museum, four of which were on display and five in storage. They span different time periods, with the oldest being from 3,500 years ago. They were also conserved in different ways and stored in different places, so they give a decent representation of all the mummified bodies in different collections around the world.

I put together a team of eight expert sniffers, of which I was one. Some are specialists who have worked with me on other projects, while some are colleagues from the Egyptian Museum who were given smell training in advance. We wanted them on the panel because they are so familiar with the smells in question.

The research

We began by doing chemical analysis to ensure the bodies were safe to smell, since in prior decades they were treated with synthetic pesticides to keep them preserved. Several bodies had high concentrations of these pesticides, which could potentially be carcinogenic, so these were removed from the study.

With the remaining nine, we slightly opened their sarcophaguses to insert little pipes and extract quantities of air. A measured volume of this air went into special bags which we took into a room away from display areas, so I and the other sniffers could experience them “nose on”.

More air was captured inside metal tubes containing a polymer that traps the volatile organic compounds, so they could be studied in a laboratory at the University of Ljubljana. This air was subjected to various chemical analyses to see which compounds were present, and also separated into its constituent parts using chromatography, so that we sniffers could experience and describe each smell individually.

This was very hard work: we usually took turns to sit on the end of a special machine with an outlet known as an olfactory port. You spend 15 to 20 minutes experiencing one smell after another, having to quickly describe them and rate their intensity. It can be as much as one smell every second, which can be overwhelming – hence the taking of turns.

Our findings

I was more excited at the prospect of discovering something new than nervous about what it would be like to smell these ancient bodies. However, you’d be forgiven for thinking these odours would not be agreeable. From the accounts of archaeologists to movies such as The Mummy (1999), mummified bodies are associated with foul smells.

Yet surprisingly, the smells were quite pleasant. The sniff team’s descriptions included “woody”, “floral”, “sweet”, “spicy”, “stale” and “resin-like”. We were able to identify ancient embalming ingredients including conifer oils, frankincense, myrrh and cinnamon.

We also identified degraded animal fats used in the mummification process; the human remains themselves; and both synthetic pesticides and benign plant-based pest oils that had more recently been used by the museum for preservation.

Bodies in display cases had a stronger scent than those in storage, but none was as strong as, say, a perfume. Surprisingly, one smelled distinctly of black tea: when you smell a body from millennia ago, you certainly don’t expect to be transported back to your kitchen. The other sniffers agreed about the tea smell, and we later established that the source was probably a chemical called caryophyllene.

Future steps

Next, we will reconstruct the smell of the mummified bodies so that visitors to the Egyptian Museum can experience them first-hand. We’ll make both a faithful chemical construction of what we smelled, plus an interpretation of how the body would have smelled when it was sealed off in its tomb.

It will probably be 2026 before the public can experience these. In the meantime, we’re also being approached by other museums with ancient Egyptian collections who are interested in working with us to apply similar methods.

Separately, I am working with other colleagues on developing a catalogue for smells of cultural significance to the UK, including vintage cars, traditional dishes and more libraries.

Hopefully, our work with mummified bodies is an example of how you can bring back another dimension of heritage. Experiencing smells helps to give visitors a more holistic appreciation and understanding of the subjects.

And everyone is fascinated by mummified bodies. Soon, it will be possible to put yourself in the shoes of the archaeologists who originally discovered their tombs, and revealed their secrets to the modern world.

Cecilia Bembibre, Lecturer in Sustainable Heritage, UCL

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

There is only so much thinking most of us can do in our heads. Try dividing 16,951 by 67 without reaching for a pen and paper. Or a calculator. Try doing the weekly shopping without a list on the back of last week’s receipt. Or on your phone.

By relying on these devices to help make our lives easier, are we making ourselves smarter or dumber? Have we traded efficiency gains for inching ever closer to idiocy as a species?

This question is especially important to consider with regard to generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology such as ChatGPT, an AI chatbot owned by tech company OpenAI, which at the time of writing is used by 300 million people each week.

According to a recent paper by a team of researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, the answer might be yes. But there’s more to the story.

Thinking well

The researchers assessed how users perceive the effect of generative AI on their own critical thinking.

Generally speaking, critical thinking has to do with thinking well.

One way we do this is by judging our own thinking processes against established norms and methods of good reasoning. These norms include values such as precision, clarity, accuracy, breadth, depth, relevance, significance and cogency of arguments.

Other factors that can affect quality of thinking include the influence of our existing world views, cognitive biases, and reliance on incomplete or inaccurate mental models.

The authors of the recent study adopt a definition of critical thinking developed by American educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom and colleagues in 1956. It’s not really a definition at all. Rather it’s a hierarchical way to categorise cognitive skills, including recall of information, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

The authors state they prefer this categorisation, also known as a “taxonomy”, because it’s simple and easy to apply. However, since it was devised it has fallen out of favour and has been discredited by Robert Marzano and indeed by Bloom himself.

In particular, it assumes there is a hierarchy of cognitive skills in which so-called “higher-order” skills are built upon “lower-order” skills. This does not hold on logical or evidence-based grounds. For example, evaluation, usually seen as a culminating or higher-order process, can be the beginning of inquiry or very easy to perform in some contexts. It is more the context than the cognition that determines the sophistication of thinking.

An issue with using this taxonomy in the study is that many generative AI products also seem to use it to guide their own output. So you could interpret this study as testing whether generative AI, by the way it’s designed, is effective at framing how users think about critical thinking.

Also missing from Bloom’s taxonomy is a fundamental aspect of critical thinking: the fact that the critical thinker not only performs these and many other cognitive skills, but performs them well. They do this because they have an overarching concern for the truth, which is something AI systems do not have.

Higher confidence in AI equals less critical thinking

Research published earlier this year revealed “a significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities”.

The new study further explores this idea. It surveyed 319 knowledge workers such as healthcare practitioners, educators and engineers who discussed 936 tasks they conducted with the help of generative AI. Interestingly, the study found users consider themselves to use critical thinking less in the execution of the task, than in providing oversight at the verification and editing stages.

In high-stakes work environments, the desire to produce high-quality work combined with fear of reprisals serve as powerful motivators for users to engage their critical thinking in reviewing the outputs of AI.

But overall, participants believe the increases in efficiency more than compensate for the effort expended in providing such oversight.

The study found people who had higher confidence in AI generally displayed less critical thinking, while people with higher confidence in themselves tended to display more critical thinking.

This suggests generative AI does not harm one’s critical thinking – provided one has it to begin with.

Problematically, the study relied too much on self-reporting, which can be subject to a range of biases and interpretation issues. Putting this aside, critical thinking was defined by users as “setting clear goals, refining prompts, and assessing generated content to meet specific criteria and standards”.

“Criteria and standards” here refer more to the purposes of the task than to the purposes of critical thinking. For example, an output meets the criteria if it “complies with their queries”, and the standards if the “generated artefact is functional” for the workplace.

This raises the question of whether the study was really measuring critical thinking at all.

Becoming a critical thinker

Implicit in the new study is the idea that exercising critical thinking at the oversight stage is at least better than an unreflective over-reliance on generative AI.

The authors recommend generative AI developers add features to trigger users’ critical oversight. But is this enough?

Critical thinking is needed at every stage before and while using AI – when formulating questions and hypotheses to be tested, and when interrogating outputs for bias and accuracy.

The only way to ensure generative AI does not harm your critical thinking is to become a critical thinker before you use it.

Becoming a critical thinker requires identifying and challenging unstated assumptions behind claims and evaluating diverse perspectives. It also requires practising systematic and methodical reasoning and reasoning collaboratively to test your ideas and thinking with others.

Chalk and chalkboards made us better at mathematics. Can generative AI make us better at critical thinking? Maybe – if we are careful, we might be able to use generative AI to challenge ourselves and augment our critical thinking.

But in the meantime, there are always steps we can, and should, take to improve our critical thinking instead of letting an AI do the thinking for us.

Deborah Brown, Professor in Philosophy, Director of the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland and Peter Ellerton, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Education; Curriculum Director, UQ Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Menstruation, or a period, is the bleeding that occurs about monthly in healthy people born with a uterus, from puberty to menopause. This happens when the endometrium, the tissue that lines the inside of the uterus, is shed.

Endometriosis is a condition that occurs when endometrium-like tissue is found outside the uterus, usually within the pelvic cavity. It is often considered a major cause of pelvic pain.

Pelvic pain significantly impacts quality of life. But how can you tell the difference between period pain and endometriosis?

Periods and period pain

Periods involve shedding the 4-6 millimetre-thick endometrial lining from the inside of the uterus.

As the lining detaches from the wall of the uterus, the blood vessels which previously supplied the lining bleed. The uterine muscles contract, expelling the blood and crumbled endometrium.

The crumbled endometrium and blood mostly pass through the cervix and vagina. But almost everyone back-bleeds via their fallopian tubes into their pelvic cavity. This is known as “retrograde menstruation”.

The process of menstrual shedding is caused by inflammatory substances, which also cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches, aches, pains, dizziness, feeling faint, as well as stimulating pain receptors.

These inflammatory substances are responsible for the pain and symptoms in the week before a period and the first few days.

For women with heavy periods, their worst days of pain are usually the heaviest days of their period, coinciding with more cramps to expel clots and more retrograde bleeding.

Many women also have pain when they are releasing an egg from their ovary at the time of ovulation. Ovulation or mid-cycle pain can be worse in those who bleed more, as those women are more likely to bleed into the ovulation follicle.

Around 90% of adolescents experience period pain. Among these adolescents, 20% will experience such severe period pain they need time off from school and miss activities. These symptoms are too often normalised, without validation or acknowledgement.

What about endometriosis?

Many symptoms have been attributed to endometriosis, including painful periods, pain with sex, bladder and bowel-related pain, low back pain and thigh pain.

Other pain-related conditions such migraines and chronic fatigue have also been linked to endometriosis. But these other pain-related symptoms occur equally often in people with pelvic pain who don’t have endometriosis.

Repeated, significant period and ovulation pain can eventually lead some people to develop persistent or chronic pelvic pain, which lasts longer than six months. This appears to occur through a process known as central sensitisation, where the brain becomes more sensitive to pain and other sensory stimuli.

Central sensitisation can occur in people with persistent pain, independent of the presence or absence of endometriosis.

Eventually, many people with period and/or persistent pelvic pain will have an operation called a laparoscopy, which allows surgeons to examine organs in the pelvis and abdomen, and diagnose and treat endometriosis.

Yet only 50% of those with identical pain symptoms who undergo a laparoscopy will end up having endometriosis.

Endometriosis is also found in pain-free women. So we cannot predict who does and doesn’t have endometriosis from symptoms alone.

How is this pain managed?

Endometriosis surgery usually involves removing lesions and adhesions. But at least 30% of people return to pre-surgery pain levels within six months or have more pain than before.

After surgery, emergency department presentations for pain are unchanged and 50% have repeat surgery within a few years.

Suppressing periods using hormonal therapies (such as continuous oral contraceptive pills or progesterone-only approaches) can suppress endometriosis and reduce or eliminate pain, independent of the presence or absence of endometriosis.

Not every type or dose of hormonal medications suits everyone, so medications need to be individualised.

The current gold-standard approach to manage persistent pelvic pain involves a multidisciplinary team approach, with the aim of achieving sustained remission and improving quality of life. This may include:

• physiotherapy for pelvic floor and other musculoskeletal problems
• management of bladder and bowel symptoms
• support for self-managing pain
• lifestyle changes including diet and exercise
• psychological or group therapy, as our moods, stress levels and childhood events can affect how we feel and experience pain.

Whether you have period pain, chronic pelvic pain or pain you think is associated with endometriosis, if you feel pain, it’s real. If it’s disrupting your life, you deserve to be taken seriously and treated as the whole person you are.

Sonia R. Grover, Clinical Professor of Gynaecology, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Some national borders are determined by natural phenomena like seas, mountains and rivers. Most, however, are created by people.

This means the creation of borders is often a political exercise – usually informed by the interests of those who create them, not the local populations to whom they apply.

The Sykes-Picot agreement, known officially as the Asia Minor Agreement of 1916, was arguably the first in a series of attempts by colonial powers to mould the borders of the Middle East.

Signed in secret at the height of the first world war, Sykes-Picot was an agreement between France and Great Britain, approved by Russia. It would have lasting consequences for the region.

It is frequently cited as the epitome of European colonial betrayal, and the genesis of most conflict in the Middle East.

But while Sykes-Picot did significantly affect regional politics, the history is more complicated than popular narratives suggest.

‘The Eastern question’

The agreement was seen by the signatories as a potential answer to what was then known by European powers as “the Eastern question”: what would happen when the Ottoman Empire inevitably collapsed?

The Ottoman state in the early 20th century was vast compared to its European peers, encompassing Anatolia (the Asian part of modern-day Turkey) and parts of the Arabian Peninsula.

But it was weak, and had been on a steady decline since the 18th century due to multiple military defeats, revolts and rampant corruption. By the beginning of the first world war, the Triple Entente (France, Britain and Russia) believed the Ottoman state would not survive long.

The Entente aimed to create new “zones of influence” in the Middle East, dividing Ottoman territory into colonial partitions.

Secret negotiations

Between late 1915 and early 1916, Britain and France sent their respective envoys to negotiate the potential terms of this outcome in secret.

Mark Sykes, a political adviser and military veteran, represented the British. François Georges-Picot, a career diplomat, represented the French.

Italy and Russia also had delegations in attendance, though the discussions were dominated by Britain and France as the most powerful nations. The Ottomans were oblivious to these negotiations.

Under the agreement:

• France was allocated what is now Syria, Lebanon and southern Turkey
• Britain claimed most of modern-day Iraq, southern Palestine and Kuwait
• Russia took control of Armenia.

An area known as the Jerusalem Sanjak (an administrative division created by the Ottomon Empire) in Palestine was to come under an international protectorate, though it was not settled in the agreement as to how this protectorate would operate.

Sykes-Picot was kept secret, mostly because Britain had made contradictory commitments to other parties. It had promised (through a series of letters known as the McMahon-Hussein correspondence) to give independence to the Arabs who had helped the British fight the Ottomans in the first world war.

Later, in early November 1917, it also made a promise to Zionist Jews migrating to Palestine in the Balfour Declaration. In this public declaration, Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur Balfour effectively expressed Britain’s support for the Zionist project to create a Jewish state in Ottoman Palestine. Then-Prime Minister David Lloyd George also publicly supported both Zionism and Balfour’s statement.

The Sykes-Picot agreement did not stay secret for long.

In November 1917, the Bolsheviks, who were now in power in Russia following the fall of the Russian monarchy, published Sykes-Picot to the world.

Arab nationalists were enraged. So, too, were Zionists who had witnessed the Balfour Declaration just weeks prior. The Anglo-French declaration of November 1918 attempted to allay the fears of the Arabs by pledging to “assist in the establishment of national governments and administrations.” However, Arab distrust of the European powers only grew.

Borders moulded by colonial powers

In the years following, European powers started to reevaluate their position on Ottoman territory.

The French, who still wished to take control of Syria, had argued the newly formed League of Nations (a predecessor of the United Nations) could give France the territory under a mandate. A mandate is a formal authorisation to govern by the League of Nations.

The British said this would violate their earlier promises to the Arabs. Britain reiterated that the Anglo-French declaration of 1918 superseded Sykes-Picot.

Then came the San Remo Conference in 1920, an international meeting in Italy. This is where some of the popular readings into Sykes-Picot get muddled, as several aspects of the agreement were discarded. What remained the same was the French and British desire to add Ottoman territory to their dominions.

Here, the European victors of the first world war sought to finalise the division of Ottoman territories by slicing them into League of Nations mandates.

This included the French mandates of Syria and Lebanon, as well as the British mandates of Palestine and Mesopotamia. Britain also confirmed at the time its support for a Jewish national homeland, while protecting the local Palestinian population.

This is where we start to see borders of the modern Middle East form. The boundaries themselves differed from Sykes-Picot. But Britain and France, however, were still able to expand their colonial dominion in the region.

In 1921, a group of British representatives met in Cairo to finalise the borders of their mandates. This led to the creation of two states: Iraq under King Faisal and Transjordan (now Jordan) under King Abdullah – both of whom were members of the Arab Heshemite dynasty. Palestine was to remain under British mandatory control.

While these states had independence on paper, then-Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill believed that Transjordan would ultimately be controlled by the British Empire, giving the Heshemites only nominal independence.

Little consideration was given to the ethnic and religious diversity of these territories. Some argue this helped lead to modern-day sectarian conflict in Iraq.

Ripples that continue today

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire was always going to cause regional upheaval, but the colonial jockeying for territory clearly had lasting consequences.

Several regional conflicts were exacerbated during this period, but it would also directly lead to the creation of the state of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

This leads to the displacement of Palestinians and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that still rages today.

Zionists and Arab nationalists viewed Palestine to have been originally promised to them by the British through the Balfour Declaration and McMahon-Hussein correspondence, respectfully.

But in Sykes-Picot, the British had no intention of promising Palestine to anyone but themselves.

As a result, the British mandate was characterised by anti-colonial violence from both Jews and Arabs.

When the British eventually abandoned control of Palestine in 1947, the UN partition plan for two states (one Jewish, one Arab) was supposed to take over. Instead, Arab-Israeli conflict began within hours of the partition taking effect.

So a lot happened after Sykes-Picot, with the map proposed in 1916 looking very different to what actually eventuated.

Many scholars argue it was the agreements that followed Sykes-Picot that were more consequential, and Sykes-Picot holds only “minor importance” by comparison.

While this may be true, Sykes-Picot is still emblematic of how consequential European colonial ambition was in the Middle East.

And while the borders outlined in the agreement did not eventuate, Britain and France still managed to get most of the territory they wanted, with little consideration of local populations.

The Sykes-Picot agreement is therefore one of many colonial projects that we are still feeling the ripples of today.

Andrew Thomas, Lecturer in Middle East Studies, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ageing is a normal part of the life course. It doesn’t matter how many green smoothies you drink, or how many “anti-ageing” skin care products you use, you can’t stop the ageing process.

But while we’re all getting older, not everyone who ages will necessarily become frail. Ageing and frailty are closely related, but they’re not the same thing.

Let’s break down the difference between the two.

What is ageing?

On a biological level, ageing is the result of the build-up of cellular and molecular damage in the body over time.

The ageing process causes a gradual decline in physical and mental function, a higher risk of disease, and eventual (and unavoidable) death.

Still, some people think they can cheat the system, spending millions trying to stay young forever. While we may be able to reduce the appearance of ageing, ultimately there’s no magic pill to increase our longevity.

Around one in six Australians are over the age of 65 (16% of the total population). Yet as individuals and a society many of us still have a fear of ageing.

But what is it about ageing we are so afraid of? When it comes down to it, many people are probably less afraid of ageing, and more afraid of becoming frail.

What is frailty?

Frailty is defined as a state of vulnerability characterised by a loss of reserve across multiple parts of the body.

Frailty is generally characterised by several physical symptoms, such as weakness, slow walking speed, exhaustion, unintentional weight loss, and low activity level.

Lower bone density and osteoporosis (a condition where the bones become weak and brittle) are also associated with frailty, increasing the risk of falls and fractures.

Notably, someone who is frail is less able to “bounce back” (or recover) after a stressor event compared to someone who is not frail. A stressor event could be, for example, having a fall, getting a urinary infection, or even being admitted to hospital.

Frailty is more common in older people. But in some cases, frailty can affect younger people too. For example, people with advanced chronic diseases, such as heart failure, can develop frailty much younger.

Frailty is dynamic. While it can get worse over time, in some cases frailty can also be reversed or even prevented through health and lifestyle changes.

For example, we know physical inactivity and a sedentary lifestyle can significantly increase a person’s risk of becoming frail. On the flip side, evidence shows doing more exercise can reduce frailty in older adults.

There are other lifestyle modifications we can make too. And the earlier we make these changes, the better.

Preventing frailty

Here are some key things you can do to help prevent frailty:

1. Get moving

Exercise more, including resistance training (such as squats and lunges, or grab some stretchy resistance bands). Many of these sorts of exercises can be done at home. YouTube has some great resources.

You might also consider joining a gym, or asking your GP about seeing an accredited exercise physiologist or physiotherapist. Medicare subsidies may be available for these specialists.

The physical activity guidelines for older Australians recommend at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity on most days or preferably every day.

The guidelines also highlight the importance of incorporating different types of activities (such as resistance, balance or flexibility exercises) and reducing the time you spend sitting down.

2. Stay socially active

Social isolation and loneliness can contribute to the progression of frailty. Reach out to friends and family for support or contact local community groups that you may be able to join. This might include your local Zumba class or bridge club.

3. Ask your doctor or pharmacist to regularly check your medications

“Polypharmacy” (when someone is prescribed five or more medications) is associated with an increased risk of frailty. The presence of frailty can also interfere with how the body absorbs medicines.

Home medicine reviews are available for older adults with a chronic medical condition or a complex medication regimen. These reviews aims to help people get the most benefit from their medicines and reduce their risk of experiencing adverse effects.

Always consult your doctor before making any changes to your current medications.

4. Eat a protein-rich diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables

Low nutrient intake can negatively impact physical function and may increase your risk of becoming frail. There’s some evidence to suggest eating more protein may delay the onset of frailty.

A food-first approach is best when looking to increase the protein in your diet. Protein is found in foods such as lean meats, poultry, seafood, eggs, dairy products, legumes and nuts.

Adults over 50 should aim to eat 64 grams of protein per day for men and 46g per day for women. Adults over 70 should aim for 81g per day for men and 57g per day for women.

Ask your GP for a referral to a dietitian who can provide advice on a dietary regime that is best for you.

Supplements may be recommended if you are struggling to meet your protein needs from diet alone.

Julee McDonagh, Senior Research Fellow of Frailty Research, University of Wollongong and Caleb Ferguson, Professor of Nursing and Director of Health Innovations, University of Wollongong

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

On November 1 2024, the roof of a newly €55 million renovated railway station in Novi Sad, Serbia’s second biggest city, collapsed and killed 15 people. The deaths sparked Serbia’s largest wave of student-led anti-government protests since Yugoslavia’s disintegration in 2000.

The protests pose the most serious threat to Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić’s power since he became prime minister in 2014, and president in 2017. The protest movement has highlighted Vučić’s growing authoritarian rule and widespread corruption in Serbia.

Serbians believe that the deadly roof collapse was caused by government corruption. The station was renovated by a Chinese-led consortium as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative investments and growing political ties with Serbia. The Chinese consortium and Vučić refused to publish the railway station restoration procurement contract after protesters demanded it.

The protesters have four demands: the publication of all procurement documents concerning the renovation of the station, a stop to the prosecution of students arrested during the protests, the prosecution of police and security forces involved in attacking students during the protests and a 20% increase in the budget for higher education.

However, the Serbian government and media — most of which Vučić controls through a network of political patronage and cronyism – are downplaying the protests and threatening students.

Vučić claims that foreign powers are behind the protests to topple him and destabilise Serbia. Russia and China have fully supported Vučić’s claims that Serbia is the target of a western plot to orchestrate the protesters and overthrow Vučić.

Serbia’s history of corruption

In the decade after former president Slobodan Milošević was overthrown, Serbia implemented a number of democratic and anti-corruption reforms. As a result, the country climbed to 72nd place out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index in 2013. Serbia opened EU membership negotiations the following year.

However, since Vučić took office, Serbia has become more authoritarian. Corruption is widespread, and the government has exploited tensions and instability with most of its western Balkans neighbours, primarily Kosovo, for political gain.

Serbia was downgraded to partly free by Freedom House in 2019, and the V-Dem Institute (Varieties of Democracy) labelled it as as an “electoral autocracy”. Serbia dropped to 105th place in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index in 2024.

Many international organisations monitoring anti-corruption, human rights and democracy have reported Vučić’s authoritarian tendencies and corruption in Serbia.

A report from Amnesty International published in December 2024 describes Serbia as a “digital prison”. It has been reported that Serbian authorities are using surveillance technology to monitor and suppress the protesters and other political opponents.

International response

The EU has mostly stayed silent since the protests began. After receiving letters from NGOs and activists, EU Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos stated that the EU is following the protests in Serbia, and backed the rule of law and freedom of assembly.

This is a far cry from the EU’s response to protests in Georgia last year. EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen said “the Georgian people are fighting for democracy” – yet has stayed silent on the protests in Serbia.

Some argue this (lack of) response is because in August 2024, Vučić made a deal with the EU to provide lithium to the bloc – a boon to the EU’s electric vehicle production. There were also widespread protests against the lithium deal over its transparency and concerns that the mine would cause irreversible environmental destruction to Serbia’s Jadar Valley.

The US has also stayed quiet. President Donald Trump’s associates were recently granted permission to build a Trump hotel in Belgrade. Further, Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois who served eight years in prison for corruption, is being considered as the new US ambassador to Serbia. Blagojevich, whose father is from Serbia, expressed support for Vučić and visited the country.

What is next for Serbia?

Serbia’s prime minister, Miloš Vučević, and Novi Sad’s mayor, Milan Đurić, both resigned in an effort to de-escalate the protests. Following the resignation of the PM, Vučić has said that he is open to the new government making the documents about the station collapse public.

While this may be a sign that the protests are loosening Vučić’s grip, the movement has only intensified, spreading to more than 200 towns on February 1.

Vučić has pledged to either form a new government within one month, or organise a new parliamentary election in the spring to address the protesters’ demands. However, this would barely paper over the cracks of systemic corruption in Serbia.

The student movement has revealed how democracy and the rule of law have eroded since Vučić came to power in 2014.

The protests have also exposed the international community’s complicity in supporting Vučić under the premise that he is a constructive partner for regional cooperation and stability in the western Balkans.

But to have a lasting impact in Serbia, the protesters should also demand a transitional government to undertake anti-corruption and democratic reforms to strengthen the rule of law, and to organise the next elections.

At the heart of these reforms must be constitutional changes, such as term limits on elected public office. Research shows stricter term limits can reduce the costs of corruption, abuse of power and attacks on the rule of law and democracy.

Term limits would also prevent figures with authoritarian tendencies, like Vučić, from becoming the state themselves with unlimited and unaccountable power.

The EU also has a role to play here. By not putting pressure on Vučić, the EU is empowering his authoritarian tendencies. Second, in EU membership negotiations, it should introduce electoral reform as a new requirement for all EU candidate countries.

Other leaders in the western Balkans have adopted similar authoritarian government models and patronage systems as Serbia to maintain power. These would undermine and threaten the EU rule of law, if they were to join the bloc today.

The EU must also publicly support student protesters who want Serbia to become more democratic and accountable. After all, the students are fighting for the very ideals on which the EU was founded.

Andi Hoxhaj, Lecturer in Law, King's College London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Google’s search engine handles the vast majority of online searches worldwide. By one estimate, it fields 6.3 million queries every second.

Because of the search engine’s enormous scale, its outputs can have outsized effects. And, while Google’s search results are shaped by ostensibly neutral rules and processes, research has shown these algorithms often produce biased results.

This problem of algorithmic bias is again being highlighted by recent escalating tensions between India and Bangladesh and cases of violence against Bangladeshi citizens in India and violence against Hindus in Bangladesh. A pro-Indian misinformation and disinformation campaign is exploiting this algorithmic bias to further its agenda – an agenda that has been described as Islamophobic and alarmist.

This kind of misinformation has been implicated in several riots and violent incidents in Bangladesh.

All of this serves as an important reminder of the power Google’s search engine has in shaping public perceptions of any event – and its vulnerability to being exploited. It’s also an important reminder to anyone who uses Google’s search engine to engage critically with the results it dishes up, rather than accepting them at face value.

What is algorithmic bias?

The algorithms that power Google’s search engine are trained on massive amounts of data. This data is gathered by computer bots which crawl billions of pages on the Internet and automatically analyse their content and quality. This information is stored in a large database, which Google’s search engine relies on to serve up relevant results whenever it receives a query.

But this process doesn’t capture every website on the Internet. It is also governed by predetermined rules about what is high quality and what is low quality, and reflects existing biases in data. For example, even though only 16% of the world’s population speaks English, it accounts for 55% of all written content online.

This means the reality of life on the ground in non-English speaking countries is often not reflected in Google search results. This is especially true for those countries located in the Global South.

This lack of representation perpetuates real-world biases. It can also hinder a nuanced public understanding of global issues.

What’s happening between Bangladesh and India?

Relations between Muslim-majority Bangladesh and neighbouring India, which is currently led by the Hindu nationalist BJP government, have deteriorated recently.

In August last year, youth-led anti-government protests erupted in Bangladesh.

These protests resulted in the downfall of prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s long-lasting autocratic regime, which had been supported by the Indian government.

An interim government filled the void. But certain Indian media outlets have leveraged sensitive issues such as Hindu minority rights to undermine its legitimacy.

In November, Bangladeshi authorities arrested Hindu leader Chinmoy Krishna Das on sedition charges over allegations he had disrespected the Bangladeshi flag. This triggered violent clashes between his supporters and police. These clashes resulted in the death of a Muslim lawyer.

Hindu activists also attacked a Bangladeshi consulate in India.

There have also been verified instances of mob violence against Hindus in Bangladesh. However, the Bangladeshi government claims these incidents are politically motivated rather than communal attacks.

The unrest intensified earlier this month, with thousands of protestors destroying the family home of deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.

Boosting a disinformation campaign

A disinformation campaign based in India has exaggerated some cases of religious violence against Hindus in Bangladesh.

This campaign has been boosted by Google’s algorithmic bias.

For example, an analysis by the Tech Global Institute of Google search results about Chinmoy Krishna Das’s arrest between November 25 and December 20 last year found a “consistent pattern of bias”.

Specifically, Indian news outlets – including Hindu ultranationalist news outlets – “disproportionately” dominated the top search results. This overshadowed

factual reporting from credible Bangladeshi media outlets […] despite the search originating from within Bangladesh, the country where the incident originally occurred.

This bias was also evident in search queries coming from overseas. For example, roughly 90% of the top results about Chinmoy Krishna Das were from Indian outlets when searched from Australia and the United States. Bangladeshi news outlets featured on the thirteenth and fourteenth pages of results.

Indian news outlets – unlike their Bangladeshi counterparts – produce a substantial amount of content in English. They also employ more advanced search engine optimisation – or SEO – techniques, such as using effective keywords and sensationalist headlines. This gives them an advantage in Google search results compared to their Bangladeshi counterparts.

Another investigation by Bangladeshi fact-checking outlet Rumor Scanner in December 2024 found 72% of social media accounts spreading fake and misinformation are located in India.

The Conversation asked Google a series of questions about its search engine. It did not receive a response.

An illustrative case of a global problem

Bangladesh is an illustrative case of the global problem of algorithmic bias. It highlights how search engines can be exploited to promote disinformation and misinformation and powerfully shape people’s perceptions about what’s happening in the world.

It also highlights how everybody should think critically about the information they find online about the current situation in Bangladesh. Or about any news event, for that matter.

The case also reinforces the urgent need for policymakers, tech companies and governments to work together to effectively address algorithmic bias. This is especially urgent in the Global South, where marginal voices remain silenced.

Abdul Aziz, Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies, School of Arts and Social Sciences, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Picture a primordial Earth: a world of muted browns, greys and greens. Fast forward to today, and Earth teems with a kaleidoscope of colours. From the stunning feathers of male peacocks to the vivid blooms of flowers, the story of how Earth became colourful is one of evolution. But how and why did this explosion of colour happen? Recent research is giving us clues into this part of Earth’s narrative.

The journey towards a colourful world began with the evolution of vision, which initially developed to distinguish light from dark over 600 million years ago. This ability probably arose in early organisms, like single-celled bacteria, enabling them to detect changes in their environment, such as the direction of sunlight. Over time, more sophisticated visual systems evolved and allowed organisms to perceive a broader spectrum of light.

For example, trichromatic vision – the ability to detect three distinct wavelengths such as red, green and blue – originated approximately 500-550 million years ago. This coincided with the “Cambrian explosion” (about 541 million years ago), which marked a rapid diversification of life, including the development of advanced sensory systems like vision.

The first animals with trichromatic vision were arthropods (a group of invertebrates that includes insects, spiders and crustaceans). Trichromatic vision emerged 420-500 million years ago in vertebrates. This adaptation helped ancient animals to navigate their environments and detect predators or prey in ways that monochromatic vision could not.

Fossil evidence from trilobites, extinct marine arthropods that roamed the seas over 500 million years ago, suggests they had compound eyes. This means eyes with multiple small lenses, each capturing a fraction of the visual field, which combine to form a mosaic image. These eyes could detect multiple wavelengths, providing an evolutionary advantage in dim marine environments by enhancing the animal’s visibility and motion detection.

The stage was set: organisms could see a colourful world before they became colourful themselves.

The first burst of conspicuous colour came from plants. Early plants began producing colourful fruits and flowers, such as red, yellow, orange, blue and purple, to attract animals to help plants with seed dispersal and pollination.

Analytical models based on present-day plant variation suggest that colourful fruits, which appeared roughly 300-377 million years ago, co-evolved with seed-dispersing animals, such as early relatives of mammals. Flowers and their pollinators emerged later, around 140-250 million years ago. These innovations marked a turning point in Earth’s palette.

The rise of flowering plants (angiosperms) in the Cretaceous period, over 100 million years ago, brought an explosion of colour, as flowers evolved brighter and more vibrant hues than seeds to attract pollinators like bees, butterflies and birds.

Conspicuous colouration in animals emerged less than 140 million years ago. Before, animals were mostly muted browns and greys. This timeline suggests that colour evolution was not inevitable, shaped instead by ecological and evolutionary factors, which could have led to different outcomes under different circumstances.

Vibrant colours often evolved as a kind of signalling to attract mates, deter predators, or establish dominance. Sexual selection probably played a strong role in driving these changes.

Dinosaurs provide some of the most striking evidence of early animal colouration. Fossilised melanosomes (pigment-containing cell structures called organelles) in feathered dinosaurs like Anchiornis reveal a vivid red plumage.

These feathers probably served display purposes, signalling fitness to mates or intimidating rivals. Similarly, the fossilised scales of a green and black ten million-year-old snake fossil suggest early use of colour for signalling or camouflage.

The evolution of colour is not always straightforward. Take poison frogs, for instance. These small amphibians display striking hues of blue, yellow, or red, not to attract mates but to warn predators of their toxicity, a phenomenon known as aposematism.

But some of their close relatives, equally toxic, blend into their environments. So why evolve bright warning signals when camouflage could also deter predators? The answer lies in the local predator community and the cost of producing colour. In regions where predators learn to associate vibrant colours with toxicity, conspicuous coloration is an effective survival strategy. In other contexts, blending in may work.

Unlike many mammals, which have dichromatic vision and see fewer colours, most primates including humans have trichromatic vision, enabling us to perceive a broader range of hues, including reds. This probably helped our ancestors locate fruit in forests and likely played a role in social signalling. We see flowers differently from pollinators like bees, which can detect ultraviolet patterns invisible to us, highlighting how colour is tailored to a species’ ecological needs.

A world still changing

Earth’s palette isn’t static. Climate change, habitat loss, and human influence are altering the selective pressures on colouration, potentially reshaping the visual landscape of the future. For example, some fish species exposed to polluted waters are losing their vibrant colours, as toxins disrupt pigment production or visual communication.

As we look to the past, the story of Earth’s colours is one of gradual transformation punctuated by bursts of innovation. From the ancient seas where trilobites first saw the world in colour to the dazzling displays of modern birds and flowers, life on Earth has been painting its canvas for over half a billion years.

What will the next chapter of this vibrant story hold?

Jonathan Goldenberg, Postdoctoral Researcher in Evolutionary Biology, Lund University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

ASIO chief Mike Burgess has warned that over the next five years Australia’s security environment will become more dynamic, diverse and degraded, with “more security surprises” in the second half of the decade than in the first.

In his Annual Threat Assessment delivered on Wednesday night, Burgess predicted more communal violence attacks and foreshadowed Australia’s defence system would face greater threats from espionage, foreign interference and potentially sabotage.

The situation had prompted him to take the unusual step of declassifying details of the security outlook covering the coming five years.

With an “unprecedented number of challenges, and an unprecedented cumulative level of potential harm, Australia has never faced so many different threats at scale at once,” he said.

“Many of the foundations that have underpinned Australia’s security, prosperity and democracy are being tested: social cohesion is eroding, trust in institutions is declining, intolerance is growing, even truth itself is being undermined by conspiracy, mis-and disinformation.

"Similar trends are playing out across the Western world.

"Australia is facing multifaceted, merging, intersecting, concurrent and cascading threats. Major geopolitical, economic, social and security challenges of the 1930s, 70s and 90s have converged. As one of my analysts put it with an uncharacteristic nod to popular culture: everything, everywhere all at once”.

Burgess said ASIO was empowered to investigate seven heads of security:

• espionage
• foreign interference
• politically motivated violence (which includes terrorism)
• the promotion of communal violence
• sabotage
• attacks on Australia’s defence system, and
• serious threats to border integrity.

“Three of our heads of security are already flashing red: espionage, foreign interference and politically motivated violence,” Burgess said.

ASIO expected in the next five years the promotion of communal violence, sabotage and attacks on the defence system could join them.

Burgess did not envisage any immediate raising of the national threat level, which puts an act of terrorism at “probable”.

But he said “politically motivated violence is raising the temperature of the security environment and making acts of terrorism more likely”.

At the same time, he stressed that none of last year’s incidents in Australia came from an offshore group and “our greatest threat remains a lone actor using an easily obtained weapon”.

“Of all the potential terrorist matters investigated last year, fewer than half were religiously motivated. The majority involved mixed ideologies or nationalist and racist ideologies.

"Almost all the matters involved minors. All were lone actors or small groups. Almost all the individuals were unknown to ASIO or the police and it is fair to say they allegedly moved towards violence more quickly than we have seen before.

"Importantly, none of the attacks or plots appear to be directly inspired by the conflict in the Middle East or directed by offshore extremists”.

On the promotion of communal violence, Burgess said “I am concerned these attacks have not yet plateaued”.

Promoting communal violence refers to “activities that are directed to incite violence between different groups in Australia, so as to endanger the peace”.

Burgess anticipated “nationalist and racist violent extremists to continue their efforts to ‘mainstream’ and expand their movement.

"They will undertake provocative, offensive and increasingly high-profile acts to generate publicity and recruit. While these activities will test legal boundaries, the greatest threat of violence comes from individuals on the periphery of these organised groups.

"I remain concerned about young Australians being caught up in webs of hate, both religiously and ideologically motivated.

"In the polarised, grievance-rich environment I’m describing, social cohesion will remain strained and we can expect spikes in communal violence.”

Burgess said the Middle East war “has not yet directly inspired terrorism in Australia, but it is prompting protest, exacerbating division, undermining social cohesion and elevating intolerance. This, in turn, is making acts of politically motivated violence more likely.”

The normalisation of violent protests lowered the threshold for potentially violent acts.

“Narratives originally centred on ‘freeing Palestine’ expanded to include incitements to ‘kill the Jews’. Threats transitioned from harassment and intimidation to specific targeting of Jewish communities, places of worship and prominent figures.

"Looking forward, targets of community violence are likely to be broad, depending on the perceived grievance, and will not be limited to nationality, race, culture, religion or gender.

"A hyper-connected world will allow political tensions or conflicts overseas to resonate quickly in Australia, spread by social media and online echo chambers, inflamed by mis- or disinformation”.

Burgess said more traditional distinctions between extremist motivations were breaking down.

Individuals were cherry-picking ideologies to create hybrid beliefs. For example, ASIO had found one person who was apparently motivated by Islamic State propaganda and neo-Nazi propaganda. Another described himself as a left-wing environmentalist aligned with Adolf Hitler.

Burgess said while he was troubled by the breadth of security threats, he was more concerned about their depth.

“More specifically, the depths some regimes are willing to plumb in pursuit of their strategic interests. This is why we assess the security environment is becoming more degraded.”

“A small number of authoritarian regimes are behaving more aggressively, more recklessly, more dangerously. More willing to engage in what we call ‘high harm’ activities.

"Russia’s brazen acts of sabotage in Europe show authoritarian regimes are willing to use a wider range of tools and tactics to coerce, intimidate and damage perceived adversaries. As a supporter of and supplier to Ukraine, it is conceivable Russia could also target Australia for sabotage.”

Australia was not immune to hostile states such as Iran undertaking “acts of security concern” in Australia or the near region.

“Whether such acts serve an internal interest, or a form of retaliation against Israel or our allies, we need to remain alert and responsive to these evolution.”

ASIO had identified at least three different countries plotting to harm people living in Australia.

In one case, a foreign intelligence service wanted to silence an Australia-based human rights activist and tried to trick them into visiting a third country where they would encounter an “accident”. ASIO foiled the plot.

In another case, a different hostile foreign intelligence service wanted to harm and possibly kill one or more individuals on Australian soil. This too was foiled.

“Beyond those egregious examples, multiple foreign regimes continually attempt to monitor, harass, intimidate and coerce cooperation from Australians and those who call Australia home. This includes trying to strong-arm people to report on other members of their diaspora community, threatening perceived dissidents and their family members with violence, and coercing people in Australia to return to the country of their birth to face questioning or charges – or possibly worse.”

On threats to Australia’s defence system, Burgess said multiple countries relentlessly sought information on our military capabilities.

“AUKUS will remain a priority target for intelligence collection, including by countries we consider friendly.

"ASIO has identified foreign services seeking to target AUKUS to position themselves to collect on the capabilities, how Australia intends to use them, and to undermine the confidence of our allies.

"By 2030, as the submarine project matures, intelligence services are more likely to focus on foreign interference to undermine community support for the enterprise and potentially sabotage if regional tensions escalate.”

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Conducting scientific studies is never easy, and there are often major disasters along the way. A researcher accidentally spills coffee on a keyboard, destroying the data. Or one of the chemicals used in the analysis is contaminated, and the list goes on.

However, when we read the results of the study in a scientific paper, it always looks pristine. The study went smoothly with no hiccups, and here are our results.

But studies can contain errors, not all of which independent experts or “peer reviewers” weed out before publication.

Statistical stuff-ups can be difficult to find as it really takes someone trained in statistics to notice something wrong.

When statistical mistakes are made and found, it can have profound impacts on people who may have changed their lifestyle as a result of the flawed study.

These three examples of inadvertent statistical mistakes have had major consequences for our health and shopping habits.

1. Did you throw out your black plastic spoons?

Late last year, I came across a news article about how black plastic kitchen utensils were dangerous as they could potentially leak toxic flame-retardant chemicals into your food.

Being a natural sceptic, I looked up the original paper, which was published in the journal Chemosphere. The article looked genuine, the journal was reputable. So – like perhaps many other people – I threw out my black plastic kitchen utensils and replaced them with silicone ones.

In the study, the authors screened 203 household products (about half were kitchen utensils) made from black plastic.

The authors found toxic flame retardants in 85% of the products tested, with levels approaching the maximum daily limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States.

Unfortunately, the authors made a mistake in their calculations. They were out by a factor of ten. This meant the level of toxic chemicals was well under the daily safety limits.

In recent weeks, the authors apologised and corrected their paper.

2. Did you avoid HRT?

A landmark study raised safety concerns about hormone replacement therapy or HRT (now also known as menopausal hormone therapy). This highlights a different type of statistical error.

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study involved 10,739 postmenopausal women aged 50-79 recruited from 40 clinical centres in the US. It compared the health of women randomised to take HRT with those who took the placebo. Neither the researchers nor the women knew which treatment had been given.

In their 2002 paper, the authors reported higher rates of invasive breast cancers in the HRT group. They used a unit called “person-years”. Person-years is a way to measure the total time a group of people spends in a study. For example, if 100 people are in a study for one year each, that makes 100 person-years. If someone leaves the trial after only six months, only that half-year is counted for them.

The authors showed a rate of 38 invasive breast cancers per 10,000 person-years in the HRT group, compared to 30 per 10,000 person-years in the placebo group. This gives a rate ratio of 1.26 (one rate divided by the other).

This fairly large increase in breast cancer rates, also expressed as a 26% increase, caused widespread panic around the world, and led to thousands of women stopping HRT.

But the actual risk of breast cancer in each group is low. The rate of 38 per 10,000 person-years is equivalent to an annual rate of 0.38%. With very small rates like this, the authors should really have used the rate difference rather than the rate ratio. The rate difference is one rate subtracted from the other, rather than divided by it. This equates to an annual increase of 0.08% breast cancer cases in the HRT group – much more modest.

The authors of the 2002 paper also pointed out that the 26% increase in the rate of breast cancer “almost reached nominal statistical significance”. Almost is not statistical significance, and formally, this means there was no difference in breast cancer rates between the two groups. In other words, the difference between the two groups could have happened by chance.

The authors should have been more careful when describing their results.

3. Did Popeye’s spinach change your meals?

Cartoon character Popeye is a one-eyed, pipe-smoking sailor with mangled English, in love with the willowy Olive Oyl. He is constantly getting into trouble, and when he needs extra energy, he opens a can of spinach and swallows the contents. His biceps immediately bulge, and off he goes to sort out the problem.

But why does Popeye eat spinach?

The story begins in about 1870, with a German chemist, Erich von Wolf or Emil von Wolff, depending on which version of events you read.

He was measuring the amount of iron in different types of leafy vegetables. According to legend, which some dispute, he was writing the iron content of spinach down in a notebook and got the decimal point wrong, writing 35 milligrams instead of 3.5 milligrams per 100 gram serve of spinach. The error was found and corrected in 1937.

By then the Popeye character had been created and spinach became incredibly popular with children. Apparently, consumption of spinach in the US went up by a third as a result of the cartoon.

This story had gained legendary status but has one tiny flaw. In a 1932 cartoon, Popeye explains exactly why he eats spinach, and it’s nothing to do with iron. He says in his garbled English:

Spinach is full of Vitamin A. An’tha’s what makes hoomans strong an’ helty!

Adrian Esterman, Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) was established in 2013, one of its driving aims was to make disability services and support systems fairer.

However, our new research shows significant inequalities remain, with some groups finding it much harder than others to be deemed eligible and access a funding plan.

Recent NDIS reforms in part aim to address inequity, and to manage costs.

So, what can we do to ensure these reforms don’t further embed existing inequalities? Here’s what we found.

Inequalities in scheme access

To receive funding from the NDIS, participants are required to demonstrate their eligibility.

We wanted to explore whether decisions about eligibility were leading to inequalities in who could access and use NDIS funding.

Our study looked at the individual NDIS applications of 485,676 people aged seven or older, made between 2016 and 2022, to see if they were deemed eligible.

We then compared differences in eligibility rates between groups, considering:

• age (applicants 55 or older versus those under 55)
• gender (women and girls versus other applicants)
• socioeconomic disadvantage (those from the poorest 30% of areas versus all other areas).

Who is deemed ineligible?

We found some groups are more likely to be rejected from the scheme than others: women and girls, people aged 55 and over, and those who live in disadvantaged areas.

Within these groups, eligibility rates also vary.

For example, people with intellectual disability, autism, and brain injury or stroke were very likely to be deemed eligible, regardless of their age, gender or socioeconomic disadvantage (900 or more were accepted per 1,000 applicants).

However, people with physical disability and psychosocial disability (disabilities that can arise from a mental health issue, such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia) were significantly more likely to be rejected.

This was true across groups, but particularly evident among women and girls.

We compared eligibility rates within every 1,000 applications made by women and girls versus men and boys.

Among those who had physical disability, 145 more women and girls were rejected, compared to men and boys.

Among those with psychosocial disability, 83 more applications were deemed ineligible for every 1,000 applications made by women, compared to men.

Age was also a factor. Older Australians with a physical disability had 235 fewer approvals per 1,000 applications than those with physical disability under 55.

What about once they’re eligible?

Inequalities are more pronounced among those trying to prove eligibility for the scheme.

Once accepted into the NDIS, our research found women and girls, and people living in poorer areas, received similar amounts of funding as men and boys, and those living in better-off areas.

This budget is based on what the participant wants to achieve in everyday life and their support needs relating to their disabilities.

However once people receive and are using plans, we then see some differences in how much these people are able to spend. This relates to factors such as the availability of services in an area or whether culturally safe supports are available.

We found that women with psychosocial disability spent more than men with similar sized budgets.

This result could reflect that women with psychosocial disability on the NDIS have higher support needs than men.

It could be that it is harder for women to get onto the scheme in the first place, so those who are deemed eligible have more significant disability than men.

But we need more research to unpack this further.

Why do we see these inequalities?

In the early days of the NDIS, to help fast-track applications, the National Disability Insurance Agency (which runs the NDIS) specified a list of diagnoses closely related to disability.

Known as list A conditions, people with these diagnoses are automatically eligible for the NDIS.

Disabilities likely to be associated with a list A diagnosis include level 2 or 3 autism (requiring substantial or very substantial support) and intellectual disability.

However some people who could have permanent and significant disability, may have a diagnosis not on list A, such as Down syndrome and motor neurone disease. They must provide a broader range of evidence on the impact of their disability to be eligible.

If they face other challenges – such as socioeconomic disadvantage – it may be harder for them to collect this evidence. For example, they may not be able to afford private health care that would help support their application.

This might explain why people who do not have a list A diagnosis are less likely to prove their eligibility for the scheme.

Where next for the scheme?

Following recommendations from an independent review into the NDIS, the National Disability Insurance Agency is currently making changes to how it assesses eligibility.

One of the changes suggested is removing list A classifications altogether.

Instead, the agency will use a suite of functional assessment tools. These are still in the process of being designed, but they are one way to assess a person’s ability to perform everyday tasks and identify the level of support they require.

This approach aims to assess more objectively and fairly how much someone is impacted by their disability.

However, there are longstanding critiques of these tools. These include concerns they are not safe for minority groups, such as those with a culturally or linguistically diverse background, LGBTQIA+ people, and First Nations applicants.

Our new research demonstrates how and why some inequalities arise. We should put this understanding front-and-centre in any changes to the NDIS.

Most importantly, we should make sure reforms are co-designed with a broad range of different groups, to ensure we don’t perpetuate old inequalities or introduce new ones.

George Disney, Research Fellow, Social Epidemiology, The University of Melbourne; Alexandra Devine, Research Fellow, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne; Anne Kavanagh, Professor of Disability and Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne; Helen Dickinson, Professor, Public Service Research, UNSW Sydney, and Yi Yang, Research Fellow, Social Epidemiology, Melbourne Disability Institute, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has taken off at lightning speed in the past couple of years, creating disruption in many industries. Newsrooms are no exception.

A new report published today finds that news audiences and journalists alike are concerned about how news organisations are – and could be – using generative AI such as chatbots, image, audio and video generators, and similar tools.

The report draws on three years of interviews and focus group research into generative AI and journalism in Australia and six other countries (United States, United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland, Germany and France).

Only 25% of our news audience participants were confident they had encountered generative AI in journalism. About 50% were unsure or suspected they had.

This suggests a potential lack of transparency from news organisations when they use generative AI. It could also reflect a lack of trust between news outlets and audiences.

Who or what makes your news – and how – matters for a host of reasons.

Some outlets tend to use more or fewer sources, for example. Or use certain kinds of sources – such as politicians or experts – more than others.

Some outlets under-represent or misrepresent parts of the community. This is sometimes because the news outlet’s staff themselves aren’t representative of their audience.

Carelessly using AI to produce or edit journalism can reproduce some of these inequalities.

Our report identifies dozens of ways journalists and news organisations can use generative AI. It also summarises how comfortable news audiences are with each.

The news audiences we spoke to overall felt most comfortable with journalists using AI for behind-the-scenes tasks rather than for editing and creating. These include using AI to transcribe an interview or to provide ideas on how to cover a topic.

But comfort is highly dependent on context. Audiences were quite comfortable with some editing and creating tasks when the perceived risks were lower.

The problem – and opportunity

Generative AI can be used in just about every part of journalism.

For example, a photographer could cover an event. Then, a generative AI tool could select what it “thinks” are the best images, edit the images to optimise them, and add keywords to each.

These might seem like relatively harmless applications. But what if the AI identifies something or someone incorrectly, and these keywords lead to mis-identifications in the photo captions? What if the criteria humans think make “good” images are different to what a computer might think? These criteria may also change over time or in different contexts.

Even something as simple as lightening or darkening an image can cause a furore when politics are involved.

AI can also make things up completely. Images can appear photorealistic but show things that never happened. Videos can be entirely generated with AI, or edited with AI to change their context.

Generative AI is also frequently used for writing headlines or summarising articles. These sound like helpful applications for time-poor individuals, but some news outlets are using AI to rip off others’ content.

AI-generated news alerts have also gotten the facts wrong. As an example, Apple recently suspended its automatically generated news notification feature. It did this after the feature falsely claimed US murder suspect Luigi Mangione had killed himself, with the source attributed as the BBC.

What do people think about journalists using AI?

Our research found news audiences seem to be more comfortable with journalists using AI for certain tasks when they themselves have used it for similar purposes.

For example, the people interviewed were largely comfortable with journalists using AI to blur parts of an image. Our participants said they used similar tools on video conferencing apps or when using the “portrait” mode on smartphones.

Likewise, when you insert an image into popular word processing or presentation software, it might automatically create a written description of the image for people with vision impairments. Those who’d previously encountered such AI descriptions of images felt more comfortable with journalists using AI to add keywords to media.

The most frequent way our participants encountered generative AI in journalism was when journalists reported on AI content that had gone viral.

For example, when an AI-generated image purported to show Princes William and Harry embracing at King Charles’s coronation, news outlets reported on this false image.

Our news audience participants also saw notices that AI had been used to write, edit or translate news articles. They saw AI-generated images accompanying some of these. This is a popular approach at The Daily Telegraph, which uses AI-generated images to illustrate many of its opinion columns.

Overall, our participants felt most comfortable with journalists using AI for brainstorming or for enriching already created media. This was followed by using AI for editing and creating. But comfort depends heavily on the specific use.

Most of our participants were comfortable with turning to AI to create icons for an infographic. But they were quite uncomfortable with the idea of an AI avatar presenting the news, for example.

On the editing front, a majority of our participants were comfortable with using AI to animate historical images, like this one. AI can be used to “enliven” an otherwise static image in the hopes of attracting viewer interest and engagement.

Your role as an audience member

If you’re unsure if or how journalists are using AI, look for a policy or explainer from the news outlet on the topic. If you can’t find one, consider asking the outlet to develop and publish a policy.

Consider supporting media outlets that use AI to complement and support – rather than replace – human labour.

Before making decisions, consider the past trustworthiness of the journalist or outlet in question, and what the evidence says.

T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University; Michelle Riedlinger, Associate Professor in Digital Media, Queensland University of Technology; Phoebe Matich, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Generative Authenticity in Journalism and Human Rights Media, ADM+S Centre, Queensland University of Technology, and Ryan J. Thomas, Associate Professor, Washington State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Living with a pet brings many benefits, including constant presence, love and support. Pet ownership is also linked with a lower long-term risk of early death.

Most of us would do anything for our pets if they become unwell. But just as caring for a human loved one can come at great personal cost, a growing body of research shows that’s also true for many pet owners looking after a seriously ill pet.

This stress is often known as “caregiver burden”.

Stress, depression, burnout and anxiety

One 2017 study looked at how people with healthy pets fared compared to those caring for pets with serious diseases.

It found many of those looking after seriously ill animals felt they didn’t have enough time for themselves due to the time they had to spend with their pet.

Compared to owners of healthy pets, those caring for unwell pets experienced:

greater burden, stress and symptoms of depression/anxiety, as well as poorer quality of life.

Our 2023 research into experiences of people looking after older dogs showed similarly concerning results.

We surveyed people with dogs eight years or older. Some of these dogs were living with canine cognitive dysfunction, a form of dementia similar to Alzheimer’s disease in people.

Out of the 637 respondents to our survey, 16% had a high burden of care likely to be associated with negative psychological, physical and financial outcomes.

One respondent told us:

My partner and I cannot leave him home alone for long at all […] I worry about [my pet’s] quality of life. I feel my partner is really struggling with [my pet’s] deterioration and when the time comes for euthanasia I know it will be me forcing the issue. I feel constant anxiety about this decision looming.

A higher burden of care was associated with the dog having more severe canine cognitive dysfunction, pet owners who were aged between 25 and 44 years, and those who lived alone.

This makes sense, because people who live alone don’t have another person to support or help them. The most difficult dog behaviours people reported were night-time disturbances and barking.

Burden of care in other situations

Any significant pet disease or disability is likely to be associated with stress in their caregivers.

Even behavioural problems in dogs, such as aggression or separation-related disorder, have been associated with clinically significant strain in more than 68% of people.

Most of the research has been done in dogs, but owners of ill cats also have a higher burden, although it appears less than owners of an ill dog.

We previously showed that a third of owners of cats with epilepsy are likely to be experiencing high levels of carer stress or strain.

These problems were worse in owners who did not feel supported by their vet. For example, they may feel they’re being rushed through appointments, or that their concerns are being dismissed.

Pet owners more likely to feel this caregiver stress included those who were younger than 55, and those whose cat had uncontrolled seizures.

Strong emotions and complex needs

The burden of caring for an unwell pet is not well recognised, even by vets.

People suffering this kind of carer stress are likely to require more time in consultations at the vet’s office, visit more frequently, and become angry and emotional.

From a vet’s perspective, clients with such strong emotions and complex needs can be challenging.

How can you get help?

If you or somebody you know is struggling with caring for a seriously ill pet, find a vet you trust and feel comfortable with. If you can tell them what you are struggling with, the vet may be able to provide some support.

Call on your village! Ask friends and family for help to provide you with respite. We often do it when we first bring a new puppy or kitten home, but don’t think it’s OK to ask for help when they’re sick or ageing and need more care.

Know that it’s OK to sometimes feel frustrated, overwhelmed, or even resentful towards your pet. It doesn’t mean you don’t love them. It means providing this level of care is hard.

Despite the hardships, many caregivers find comfort in their deep connection to their pets. One of our respondents in the senior dog study wrote:

every moment I have with her now is a blessing. She has given me so much over the last ten years; it’s time to pay back now.

Pets also give meaning to our lives. In our study of cats with epilepsy, one person wrote:

I think that most of the people are not aware of the benefits of living with the cat with special needs.

Supporting the human-animal bond means supporting both humans and animals. We’re all better off when we recognise and support people struggling with caring for their pets.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636.

Susan Hazel, Associate Professor, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide and Tracey Taylor, PhD Candidate, School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This is the best day of the past five months for me … This is my home … I am not afraid of anything and I urge you not to be afraid of anything either.

These were Alexei Navalny’s words after landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on January 17 2021. Russia’s leading opposition figure had spent the past months recovering in Germany from an attempt on his life by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Minutes after making his comments, Navalny was detained at border control. And he would remain behind bars until his death on February 16 2024, in the remote “Polar Wolf” penal colony within the Arctic Circle.

“Why did he return to Russia?” That’s the question I’m asked about Navalny most frequently. Wasn’t it a mistake to return to certain imprisonment, when he could have maintained his opposition to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, from abroad?

But Navalny’s decision to return didn’t surprise me. I’ve researched and written about him extensively, including co-authoring Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future?, the first English-language, book-length account of his life and political activities. Defying the Kremlin by returning was a signature move, reflecting both his obstinacy and bravery. He wanted to make sure his supporters and activists in Russia did not feel abandoned, risking their lives while he lived a cushy life in exile.

The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.

Besides, Navalny wasn’t returning to certain imprisonment. A close ally of his, Vladimir Ashurkov, told me in May 2022 that his “incarceration in Russia was not a certainty. It was a probability, a scenario – but it wasn’t like he was walking into a certain long-term prison term.”

Also, Navalny hadn’t chosen to leave Russia in the first place. He was unconscious when taken by plane from Omsk to Berlin for treatment following his poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok in August 2020. Navalny had been consistent in saying he was a Russian politician who needed to remain in Russia to be effective.

In a subsequent interview, conducted in a forest on the outskirts of the German capital as he slowly recovered, Navalny said: “In people’s minds, if you leave the country, that means you’ve surrendered.”

Outrage, detention and death

Two days after Navalny’s final return to Russia, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) – the organisation he established in 2011 – published its biggest ever investigation. The YouTube video exploring “Putin’s palace” on the Black Sea coast achieved an extraordinary 100 million views within ten days. By the start of February 2021, polling suggested it had been watched by more than a quarter of all adults in Russia.

Outrage at Navalny’s detention, combined with this Putin investigation, got people on to the streets. On January 23 2021, 160,000 people turned out across Russia in events that did not have prior approval from the authorities. More than 40% of the participants said they were taking part in a protest for the first time.

But the Russian authorities were determined to also make it their last time. Law enforcement mounted an awesome display of strength, detaining protesters and sometimes beating them. The number of participants at protests on January 31 and February 2 declined sharply as a result.

Between Navalny’s return to Russia in January 2021 and his death in February 2024, aged 47, he faced criminal case after criminal case, adding years and years to his time in prison and increasing the severity of his detention. By the time of his death, he was in the harshest type of prison in the Russian penitentiary system – a “special regime” colony – and was frequently sent to a punishment cell.

The obvious intent was to demoralise Navalny, his team and supporters – making an example of him to spread fear among anyone else who might consider mounting a challenge to the Kremlin. But Navalny fought back, as described in his posthumously published memoir, Patriot. He made legal challenges against his jailers. He went on hunger strike. And he formed a union for his fellow prisoners.

He also used his court appearances to make clear his political views, including following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, declaring: “I am against this war. I consider it immoral, fratricidal, and criminal.”

Navalny’s final public appearance was via video link. He was in good spirits, with his trademark optimism and humour still on display. Tongue firmly in cheek, he asked the judge for financial help:

Your Honour, I will send you my personal account number so that you can use your huge salary as a federal judge to ‘warm up’ my personal account, because I am running out of money.

Navalny died the following day. According to the prison authorities, he collapsed after a short walk and lost consciousness. Although the Russian authorities claimed he had died of natural causes, documents published in September 2024 by The Insider – a Russia-focused, Latvia-based independent investigative website – suggest Navalny may have been poisoned.

Whether or not Putin directly ordered his death, Russia’s president bears responsibility – for leading a system that tried to assassinate Navalny in August 2020, and for allowing his imprisonment following Navalny’s return to Russia in conditions designed to crush him.

Commenting in March 2024, Putin stated that, just days before Navalny’s death, he had agreed for his most vocal opponent to be included in a prisoner swap – on condition the opposition figure never returned to Russia. “But, unfortunately,” Putin added, “what happened, happened.”

‘No one will forget’

Putin is afraid of Alexei, even after he killed him.

Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s wife, wrote these words on January 10 2025 after reading a curious letter. His mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, had written to Rosfinmonitoring – a Russian state body – with a request for her son’s name to be removed from their list of “extremists and terrorists” now he was no longer alive.

The official response was straight from Kafka. Navalny’s name could not be removed as it had been added following the initiation of a criminal case against him. Even though he was dead, Rosfinmonitoring had not been informed about a termination of the case “in accordance with the procedure established by law”, so his name would have to remain.

This appears to be yet another instance of the Russian state exercising cruelty behind the veil of bureaucratic legality – such as when the prison authorities initially refused to release Navalny’s body to his mother after his death.

“Putin is doing this to scare you,” Yulia continued. “He wants you to be afraid to even mention Alexei, and gradually to forget his name. But no one will forget.”

Today, Navalny’s family and team continue his work outside of Russia – and are fighting to keep his name alive back home. But the odds are against them. Polling suggests the share of Russians who say they know nothing about Navalny or his activities roughly doubled to 30% between his return in January 2021 and his death three years later.

Navalny fought against an autocratic system – and paid the price with his life. Given the very real fears Russians may have of voicing support for a man still labelled an extremist by the Putin regime, it’s not easy to assess what people there really think of him and his legacy. But we will also never know how popular Navalny would have been in the “normal” political system he fought for.

What made Navalny the force he was?

Navalny didn’t mean for the humble yellow rubber duck to become such a potent symbol of resistance.

In March 2017, the ACF published its latest investigation into elite corruption, this time focusing on then-prime minister (and former president), Dmitry Medvedev. Navalny’s team members had become masters of producing slick videos that enabled their message to reach a broad audience. A week after posting, the film had racked up over 7 million views on YouTube – an extraordinary number at that time.

The film included shocking details of Medvedev’s alleged avarice, including yachts and luxury properties. In the centre of a large pond in one of these properties was a duck house, footage of which was captured by the ACF using a drone.

Such luxuries jarred with many people’s view of Medvedev as being a bit different to Putin and his cronies. As Navalny wrote in his memoir, Medvedev had previously seemed “harmless and incongruous”. (At the time, Medvedev’s spokeswoman said it was “pointless” to comment on the ACF investigation, suggesting the report was a “propaganda attack from an opposition figure and a convict”.)

But people were angry, and the report triggered mass street protests across Russia. They carried yellow ducks and trainers, a second unintended symbol from the film given Medvedev’s penchant for them.

Another reason why so many people came out to protest on March 26 2017 was the organising work carried out by Navalny’s movement.

The previous December, Navalny had announced his intention to run in the 2018 presidential election. As part of the campaign, he and his team created a network of regional headquarters to bring together supporters and train activists across Russia. Although the authorities had rejected Navalny’s efforts to register an official political party, this regional network functioned in much the same way, gathering like-minded people in support of an electoral candidate. And this infrastructure helped get people out on the streets.

The Kremlin saw this as a clear threat. According to a December 2020 investigation by Bellingcat, CNN, Der Spiegel and The Insider, the FSB assassination squad implicated in the Novichok poisoning of Navalny had started trailing him in January 2017 – one month after he announced his run for the presidency.

At the protests against Medvedev, the authorities’ growing intolerance of Navalny was also on display – he was detained, fined and sentenced to 15 days’ imprisonment.

The Medvedev investigation was far from the beginning of Navalny’s story as a thorn in the Kremlin’s side. But this episode brings together all of the elements that made Navalny the force he was: anti-corruption activism, protest mobilisation, attempts to run as a “normal” politician in a system rigged against him, and savvy use of social media to raise his profile in all of these domains.

Courting controversy

In Patriot, Navalny writes that he always “felt sure a broad coalition was needed to fight Putin”. Yet over the years, his attempts to form that coalition led to some of the most controversial points of his political career.

In a 2007 video, Navalny referred to himself as a “certified nationalist”, advocating for the deportation of illegal immigrants, albeit without using violence and distancing himself from neo-Nazism. In the video, he says: “We have the right to be Russians in Russia, and we’ll defend that right.”

Although alienating some, Navalny was attempting to present a more acceptable face of nationalism, and he hoped to build a bridge between nationalists and liberals in taking on the Kremlin’s burgeoning authoritarianism.

But the prominence of nationalism in Navalny’s political identity varied markedly over time, probably reflecting his shifting estimations of which platform could attract the largest support within Russia. By the time of his thwarted run in the 2018 presidential election, nationalist talking points were all but absent from his rhetoric.

However, some of these former comments and positions continue to influence how people view him. For example, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Navalny tried to take a pragmatic stance. While acknowledging Russia’s flouting of international law, he said that Crimea was “now part of the Russian Federation” and would “never become part of Ukraine in the foreseeable future”.

Many Ukrainians take this as clear evidence that Navalny was a Russian imperialist. Though he later revised his position, saying Crimea should be returned to Ukraine, some saw this as too little, too late. But others were willing to look past the more controversial parts of his biography, recognising that Navalny represented the most effective domestic challenge to Putin.

Another key attempt to build a broad political coalition was Navalny’s Smart Voting initiative. This was a tactical voting project in which Navalny’s team encouraged voters to back the individual thought best-placed to defeat the ruling United Russia candidate, regardless of the challenger’s ideological position.

The project wasn’t met with universal approval. Some opposition figures and voters baulked at, or flatly refused to consider, the idea of voting for people whose ideological positions they found repugnant – or whom they viewed as being “fake” opposition figures, entirely in bed with the authorities. (This makes clear that Navalny was never the leader of the political opposition in Russia; he was, rather, the leading figure of a fractious constellation of individuals and groups.)

But others relished the opportunity to make rigged elections work in their favour. And there is evidence that Smart Voting did sometimes work, including in the September 2020 regional and local elections, for which Navalny had been campaigning when he was poisoned with Novichok.

In an astonishing moment captured on film during his recovery in Germany, Navalny speaks to an alleged member of the FSB squad sent to kill him. Pretending to be the aide to a senior FSB official, Navalny finds out that the nerve agent had been placed in his underpants.

How do Russians feel about Navalny now?

It’s like a member of the family has died.

This is what one Russian friend told me after hearing of Navalny’s death a year ago. Soon afterwards, the Levada Center – an independent Russian polling organisation – conducted a nationally representative survey to gauge the public’s reaction to the news.

The poll found that Navalny’s death was the second-most mentioned event by Russian people that month, after the capture of the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka by Russian troops. But when asked how they felt about his death, 69% of respondents said they had “no particular feelings” either way – while only 17% said they felt “sympathy” or “pity”.

And that broadly fits with Navalny’s approval ratings in Russia. After his poisoning in 2020, 20% of Russians said they approved of his activities – but this was down to 11% by February 2024.

Of course, these numbers must be taken for what they are: polling in an authoritarian state regarding a figure vilified and imprisoned by the regime, during a time of war and amid draconian restrictions on free speech. To what extent the drop in support for Navalny was real, rather than reflecting the increased fear people had in voicing their approval for an anti-regime figure, is hard to say with certainty.

When asked why they liked Navalny, 31% of those who approved of his activities said he spoke “the truth”, “honestly” or “directly”. For those who did not approve of his activities, 22% said he was “paid by the west”, “represented” the west’s interests, that he was a “foreign agent”, a “traitor” or a “puppet”.

The Kremlin had long tried to discredit Navalny as a western-backed traitor. After Navalny’s 2020 poisoning, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that “experts from the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency are working with him”. The Russian state claimed that, rather than a patriot exposing official malfeasance with a view to strengthening his country, Navalny was a CIA stooge intent on destroying Russia.

Peskov provided no evidence to back up this claim – and the official propaganda wasn’t believed by all. Thousands of Russians defied the authorities by coming out to pay their respects at Navalny’s funeral on March 1 2024. Many, if not all, knew this was a significant risk. Police employed video footage to track down members of the funeral crowd, including by using facial recognition technology.

The first person to be detained was a Muscovite the police claimed they heard shouting “Glory to the heroes!” – a traditional Ukrainian response to the declaration “Glory to Ukraine!”, but this time referencing Navalny. She spent a night in a police station before being fined for “displaying a banned symbol”.

Putin always avoided mentioning Navalny’s name in public while he was alive – instead referring to him as “this gentleman”, “the character you mentioned”, or the “Berlin patient”. (The only recorded instance of Putin using Navalny’s name in public when he was alive was in 2013.)

However, having been re-elected president in 2024 and with Navalny dead, Putin finally broke his long-held practice, saying: “As for Navalny, yes he passed away – this is always a sad event.” It was as if the death of his nemesis diminished the potency of his name – and the challenge that Navalny had long presented to Putin.

Nobody can become another Navalny

Someone else will rise up and take my place. I haven’t done anything unique or difficult. Anyone could do what I’ve done.

So wrote Navalny in the memoir published after his death. But that hasn’t happened: no Navalny 2.0 has yet emerged. And it’s no real surprise. The Kremlin has taken clear steps to ensure nobody can become another Navalny within Russia.

In 2021, the authorities made a clear decision to destroy Navalny’s organisations within Russia, including the ACF and his regional network. Without the organisational infrastructure and legal ability to function in Russia, no figure has been able to take his place directly.

More broadly, the fate of Navalny and his movement has had a chilling effect on the opposition landscape. So too have other steps taken by the authorities.

Russia has become markedly more repressive since the start of its war on Ukraine. The human rights NGO First Department looked into the number of cases relating to “treason”, “espionage” and “confidential cooperation with a foreign state” since Russia introduced the current version of its criminal code in 1997. Of the more than 1,000 cases, 792 – the vast majority – were initiated following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russian law enforcement has also used nebulous anti-extremism and anti-terrorism legislation to crack down on dissenting voices. Three of Navalny’s lawyers were sentenced in January 2025 for participating in an “extremist organisation”, as the ACF was designated by a Moscow court in June 2021. The Russian legislature has also passed a barrage of legislation relating to so-called “foreign agents”, to tarnish the work of those the regime regards as foreign-backed “fifth columnists”.

Mass street protests are largely a thing of the past in Russia. Restrictions were placed on public gatherings during the COVID pandemic – but these rules were applied selectively, with opposition individuals and groups being targeted. And opportunities for collective action were further reduced following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Freedom of speech has also come under assault. Article 29, point five of the Russian constitution states: “Censorship shall be prohibited.” But in September 2024, Kremlin spokesperson Peskov said: “In the state of war that we are in, restrictions are justified, and censorship is justified.”

Legislation passed very soon after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine made it illegal to comment on the Russian military’s activities truthfully – and even to call the war a war.

YouTube – the platform so central to Navalny’s ability to spread his message – has been targeted. Without banning it outright – perhaps afraid of the public backlash this might cause – the Russian state media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has slowed down internet traffic to the site within Russia. The result has been a move of users to other websites supporting video content, including VKontakte – a Russian social media platform.

In short, conditions in Russia are very different now compared to when Navalny first emerged. The relative freedom of the 2000s and 2010s gave him the space to challenge the corruption and authoritarianism of an evolving system headed by Putin. But this space has shrunk over time, to the point where no room remains for a figure like him within Russia.

In 2019, Navalny told Ivan Zhdanov, who is now director of the ACF: “We changed the regime, but not in the way we wanted.” So, did Navalny and his team push the Kremlin to become more authoritarian – making it not only intolerant of him but also any possible successor?

There may be some truth in this. And yet, the drastic steps taken by the regime following the start of the war on Ukraine suggest there were other, even more significant factors that have laid bare the violent nature of Putin’s personal autocracy – and the president’s disdain for dissenters.

Plenty for Russians to be angry about

How can we win the war when dedushka [grandpa] is a moron?

In June 2023, Evgeny Prigozhin – a long-time associate of Putin and head of the private military Wagner Group – staged an armed rebellion, marching his forces on the Russian capital. This was not a full-blown political movement against Putin. But the target of Prigozhin’s invective against Russia’s military leadership had become increasingly blurry, testing the taboo of direct criticism of the president – who is sometimes referred to, disparagingly, as “grandpa” in Russia.

And Prigozhin paid the price. In August 2023, he was killed when the private jet he was flying in crashed after an explosion on board. Afterwards, Putin referred to Prigozhin as a “talented person” who “made serious mistakes in life”.

In the west, opposition to the Kremlin is often associated with more liberal figures like Navalny. Yet the most consequential domestic challenge to Putin’s rule came from a very different part of the ideological spectrum – a figure in Prigozhin leading a segment of Russian society that wanted the Kremlin to prosecute its war on Ukraine even more aggressively.

Today, there is plenty for Russians to be angry about, and Putin knows it. He recently acknowledged an “overheating of the economy”. This has resulted in high inflation, in part due to all the resources being channelled into supporting the war effort. Such cost-of-living concerns weigh more heavily than the war on the minds of most Russians.

A favourite talking point of the Kremlin is how Putin imposed order in Russia following the “wild 1990s” – characterised by economic turbulence and symbolised by then-president Boris Yeltsin’s public drunkenness. Many Russians attribute the stability and rise in living standards they experienced in the 2000s with Putin’s rule – and thank him for it by providing support for his continued leadership.

The current economic problems are an acute worry for the Kremlin because they jeopardise this basic social contract struck with the Russian people. In fact, one way the Kremlin tried to discredit Navalny was by comparing him with Yeltsin, suggesting he posed the same threats as a failed reformer. In his memoir, Navalny concedes that “few things get under my skin more”.

Although originally a fan of Yeltsin, Navalny became an ardent critic. His argument was that Yeltsin and those around him squandered the opportunity to make Russia a “normal” European country.

Navalny also wanted Russians to feel entitled to more. Rather than be content with their relative living standards compared with the early post-Soviet period, he encouraged them to imagine the level of wealth citizens could enjoy based on Russia’s extraordinary resources – but with the rule of law, less corruption, and real democratic processes.

‘Think of other possible Russias’

When looking at forms of criticism and dissent in Russia today, we need to distinguish between anti-war, anti-government, and anti-Putin activities.

Despite the risk of harsh consequences, there are daily forms of anti-war resistance, including arson attacks on military enlistment offices. Some are orchestrated from Ukraine, with Russians blackmailed into acting. But other cases are likely to be forms of domestic resistance.

Criticism of the government is still sometimes possible, largely because Russia has a “dual executive” system, consisting of a prime minister and presidency. This allows the much more powerful presidency to deflect blame to the government when things go wrong.

There are nominal opposition parties in Russia – sometimes referred to as the “systemic opposition”, because they are loyal to the Kremlin and therefore tolerated by the system. Within the State Duma, these parties often criticise particular government ministries for apparent failings. But they rarely, if ever, now dare criticise Putin directly.

Nothing anywhere close to the challenge presented by Navalny appears on the horizon in Russia – at either end of the political spectrum. But the presence of clear popular grievances, and the existence of organisations (albeit not Navalny’s) that could channel this anger should the Kremlin’s grip loosen, mean we cannot write off all opposition in Russia.

Navalny’s wife, Yulia, has vowed to continue her husband’s work. And his team in exile maintain focus on elite corruption in Russia, now from their base in Vilnius, Lithuania. The ACF’s most recent investigation is on Igor Sechin, CEO of the oil company Rosneft.

But some have argued this work is no longer as relevant as it was. Sam Greene, professor in Russian politics at King’s College London, captured this doubt in a recent Substack post:

[T]here is a palpable sense that these sorts of investigations may not be relevant to as many people as they used to be, given everything that has transpired since the mid-2010s, when they were the bread and butter of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. Some … have gone as far as to suggest that they have become effectively meaningless … and thus that Team Navalny should move on.

Navalny’s team are understandably irritated by suggestions they’re no longer as effective as they once were. But it’s important to note that this criticism has often been sharpest within Russia’s liberal opposition. The ACF has been rocked, for example, by recent accusations from Maxim Katz, one such liberal opposition figure, that the organisation helped “launder the reputations” of two former bank owners. In their response, posted on YouTube, the ACF referred to Katz’s accusations as “lies” – but this continued squabbling has left some Russians feeling “disillusioned and unrepresented”.

So, what will Navalny’s long-term legacy be? Patriot includes a revealing section on Mikhail Gorbachev – the last leader of the Soviet Union, whom Navalny describes as “unpopular in Russia, and also in our family”. He continues:

Usually, when you tell foreigners this, they are very surprised, because Gorbachev is thought of as the person who gave Eastern Europe back its freedom and thanks to whom Germany was reunited. Of course, that is true … but within Russia and the USSR he was not particularly liked.

At the moment, there is a similar split in perceptions of Navalny. Internationally, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament, and a documentary about him won an Oscar.

But there are also those outside of Russia who remain critical: “Navalny’s life has brought no benefit to the Ukrainian victory; instead, he has caused considerable harm,” wrote one Ukrainian academic. “He fuelled the illusion in the west that democracy in Russia is possible.”

Inside Russia, according to Levada Center polling shortly after his death, 53% of Russians thought Navalny played “no special role” in the history of the country, while 19% said he played a “rather negative” role. Revealingly, when commenting on Navalny’s death, one man in Moscow told RFE/RL’s Russian Service: “I think that everyone who is against Russia is guilty, even if they are right.”

But, for a small minority in Russia, Navalny will go down as a messiah-like figure who miraculously cheated death in 2020, then made the ultimate sacrifice in his battle of good and evil with the Kremlin. This view may have been reinforced by Navalny’s increasing openness about his Christian faith.

Ultimately, Navalny’s long-term status in Russia will depend on the nature of the political system after Putin has gone. Since it seems likely that authoritarianism will outlast Putin, a more favourable official story about Navalny is unlikely to emerge any time soon. However, how any post-Putin regime tries to make sense of Navalny’s legacy will tell us a lot about that regime.

While he was alive, Navalny stood for the freer Russia in which he had emerged as a leading opposition figure – and also what he called the “Beautiful Russia of the Future”. Perhaps, after his death, his lasting legacy in Russia remains the ability for some to think – if only in private – of other possible Russias.

For you: more from our Insights series:

• I investigated millions of tweets from the Kremlin’s ‘troll factory’ and discovered classic propaganda techniques reimagined for the social media age

• How the world’s first open-source digital map of mass graves could help bring justice to victims in Ukraine and other war zones

• The Trump revolution: where it came from and where it’s going

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Ben Noble, Associate Professor of Russian Politics, UCL

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

When I was a child, I lived in a very politically engaged household. My parents were always talking politics, and my dad in particular was often growling at the television when the face of someone he disagreed with appeared on it.

Yet despite this, and despite nerdily watching election counts all the way through my school years, spurred by a deep interest in how power operates in this country, I still managed to make it to university and beyond with gaping holes in my civics education.

What does our Constitution say, for example? And why is it such a dry legal document, so different from the grand sentiment of its US counterpart? How did the major political parties come to be? And where does the High Court fit into all this?

So in 2024, in the tumultuous aftermath of the Voice to Parliament referendum that had us all grappling with constitutional change and what it might mean, I decided to use the incredible wealth of knowledge and experience at our disposal in our academic writers and put together a book called How Australian Democracy Works. It’s my hope that readers will find it as informative to read as I did to bring it together.

In it, some of our finest thinkers and writers explain and analyse how our government, parliament and Constitution work, and examine some of the most pressing issues facing our democracy. James Walter explains how our unique democracy evolved; Michelle Grattan looks at the role of the prime minister – and some of the most significant holders of that position we’ve had.

Constitutional law expert Anne Twomey explains why Australia is (still) a constitutional monarchy, Yee-Fui Ng examines corruption and other abuses of political power, and Chris Wallace looks at the role of the public service and its place in our democracy. Finally, political historian Paul Strangio presents an essay on the health of Australian democracy a quarter of the way through the 21st century: where its strengths are, but also the considerable fissures that are emerging.

As we head into a federal election at a pivotal moment in our history, it’s our hope that the book offers a deeper understanding of our democracy: its history, strengths and challenges.

In concert with its publication on March 4 (you can pre-order here), we are hosting a series of launches this February and March, and we’d love to see you there.

Canberra

Monday February 24, 6pm SOLD OUT

Editor Misha Ketchell in conversation with Michelle Grattan, Frank Bongiorno and Mark Kenny

Location: Cultural Centre Kambri, Australian National University

Register here

Sydney

Tuesday, March 4, 7pm

Senior Editor Sunanda Creagh in conversation with Michelle Arrow, Anne Twomey and Paul Kildea

Location: Red Mill Distillery, 176 Mullens Street, Rozelle

Register here

Melbourne

Friday, March 7, 6pm

Politics + Society Editor Amanda Dunn in conversation with Chris Wallace, Paul Strangio, Denis Muller

Location: Church of All Nations, 180 Palmerston Street, Carlton

Register here

Amanda Dunn, Politics + Society Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate change is often communicated through scientific reports, statistics and policy discussions. However, these technical approaches can be inaccessible to the public, failing to capture the experiences of those most affected.

Climate narratives structured as stories that involve emotional engagement and personal anecdotes are more effective at mobilising communities, influencing policy and promoting pro-environmental actions across diverse audiences. By blending art with storytelling, illustrations can make complex environmental issues, such as climate justice, much more accessible to the general public.

Illustrations are not just artistic expressions. They can amplify the voices of affected communities and help make the case for climate justice. In an era where climate action is urgent, harnessing the power of illustration can be transformative. It can challenge dominant narratives while creating more inclusive and participatory ways of understanding climate action.

I have been collaborating with Puspita Bahari, an Indonesian fisherwomen’s movement to develop ways to communicate the effects of tidal floods and the importance of feminist solidarity. For my PhD research, I spent seven months carrying out fieldwork in three coastal villages in Demak, Central Java, Indonesia. This involved interviews, observations and creative workshops with the community.

By drawing on 38 women’s firsthand experiences, we have published an illustrated book: Tidal Floods: Women, Fisheries, and Climate Crisis in Indonesia (2024). This story about Indonesia’s fisherwomen explores the intersections of gender, environmental change, activism and the future of the country’s coastal regions. Here are five ways that collaborative illustrations can be used to tell female-led climate justice stories:

1. Intersectional narration

The effects of tidal flooding on Indonesian women vary depending on location, livelihood, age and disability status. Along the coastline, women in Indonesia are involved in selling fish, processing seafood and fishing at sea, alongside domestic work.

This book does not depict women as having a single, monolithic identity. Instead, the images portray their varied realities. These shape how they experience climate injustice and how pre-existing inequalities reproduce new climate injustices.

Intersectional narration is storytelling that captures how different aspects of identity overlap to shape people’s experiences in complex ways. Using this, various issues such as economic hardship, domestic violence, sexual reproductive health, physical and mental health can be better represented.

The image below illustrates these challenges. A woman with a disability is unable to use her wheelchair because the village is sinking. A pregnant woman struggles to access healthcare facilities. Fisherwomen face declining incomes due to environmental and economic pressures.

2. Body maps

To understand the complexity of climate impacts, I worked with women to draw body maps. As they annotated each picture, fisherwomen shared their embodied experiences of living with tidal floods as an everyday disaster.

Body mapping is an intimate cartographic process that involves tracing the body and visually exploring one’s lived experience. This method goes beyond textual and oral narratives. It helps women recall and record body memories that might otherwise remain unspoken.

Their body maps are not just research artefacts. They have been translated into powerful visuals so their personal stories can be shared in this book. The picture above illustrates one fisherwoman’s daily struggles, physical and physiological burdens – so the image reveals the complex, gendered, and intersectional effects of tidal floods.

3. Historical context

Certain pictures show how the coastal landscapes are rapidly changing and how villages are sinking at an alarming rate. This historical context is not only drawn from women’s oral narratives but also from past photo albums shared by the community.

The picture below illustrates the landscape change over 20 years, from rice fields to tidal floodwaters.

4. Movement and agency

Beyond documenting vulnerabilities and the social, ecological and economic effects of climate change on women, this book shows how these women have agency. This manifests in various ways, from small acts of resilience to broader feminist solidarity.

When they work together as a community, women can adapt through collective action. This includes planting crops, building cooperatives and holding demonstrations. Stories can play a role in moving beyond positioning women not just as victims but as people with valuable knowledge and the ability to assert their agency and drive sustainable climate action.

5. Reflection and collective ownership

In an era defined by uncertainty and rapid change, the ability to pause and reflect on climate justice is more valuable than ever. Certain images actively encourage readers to reflect on more tech-driven and infrastructure-focused responses to the climate crisis.

The final pages include questions that prompt critical thinking about the links between gender, climate justice and activism. For example, “what do you think will happen if we do not address the climate crisis?”

Rather than extracting knowledge from women, especially those in Global South countries, this book is co-created. Fisherwomen’s voices and narratives are central to the storytelling process. By reclaiming conversations about climate change that are often dominated by international forums, we can hear and learn from the people who are most affected. And hopefully inspire more climate advocacy and grassroots action.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 40,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Andi Misbahul Pratiwi, PhD Candidate, School of Geography, University of Leeds

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Throughout the 1990s, I was a music journalist in London. I profiled hundreds of rock bands at the start of their careers, including Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails and the Foo Fighters. I can’t imagine a better way to have spent my twenties. But I witnessed a downside. For many musicians, success was a shock, and nearly everyone I knew struggled with aspects of it at times.

Most were affected by the obvious pitfalls of sex, drugs and alcohol, and some didn’t survive. A lot had trouble reconciling their artistic values with the rigorous demands of a cutthroat business, despite their ambitions. Women, including Björk, Tori Amos and Kim Gordon, described their battles with structural misogyny across the industry. And, in a world that rewards performance and persona, many had trouble establishing healthy relationships and holding onto a sense of identity.

The psychological pressures of fame have since intensified. Social media poses a constant threat to personal privacy, and, for better or worse, parasocial relationships are on the rise. But a recent batch of celebrity memoirs, all set in the pre-digital age, support my observations from the 1990s. Famous people lead peculiar lives, and success has always carried a cost.

‘I don’t know who I am’

The most tragic of these accounts is From Here to the Great Unknown, a collaboration between Elvis Presley’s only child, Lisa Marie Presley, and her oldest daughter, Riley Keough. According to Keough’s preface, her mother worked on the memoir for several years, battling with self-doubt before asking her daughter to help. A month later, in January 2023, Presley died aged 54 of a cardiac arrest due to a small bowel obstruction following bariatric surgery.

Still grieving, Keough decided to complete the project alone. The result is essentially an edited transcript of Presley’s memoir tapes interwoven with her own recollections of her beloved mother. Intermittently intimate, it reads less like a biography, and more like a late-night conversation, painting a vivid, although incomplete picture of a lonely, unreachable woman whose greatest loves were her children.

At times, the lack of detail is frustrating. There is nothing here about the impact of Presley’s parents’ divorce, barely any information regarding her third and fourth marriages to actor Nicolas Cage and producer/guitarist Michael Lockwood respectively, and very little about the devastating sexual abuse allegations concerning her second husband, Michael Jackson. No doubt this is partly due to the consideration of surviving family members as well as the content of the tapes, but it does raise questions of editing and craft.

Nevertheless, the narrative offers a moving insight into the worst legacy of superstardom, chronicling the dysfunctional childhood, troubled adolescence and heartbreaking adulthood of someone who was born into privilege, but spent her life seeking validation.

Growing up between the wildly undisciplined environment of Graceland with her loving but volatile father, and a strained home life in California with her mother, Priscilla, who she says “didn’t want me”, Presley was only nine when Elvis died. By then, she was already on track to becoming a textbook problem child.

During adolescence, she endured a spell in rehab, suffered brutal physical violence from her mother’s partner, was subjected to sexual exploitation by an older boyfriend, and made her first suicide attempt. At 17, she found a way out when she fell in love with musician Danny Keough. Presley decided she wanted to have children, and according to Riley, she “absolutely meant to trap my dad”.

With Riley and her younger brother Ben, Presley found happiness, but she was still young and family life was hard to maintain. When Michael Jackson decided she should be with him instead, she embarked on one of the most intriguing celebrity relationships in modern history until his drug dependency drove them apart. The book offers some fascinating insights into the couple’s strong connection, which outlived their marriage by years.

But after Jackson, although Presley had another two husbands, she never found security. “I don’t know who I am,” she states in the book. “I never really got the chance to uncover my own identity. I didn’t have a family. I didn’t have a childhood.”

When her son Ben committed suicide in 2020 at the age of 27, she was finally overwhelmed by her lifelong sense of failure and purposelessness. Unable to face a funeral, she kept Ben’s body in her home for two months in a temperature-controlled room before laying him to rest at Graceland. In many ways, she never recovered from his death.

Keough, who, somewhat unconvincingly, describes her childhood as “perfect” and “amazing”, says her mother wanted to tell her story in order to understand herself and to be understood by others, “in full, for the first time in her life”. The extent of Presley’s personal tragedy, of not being seen, known or witnessed within a world of luxury, lies in these words.

Watching from the wings

While Presley’s memoir conveys the destructive side of inherited fame, media consultant Elliot Mintz’s book, We All Shine On: John, Yoko & Me looks at the peculiar allure of stardom for those in the wings.

The story begins in the wake of John Lennon’s murder, a tragedy directly born of fame. The opening pages tell how Mintz, at the time a broadcaster and close associate of John and Yoko, has been summoned to the Dakota building in Manhattan to compile an inventory of John’s belongings. But while this laborious task is testament to Yoko’s faith in him, Mintz has not been personally informed of John’s death, which is odd. He hears about the shooting from his mother, who has seen a television report, and rushes to the airport in a panic to catch a plane to New York. During the flight, he discovers “my best friend is gone” when an air steward explains why she’s crying.

This incongruity typifies the memoir. Graciously told with an old-fashioned charm, the book is presented as an intimate portrayal of life with an extraordinary couple. Yet it’s more a study of dysfunctional interpersonal dynamics where the rich and famous hold sway.

As an adolescent, Mintz was isolated and cursed with a stutter. He developed fantasy relationships with TV talk show hosts, and confesses that “my only friends were on the airwaves”. During the 1970s, he lived in the bohemian haven, Laurel Canyon, and worked in broadcasting, which is how he became part of Lennon and Ono’s personal entourage.

Mintz’s first encounter with Yoko was for a phone interview on his LA radio show during which he cleverly avoided asking the artist about her famous husband. Impressed, Yoko began calling at all hours of the day and night from New York, with John soon joining in.

Gradually, the couple began to trust him. A useful Hollywood contact who comes across as easily flattered into compliance and servitude, he installed a red light on his bedroom ceiling that flashed whenever the phone rang. He hired private investigators at his own expense to help Yoko secure personal details of potential business associates, and after playing the couple’s controversial third album on his radio show, he lost his job.

But aside from an all-expenses trip to Japan, where he acted as John’s minder under Yoko’s orders, the couple never paid him a cent, despite their constant demands.

Aware of his status as unpaid assistant, Mintz nevertheless regarded the Lennons as close friends, and even family. But he is never clear about what he meant to them on a purely personal level, and the one time he introduced them to a girlfriend, it didn’t go well. “Whatever magic happened between me, Yoko and John when we got together, it couldn’t be recreated as a party of four”, he says, with unsettling acceptance.

The most revealing, and disturbing, moment in the book is after a party, during which John subjected Yoko to the cruel humiliation of having loud sex with another guest in an adjoining room. Worried about the aftermath, Mintz tries to imagine a world in which the “magical couple” are no longer together, but is unable to bear the thought.

Tellingly, he also fears for himself.

I wondered whether my friendships with them could survive a split. Who would get custody of me? How could I possibly remain friends with just one of them? Or would I end up being abandoned by them both?

In the end, Mintz’s expectation that “the three of us would grow old together” was shattered by John’s murder. He has since maintained a connection with Yoko, but ends his book asking whether the sacrifices he made for the couple were worth the nine years he spent in their company. Interestingly, aside from wondering whether he might have married and had a family, or ended up in a less glamorous career, he doesn’t provide an answer.

‘I was who I was my whole life’

For a more straightforward, firsthand account of fame, Cher: The Memoir, Part One is hard to beat. A big, bold, engaging story of grit and determination that charts the initial rise of Cheryl Sarkisian from poverty and hardship towards becoming the “global icon” known as Cher, this book has all the right ingredients for a blockbuster celebrity biography.

Tracing the first four decades of the superstar’s life, from her birth in 1946 to the brink of her acting profession in 1980, this hefty volume focuses on Cher’s turbulent upbringing and the earlier stages of her singing and entertainment career. It includes her chequered marriages to Sonny Bono, with whom she found success as the pop duo Sonny and Cher, and musician Gregg Allman, as well as her relationships with record label boss David Geffen, and Gene Simmons of Kiss.

Ever the performer, when Cher first agreed to publish a memoir, her main concern was how to replicate the authenticity of her voice. Famously dyslexic, she hired a ghostwriter, but was unhappy with the first attempt because it didn’t sound like her. Two more ghostwriters were found, and the book was rushed out in four months.

Regardless, certain critics have bemoaned the flatness of tone. But while Cher’s distinctive, sassy style would have been hard to capture on the page, no doubt the writers were aiming for coherence. Given the rich, eventful nature of her life, this can’t have been easy. Cher’s memoir is a true adventure story.

Left in the care of children’s homes and extended family members as an infant, Cher experienced a wildly insecure childhood with her beautiful but unstable mother, the aspiring actress, Georgia Holt. Together with her half-sister, Gee, Cher moved home and switched schools constantly, had a string of father figures, and was a teenager by the time she met her biological dad, Johnnie Sarkisian, a heroin addict.

Despite such a difficult start, Cher didn’t buckle. Instead, she developed a fierce independence, a free spirit and a strong sense of self, and from a young age, was determined to achieve the singing and acting career that eluded her mother.

“I guess I was who I was my whole life,” she says, recalling the time she impressed her family with a song at the age of five.

Perhaps inevitably, given the mostly terrible male role models of her childhood, Cher’s marriages were her biggest downfall. Sonny Bono turned out to be pathologically controlling, cheated her out of her money and engaged her in a bitter custody battle over their child, Chas. David Geffen came to the rescue, arranging lawyers and supporting her back to independence, and for a while she was happy with him. But then she fell for Gregg Allman, who suffered from chronic addiction issues, and lied about his habits even after their son, Elijah Blue, was born.

While the book details her divorce from Sonny and outlines the negative episode with Allman, it skims over the breakdown of her other relationships, maintaining the upbeat survivor mode that has become so consistent with her public image. And yet, when it comes to her career, her reflections are occasionally revealing.

“It’s hard when people see you in a certain light and don’t think you can do anything beyond that,” she says of her struggle to be considered for serious acting roles back in 1980. “I was used to that my whole life, but it didn’t make it any less painful.”

Even for Cher, it seems fame and success have not been straightforward.

Cher: The Memoir, Part Two is due for publication in November 2025.

Liz Evans, Adjunct Researcher, English and Writing, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We have a natural fascination with time – how landscapes have been carved over millennia, how our bodies grow and sag with age, how the stars traverse the sky each night. Scientists probe the layers beneath our feet to understand the secrets of our past. Geologists and palaeontologists sample ice, rock and fossils to reconstruct past climates and species and archaeologists pick through ancient “dustbins” (middens) in excavation sites to reimagine our historical dinner time.

Similarly, most living things produce records of their own existence in layered body tissues – often in the form of daily or yearly growth bands. The most familiar of these so-called biochronologies are tree rings, which form every year in response to seasonal cycles in temperature and rainfall.

Dendrochronology – the art of tree-ring counting – allows us to precisely date trees. Based on the rings in its trunk, a bristlecone pine in eastern California known as Methuselah is said to be the world’s oldest living thing at 4,856 years old.

It’s not just the number of rings, either – their width tells us whether the tree was thriving in a particular year, or suffering due to drought. Chemical compounds locked into the wood offer clues about atmospheric changes, including those produced by volcanic eruptions.

Let’s not not stop at trees – your own tooth cement, nails and hair are forming chemical and visual records of your own life experience right now, storing traces of food, drink and drugs you have consumed. They can also produce “stress marks” during trauma or pregnancy, when a mother literally breaks her own body tissues to grow and nourish her baby.

Elsewhere in the natural world, some of the more surprising examples of biochronologies include whale earwax, narwhal tusks, bird feathers and the bony plates (scutes) on turtle shells.

Recent studies, for instance, have applied forensic analyses of whale earwax to explore their stress levels during historic whaling days. Narwhal tusks, meanwhile, have helped explain how declining Arctic sea ice has affected their diet and exposure to pollution.

The importance of otoliths

In my lab, we work with aquatic animals – from fish scales and ear bones to squid eyes and beaks. Like decoding a biological black box, we analyse chemical constituents in the growth layers to reconstruct a detailed picture of the individual’s prior health, diet and movements.

Some biochronologies are more “fickle”, forming layers at unpredictable rates, including the eye lenses of fish and turtle scutes. Others, such as bird feathers, are shorter lived due to periodic moulting. Yet they all share the important feature of serial growth, producing valuable archives that we can probe to build a picture of the animal’s life.

Probably the best known biochronometer in the animal world – and my own personal obsession – is the fish otolith, or ear bone (Ancient Greek: oto is ear and líthos is stone). We humans have tiny ear stones (otoconia), whose primary function is to maintain balance, but fish otoliths are also crucial for hearing, as well as featuring specific properties that make them particularly valuable markers of biochronology.

Unlike “normal” bones, fish otoliths are composed of calcium carbonate crystals and are metabolically inert, meaning they never get broken down and rebuilt. Instead they keep growing – even during periods of starvation – producing daily and annual growth bands.

These beautiful crystalline structures are also highly resistant to degradation and vary in shape between species. This enables scientists to use a combination of “otolith atlases” and artificial intelligence to identify popular choices of fish from otoliths left behind in ancient human middens, as well as in the contemporary stomach contents or poop of predators such as seals, albatrosses and squid.

Otoliths have driven my research for almost two decades. I’ve been fascinated by animal migration and the ecological and evolutionary processes underpinning these long and dangerous journeys ever since taking a “movement ecology” class at the University of Edinburgh with the brilliant Professor Victoria Braithwaite in 2003.

I decided I wanted to track marine animals myself, and my lab now primarily uses otolith and eye lens chemistry to reconstruct fish habitat use and growth rates, and the temperatures they experienced through their lives. We are now also investigating how well these same structures track reproductive events, chronic stress and exposure to pollution.

And we are working with international teams to understand how hypoxia (low oxygen zones or “dead zones”) affect fish growth and reproduction. Ultimately, this data allows us to connect stressful events in a fish’s past to its lifetime health and survival, which is important for predicting a species’ persistence.

For example, a recent study used otolith-derived metabolic rates of Atlantic bluefin tuna to show their vulnerability to future climate change. Meanwhile in California, we used otolith chemistry to understand the impact of dams on salmon migration and survival, revealing that – on many rivers - dams have made it impossible for salmon to escape into the mountains during summer, which is essential for enabling them to resist the increasingly severe droughts afflicting the region.

Conservation

Fisheries managers read the rings on millions of otoliths each year to track individual cohorts and look for warning signs of overfishing, but I would argue that biochronologies are still underused in this field. For example, fisheries managers could use otoliths to track the movements of juveniles too small to be tagged (those under 4cm long), since chemical markers make it possible to identify where they grew up. This would allow these managers to earmark productive or struggling “nursery habitats” for protection or improvement, respectively.

We consistently find that rivers and estuaries play a critical role in the survival and growth of valuable species such as salmon, sea bass and anchovies. Juvenile fish often have such high natural mortality rates – often only 1% survive to their first birthday – that even small improvements to their survival can result in large boosts in abundance and make wild fisheries more sustainable.

As such, let’s keep up the momentum to clean and restore our rivers and beaches, and to embrace monitoring tools such as biochronologies to learn which actions produce the biggest benefits. Next time you think about banging the glass at an aquarium, just remember that the fish inside are listening – and recording you too.

Anna Sturrock, Senior Lecturer, School of Life Sciences, University of Essex

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Have you ever asked someone how their day was, or been chatting casually with a friend, only to have them tell you a horrific story that has left you feeling distressed or emotionally exhausted yourself?

This is called “trauma dumping”. It’s when someone shares something traumatic or distressing without checking in first if the person they’re talking to has the capacity or willingness to take on that information.

Trauma dumping is not new, and you’ve probably experienced it (or inadvertently done it yourself) at some stage in your life.

But now, with the rise of social media platforms such as TikTok, the risk of experiencing trauma dumping has increased exponentially.

People often turn to TikTok for support or validation. And because TikTok’s algorithm is based on attention, it’s not uncommon for highly emotional stories to gather traction and go viral.

My colleagues and I wanted to understand more about trauma dumping on TikTok. In a recent study, we found people often share their trauma on TikTok. And this is usually done without a trigger warning.

TikTok and mental health

It’s estimated around 75% of the population have experienced a traumatic event at some point in their lives. This could include exposure to abuse or neglect in childhood, violence, natural disasters, the death of a loved one, or any other event which is unexpected, distressing, and causes long-term impacts on physical or mental health.

TikTok can be an important source of support and validation, especially for young people who have faced trauma, and who may not have sufficient support offline.

Previous research has shown TikTok provides a platform for talking about things like body image concerns, seeking support and information about gender and sexual diversity, and tackling stigma.

But while TikTok can be a great place for community, support and validation, at the same time it can be a hotbed for trauma dumping.

Importantly, sharing trauma on social media runs the risk of exposing other users to vicarious traumatisation, which is when a person is traumatised by someone else’s trauma.

Vicarious trauma is most common in people who work in “frontline” jobs, such as paramedics or therapists, who deal with trauma regularly. However, anyone can be at risk. Factors including personal experiences, personality traits (such as empathy), support systems and coping strategies all play a role in whether someone might experience vicarious trauma.

In our study, we set out to explore the top videos on TikTok with one or more of five hashtags related to trauma: #traumatok, #trauma, #traumatized, #traumatic and #traumabond.

We looked the most viewed 50 videos from each hashtag. At the time we carried out our analysis in December 2022, these 250 videos had a total of 296.6 million likes, 2.3 million comments and 4.6 million shares.

#TraumaTok

We found the majority of videos (about 67%) were from people sharing their trauma. In many cases severe trauma was discussed, including child maltreatment, violence and death.

Our study also showed some videos (about 22%) were from people who claimed to be “experts” in trauma. They were using the platform to speak about the symptoms and treatment for trauma-related mental health conditions.

Worryingly, most “experts” (84%) did not disclose their credentials. And only a small proportion (2%) said they were licensed psychologists, counsellors or medical professionals (who are trained to provide evidence-based treatment or advice for mental health).

The remaining videos were either more general mental health content with a mix of hashtags such as “anxiety” and “depression”, or were meant to be humorous, using memes or jokes about trauma.

One of the most concerning things we found in our study was that only 3.7% of videos had some form of trigger warning. A trigger warning, often a verbal statement by the creator, text within the video or a caption, is meant to alert the audience that potentially distressing content is discussed in the video.

One of the limitations of our study was that we didn’t look at users’ experiences of viewing these videos. We also didn’t explore discourse on the app, such as comments and video replies.

We can’t say for sure what it’s like for people, especially young people or people with lived experience of trauma, to watch and interact with these videos. Exploring this should be a focus for future research.

Trigger warnings are important

None of this is to say that sharing stories, even traumatic ones, should never happen. In fact, we know support from others is essential for healing from trauma. This can be facilitated, among other avenues, through sharing stories on social media.

But to make this safer for everyone, TikTok should encourage trigger warnings, and creators should use them on videos where trauma is shared. This can give users the option to “opt out” and scroll on if they think they might not have the capacity to listen at that time.

For people consuming videos on TikTok and other platforms, it’s important to be wary of misinformation and think critically about the information they see, seeking further advice from other sources.

If you feel distressed by content you see on social media, seek support from a health-care professional.

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

Alix Woolard, Senior Research Fellow, The Kids Research Institute Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Almost half of Australians wish they read more: in our recent research, 54.9% of those who have read a book in the past year, and 49.8% of those who haven’t, told us they read less than they intend to.

So, what’s stopping them?

Common difficulties include getting distracted, finding books they want to read, feeling motivated to read and not feeling like they’re in the right mood to read.

The good news is behavioural science, the study of human behaviour, can offer strategies to help us read more often. The key is to identify the barriers that stop us from reading – and use behavioural tactics tailored to them.

We surveyed a diverse range of 1,622 Australians aged 16 years and older, in August 2024. Our research, done in partnership with Australia Reads, used behavioural science to understand how people read for recreation. We counted print, digital and audio books, but not newspapers or magazines.

We asked participants about their current reading behaviours and their motivations, capabilities, opportunities and barriers related to reading. We broke down the activity of “reading” into a journey involving five specific behaviours: finding books, choosing books, getting books, starting to read, and continuing to read.

People may go back and forth between stages in their reading journey, and even be at different stages for different books. After investigating the specific barriers people experience at different stages we’ve devised ten useful tactics, to help you read more often.

If you want to read, but get distracted by other activities (or scrolling)

1. Try different formats, like audiobooks and ebooks, to incorporate reading at a more convenient time or place. For example, you could listen to an audiobook when you cook dinner.

2. Engage with shorter material or different genres to reduce the perceived effort of reading. (For example, graphic novels, short stories, or novellas.)

3. Place books in visible places, such as next to the bag you grab before you catch the train, or set reminders to read.

4. Try setting up a regular reading time, such as before bed or on public transport. Most importantly, find a time that is convenient and works with your life.

If you’re rarely in the mood to read

5. Remember, there’s a book for every mood. Find material that feels engaging in the moment, even if it means starting a new book or trying a different genre than you’re used to.

6. Read for enjoyment rather than as a chore – stop reading books if you aren’t enjoying them (give yourself permission to not finish a book even if you usually do), and select books based on your mood and interests, rather than what you think you should be reading.

7. Implement a reading buddy system with a friend or family member to make reading more social and encourage each other.

If you’re unsure what you like to read, or unmotivated by your usual reading material

8. Try shorter, more accessible books to find the types of genres and stories you enjoy. Pay attention to the parts of the books you enjoyed to help you find other similar books.

9. Use book subscriptions or curation services to help find books you might enjoy.

10. Try asking a friend, a librarian or a bookseller for recommendations.

How Australians read for leisure

Recreational reading can ebb and flow during different life stages and according to competing priorities. Just 17.3% of those we spoke to cited reading books as their top leisure activity.

But half (49.9%) of them read books as one of their leisure activities. Overall, reading was ranked fourth: behind watching TV and movies (80.9%), social media and internet browsing (61.2%), and eating and drinking out (55.1%).

Our participants who had read a book in the past year told us their top motivations to read were that it helps them relax and unwind (49.2%), brings pleasure and enjoyment (46.3%), and helps to keep their brain active (34.7%).

It can take a while to feel engaged with a new book, especially if you’re coming back to reading after a bit of a slump. While most people we surveyed felt engaged in 30 minutes or less, around 15% needed up to 60 minutes to feel engaged with a book, and roughly 5% needed over an hour.

It can be easy to feel distracted when you’re not yet engaged. But give yourself time, especially when starting a new book, to connect with it.

The most important thing if you want to read more is to try to understand what’s getting in your way. Then, you can try something to specifically address that barrier.

Breanna Wright, Research fellow, BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University; Alyse Lennox, Senior Research Officer, BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University, Monash University, and Fernanda Mata, Research Fellow, BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The mere mention of Leonardo da Vinci evokes genius. We know him as a polymath whose interests spanned astronomy, geology, hydrology, engineering and physics. As a painter, his Mona Lisa and Last Supper are considered works of mastery.

Yet one great achievement that frequently goes unrecognised is his studies of human anatomy. More than 500 years after his death, it’s time this changed.

Leonardo is thought to have been born on April 15 1452 in Anchiano, a small hamlet near the town of Vinci, close to Florence. His mother was a 16-year-old peasant girl called Caterina di Meo Lippi, and his father was Ser Piero da Vinci, a 26-year-old notary.

Being illegitimate, the young Leonardo was only permitted an elementary education in reading, writing and arithmetic. He was also barred from becoming a notary, but this worked out to his advantage. Instead of being constrained by life as an officiate, he was free to be creative and explore the world of nature, satisfying his insatiable appetite for knowledge.

The human anatomy became one of his great interests. This was seeded during his time as an apprentice in Andrea del Verrocchio’s bottega (studio) in Florence, where studying the human form was crucial for achieving realistic depictions.

Creating detailed anatomical drawings required precise sketching skills and the ability to accurately depict the structures being studied. As Leonardo’s fascination grew, he would delve deeper into anatomy as a discipline.

Pioneers

This traces back to the 2nd-century Greek physician Galen of Pergamum, whose anatomical descriptions were mostly based on insights he had gained through dissecting animals and studying wounded gladiators. However, he did no human dissections – they were illegal during his time – and many of his extrapolations from animal to human anatomy were wrong.

It wasn’t until the 14th century that anatomy and medical science advanced thanks to the start of systematic human cadaver dissections. The physician Mondino de Liuzzi, who practised the first public dissections of human cadavers at the University of Bologna, published the first modern anatomical text, Anathomia Corporis Humani, in 1316.

The text was mostly descriptive in nature, like that of Galen, lacking drawings to illustrate anatomy. Subsequent texts on the subject during the 14th and early 15th centuries did contain drawings, but these were basic and unrealistic.

Leonardo advanced this discipline through his remarkable observational skills, knowledge of perspective and, most notably, his outstanding drawing abilities. His anatomical sketches were unlike anything seen before. For example, his sketches of the muscles of the arms and human skull are comparable to illustrations in today’s medical anatomy texts.

According to Leonardo’s biographer, Giorgio Vasari, the artist “was one of the first who, with Galen’s teachings, began to bring honour to medical studies and to shed real light upon anatomy, which had until that time been shrouded in the deepest shadows of ignorance”.

Leonardo was the first to depict a detailed study of the human spine, showing its natural curvature and correctly numbered vertebrae. He drew and described nearly all the bones and muscles of the body in beautiful detail, as well as investigating their biomechanics.

His studies on the heart combined both experimentation and observation. Using an ox’s heart to understand blood flow though the aortic valves, Leonardo poured molten wax into the surrounding cavities to make a wax cast, from which a glass model of the heart was made. He then pumped water mixed with grass seeds through this model to visualise the flow pattern. From this experiment, he concluded that the vortex-like flow of blood through the aortic valves was responsible for closing them during each heartbeat.

Over 450 years later, in 1968, scientists used dyes and radiography methods to observe this blood flow and prove that Leonardo was correct. A study in 2014 using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) also demonstrated that he had provided a strikingly precise depiction of these vortex-like flows.

Shortcomings

Leonardo may have dissected around 30 human corpses during his lifetime. Most took place at the Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence, and later at the Santo Spirito hospital in Rome. The fact he didn’t have more human cadavers to study probably helps to explain why he also got things wrong.

In addition, Leonardo was very influenced by Galen, through his readings of both Mondino de Liuzzi and the Persian writer Avicenna (c980-1037), while also dissecting animals such as dogs, cattle and horses to fill in human anatomical gaps.

This approach is evident in his study of the male and female reproductive system, as I found when carrying out a detailed review of his work in this area. Misconceptions included the presence of three channels in the penis for semen, urine and “animal spirit”. The prostate gland is also missing in all his sketches of the male reproductive system. Meanwhile, he made the uterus spherical (derived from cow dissections), and similarly misrepresented the fallopian tubes and ovaries.

Even then, Leonardo still got a lot right. He correctly depicts the position of the foetus in the uterus, and the umbilical cord anatomy. He also correctly argued that penile erections were caused by blood engorgement and not by air or “vital spirits” flowing into the penis, as suggested by Galen.

Where he got things wrong, Leonardo’s shifting focus may also have played a part. His restlessness, disorganised notes and unfinished work suggest ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Equally, this may also explain his boundless curiosity and incredible creativity.

Despite his shortcomings, Leonardo’s anatomical studies were centuries ahead of their time, rivalling modern standards. His work in this area might have been more appreciated had he published it in a book: he had planned one, and is said to have been collaborating with the Renaissance physician and professor, Marc’Antonio della Torre.

Unfortunately, this was cut short with Marc’Antonio’s death in 1511. Leonardo died in 1519 at the age of 67, and while his gifts to the world have received endless attention, his important contributions to anatomy remain overshadowed, and deserve greater recognition.

Michael Carroll, Reader / Associate Professor in Reproductive Science, Manchester Metropolitan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The 2025 Academy Awards could shape up to be a big one for stop-motion animation. Australian director Adam Eliott’s Memoir of a Snail (2024) has raked in a nomination for Best Animated Feature Film, alongside Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024).

Coincidentally, this recognition comes in what is already an historic year for stop motion. A century ago, on February 8 1925, The Lost World hit cinemas. This film is widely considered the first feature-length stop-motion production, as well as the first “creature feature”.

Audiences were captivated as they watched animated dinosaurs share the screen with live actors. The animators positioned and photographed miniature dinosaurs made of rubber, one frame at a time, to create moving sequences that accompanied full-scale shots with human actors.

This method drew from earlier works such as Georges Méliès’s 1902 short film A Trip to the Moon (Le voyage dans la lune).

Dynamation: the beginnings

After animating on The Lost World, stop-motion pioneer Willis O’Brien went on to animate King Kong (1933) and the lesser-known Mighty Joe Young (1949), where he mentored Ray Harryhausen.

Harryhausen himself would later design and animate some of the most celebrated stop-motion sequences of all time, including the famous skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and the fictional Rhedosaurus from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953).

The blend of animated miniatures and live actors become known as Dynamation, as Harryhausen pushed to create ever-more integrated and dynamic sequences in which animated puppets “interacted” with real actors.

Back then it wasn’t possible to review animation as it was being shot; you could only see the puppet as it was in the moment. Sequences were shot on celluloid film, and animators had to wait for the film to develop before they could see the results.

The famous skeleton fight in Jason and the Argonauts required Harryhausen to remember the movements of seven skeletons and line up a fight sequence with two pre-recorded actors, one frame at a time. He would often work for months before being able to review his work.

In Eastern Europe, filmmakers such as Karel Zeman were also combining live action with miniature special effects and stop motion – extending a long history of Eastern European puppet theatre into cinema.

In 1958, Zeman brought Jules Vernes’ whimsical vehicles and underwater worlds to the screen in his feature film Invention for Destruction (Vynález zkázy).

Zeman’s work went on to influence famous animators such as Jan Švankmajer and Terry Gilliam.

Technology advances

In the 1970s, Phil Tippet and others working at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) – a studio founded by George Lucas – pushed the medium further through the development of “go-motion”.

This invention used a custom-made control rig that precisely moved a puppet while it was being photographed – resulting in a subtle motion blur that emulated live-action movement.

This technique allowed for more realistic animation and was used in productions such as Dragon Slayer (1981) and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

In the 1980s, however, Star Wars began a trend towards photorealism and audiences became more scrutinising of visual effects. Harryhausen’s creatures in Clash of the Titans (1981) appeared especially hammy and outdated even for the time.

The CGI scare

In the early 90s, Phil Tippet and colleagues at ILM, in the pursuit of perfecting the craft, developed test dinosaur sequences for Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). Tippet animated the original test sequences in stop motion.

Also at ILM, Dennis Muren was experimenting with a new kind of animation for creatures made entirely using computer software. These were the early days of computer-generated imagery (CGI).

When Tippet saw an early Jurassic Park test of CGI dinosaur footage, he said to Steven Spielberg “I’m extinct”.

Nonetheless, once it was decided the dinosaurs would be created with CGI, Tippet continued working on the film. He used a dinosaur-shaped physical rig, which allowed changes to the rig’s position to translate to CGI movements onscreen. Stop-motion animators were helpful in this process because “CGI animators” as we know them didn’t yet exist.

Amid a CGI-induced scare, Tim Burton and Henry Selicks’ The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) became the first fully stop-motion animated feature to be produced by a major studio. This film proved stop motion could be achieved at a Hollywood scale.

Stop motion took a backseat to CGI in the years that followed. Pixar’s Toy Story (1995), the world’s first fully CGI animated feature, cemented CGI as the way of the future.

The only other noteworthy stop-motion cinematic release came at the turn of the century, when DreamWorks teamed up with Aardman Animations to produce Chicken Run (2000), following a number of successful stop motion shorts, starting with Wallace and Gromit’s A Grand Day Out in 1989.

The comeback

Eventually, innovations in digital cameras and motion control paved the way back to stop motion, giving us films such as Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and The Corpse Bride (2005).

Working on Coraline (2008), Laika studios introduced 3D printing technology for a sophisticated form of replacement animation, in which different body and facial pieces are swapped to create character movements and expressions.

Traditionally, this technique was achieved by carving individual wooden models and swapping them out between capturing frames. This is how filmmaker George Pal made his Puppetoons films in the 1930s.

Embracing new tech brought stop motion back onto the world stage, with studios such as Laika leading the charge. Since then, we’ve seen the release of features including ParaNorman (2012), The Boxtrolls (2014), Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), Missing Link (2019) and Guillermo del Toro’s Academy Award-wining Pinnoccio (2022).

A new era of stop-motion features

Despite huge developments in CGI, audiences still appreciate the painstaking work of bringing inanimate objects to life frame by frame.

There are more stop motion films being made than ever before, with independent filmmakers and students creating quality sequences for a fraction of what it cost 30 years ago.

Some directors use the medium for its connection with real materials, and out of respect for the art form. Phil Tippet spent more than 30 years on his stop motion feature Mad God (2021) – an experimental and intense horror magnum opus that embodies the materiality of stop motion.

Wes Anderson says his approach to stop motion in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) was “very much about bringing to life the [characters’] performance.”

In Pinocchio (2022), Guillermo del Toro tells the touching story of a puppet, using real puppets, in which imperfection and human frailty are emphasised.

We’re also seeing the return of stop-motion creature effects, such as with Disney’s Star Wars series Skeleton Crew (2024–25), in which live action is once again integrated with stop-motion puppets.

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) is now pushing audiences and creators to question what they value in animation, cinema and art more generally.

If AI could generate high-quality films with a stop-motion aesthetic, would we value them as much as those productions that were laboured over for years on end? The recent Oscar nominees may hold the answer.

Jack McGrath, Lecturer in Animation, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Fewer young Australians are drinking. And when they do drink, they are drinking less and less often than previous generations at the same age.

It’s a trend happening all around the world.

The proportion of young people who drink infrequently is growing in the long term. In 2001, 13.6% of Australians aged 18–24 drank less than once a month. That’s since increased to 20%, or one in five.

The proportion of young people who’ve never consumed a full glass of alcohol has also more than doubled since 2001, from 7.5% to 16.3%.

But for many, abstinence is not necessarily the goal. An interest in mindful drinking means trends that encourage moderation – including “zebra striping” and “damp drinking” – have taken off on social media.

So, what are these strategies for cutting down? And are they really something new?

What is ‘zebra striping’?

“Zebra striping” means alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. It effectively halves alcohol consumption for most people. This reduces the risk of intoxication because it gives your body time to process the alcohol.

The term is new but the concept of alternating drinks has long been a cornerstone of harm-reduction strategies.

A UK study commissioned by a zero-alcohol beer brand found that 25% of pub goers alternate between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beer. While commercial research like this requires cautious interpretation, it does highlight a growing appetite for moderation.

Is it different to ‘damp drinking’?

The rise of “damp drinking” is another shift from all-or-nothing approaches to alcohol. In a recent survey, close to 40% of drinkers want to drink less compared to 6.5% who say they want to quit altogether.

Going “damp” – rather than completely “dry” – means reducing alcohol without cutting it out altogether.

Having a drink is reserved for special occasions, but generally doesn’t feature in everyday life. This is also known as being “99% sober”.

It’s an approach that resonates with many young people who are “sober curious”, but do not want to completely abstain from alcohol.

Moderation can be a sustainable strategy for people who are not dependent on alcohol. Sometimes even people who were dependent can achieve moderation, usually after a period of abstinence. In the past, the consensus was that people who were dependent on alcohol should only aim for complete abstinence.

Strict sobriety goals can increase risk of relapse. This is referred to as the abstinence violation effect, which can sometimes lead to a cycle of binge drinking and guilt when people feel they’ve failed.

Moderation strategies, such as damp drinking or zebra striping, are more likely to foster self-compassion and gradual change.

So what’s behind this cultural shift?

In part, popular wellness trends have promoted alcohol-free living as a positive and aspirational lifestyle.

But health concerns are only part of the answer.

Young people especially face increasing social and economic pressures, and may be more focused on professional and personal growth than previous generations.

Studies show many view excessive drinking – and accompanying anxiety and hangovers – as incompatible with their ambitions and desire to stay in control.

Adding to this, social media can make what you do more visible to others – and serve as a permanent record. So some young people are more careful with behaviours that might lead to regret.

The increasing availability of better-tasting zero-alcohol drinks helps, too.

Zero-alcohol beer and wine, and mocktails, offer a way to participate socially without the drawbacks of alcohol consumption. These alternatives have reduced the stigma once associated with abstaining or drinking less in social settings.

This shift is also underpinned by a changing narrative around alcohol. Unlike older generations who often associated drinking with celebration and bonding, younger people are more likely to question the role of alcohol in their lives.

Binge drinking, once seen as a rite of passage, simply may not be as “cool” anymore.

Finding support for change

Given the health risks associated with drinking, such as cancer, liver disease and mental health issues, it’s great news more young people are reducing their drinking.

But four in ten young people (42%) are still consuming alcohol at risky levels.

The Australian national alcohol guidelines try to balance the social benefits and the health risks of drinking.

If you drink within the guidelines – no more than ten drinks a week and no more than four in any one day – you have a one in 100 chance of dying from an alcohol- related illness like cancer or heart disease.

If you drink above those guidelines the risk of these issues exponentially increases.

If you are looking to change your relationship with alcohol, self-reflection is a vital first step. Key questions to consider include:

• is alcohol negatively impacting my health, relationships or work?
• do I struggle to enjoy social occasions without drinking?

Alcohol and other drug support organisations such as Hello Sunday Morning and Smart Recovery offer free, evidence-based, digital support and resources for people looking to change their drinking.

These services emphasise harm reduction and self-compassion, encouraging individuals to set realistic goals and achieve lasting change.

Katinka van de Ven, Alcohol and other drug specialist, UNSW Sydney and Nicole Lee, Adjunct Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne based), Curtin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Throughout her life, the “Damsel of Cyprus” (born circa 1177) was used as a political and diplomatic tool in the conflicts of men. She was the daughter of Isaac Komnenos, the emperor of Cyprus. Her own name was never recorded, although historians have suggested it may have been either Beatrice or Maria.

While the princess was often powerless, the small snippets of evidence that we have about her present the life of a young woman with the resolve and tenacity to survive and thrive. She’s one of the many women I’ve come across during my research into elite women’s experiences of confinement across 11th to 13th-century medieval Europe.

As a child, the princess and her brother were used as hostages in a war that her father was involved in. Isaac was captured while fighting in Armenia and given into the custody of Bohemond III, the prince of the Greek city of Antioch (which was in what is now Turkey). A ransom of 60,000 gold coins was set. After paying half the ransom, Isaac was released and he gave his children as hostages into Bohemond’s custody as surety for the remaining ransom payment.

The ransom was then supposedly stolen by pirates. Isaac argued that this was a ploy invented by Bohemond and refused to repay it. This left his children in custody for two years until Bohemond, realising that Isaac would never repay the ransom, released them. The princess was seven years old at the time of her release. After the death of her brother, she was Isaac’s sole heir.

In 1191, the princess was again taken captive as a result of one of her father’s conflicts, this time by Richard I of England. Isaac had attempted to capture Richard’s ship, which carried the king’s sister, Joanna of Sicily, and his future wife, Berengaria of Navarre. In retaliation, Richard laid siege to Cyprus.

Isaac eventually fled from Richard’s forces. According to 12th-century English chronicler, Roger of Hoveden, when Richard captured the castle that the princess was hiding in, she went out to meet the king and surrendered. A brave move from a young girl who was only around 14 or 15 years old.

Isaac, who loved his daughter dearly, despite having previously offered her as ransom collateral, soon surrendered and was imprisoned. Richard placed the princess into the custody of his new wife and sister “to be cared for and educated in their customs”. Although she was treated as a ward of the two queens, in reality she was a captive.

Freedom or control? The travels of the princess

A new chapter of the princess’s life began. She travelled with the two queens to Acre (in modern-day Israel), Rome, Pisa, Genoa, Marseilles, Aragon (on the Iberian Peninsula) and Poitou, in west-central France.

The historian Annette Parks has suggested that this offered an “odd kind of freedom” for the princess, travelling further than she ever had before and quite possibly crossing paths with the likes of the queen mother of England, Eleanor of Aquitaine. But despite her relative “freedom” in accompanying the two queens, these travels were not at the princess’s own discretion, and her movements were controlled.

After Richard’s own capture by the Holy Roman Emperor, the agreement for his release included his consenting to the marriage of both the princess and Eleanor of Brittany (who was also in Richard’s custody) to the sons of Leopold V of Austria.

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The two women began to travel to Austria together in 1193 only to turn around part way through the journey, as the death of Leopold brought an end to the agreement. The princess may then have accompanied Joanna of Sicily during her second marriage to Raymond VI of Toulouse in 1196.

With Richard’s death in 1199, the princess was finally freed and went on to make two advantageous marriages. First, to Raymond VI, the same man who had been married to Joanna of Sicily until her death also in 1199. Second, to Thierry of Flanders after the annulment of her first marriage. Raymond had repudiated the princess in favour of a stronger marriage alliance with Leonor, the daughter of Alfonso II of Aragon.

It was during this second marriage that the princess briefly becomes visible in the historical record again.

In 1204 Thierry attempted to reclaim Cyprus through the rights of his wife. By this point, the political circumstances of Cyprus had changed and a new king had been installed. Thierry and the princess’s attempt was unsuccessful and the two were forced to flee, after which they disappear from the record for good.

The Damsel of Cyprus had almost no control over her life. But the record shows instances in which her own strength and tenacity were able to shine through. From facing King Richard in surrender, to forming advantageous marriages when she had no networks of her own, she navigated the circumstances that captivity brought upon her and she found ways to survive and retain her status as an elite woman. I would even speculate that the attempt to reclaim Cyprus was at the princess’s instigation, in an effort to regain her home.

As a young girl with no say over much of her life, the Damsel of Cyprus is a reminder of how medieval women continued to find ways to overcome the limitations placed on them.

Leticia Jeeval Pala, PhD Candidate, history, Nottingham Trent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Many of us take pleasure in listening to music. Music accompanies important life events and lubricates social encounters. It represents aspects of our existing identity, as well as our hopes and dreams. It expresses emotions that cannot be explained with words. Music also distracts us from boredom and difficulty and helps us escape into another world.

Music seems to have a magical power: a wand to be waved that makes life feel better. But what if the power was not in the music itself? In fact, the power of music comes from our choices in what to listen to and the human agency we express in this act.

It can be seen as a placebo effect where the music is endowed with special powers by our minds. The qualities of the music are important. But as with all art, it is how we uniquely perceive the song that makes our experience powerful.

My research has shown most of us operate on autopilot when it comes to choosing music, often assuming previous music selections will have the same effect even under very different circumstances.

Stepping out of autopilot and being more intentional in the songs we chose can move from hoping the music will make you feel good, to knowing it will and seeing how it does.

Choose the right music for you

The way we experience music is personal. There is no one song that is going to make everyone feel the same.

Think about trying to pick a song to make you feel happy, or to listen to when you’re happy. If the power was in the musical qualities of the song itself, Pharrell Williams’ Happy might work. The song has several uplifting musical features: a simple but catchy melody; an energising rhythm emphasised by the singer clicking along; a lively tempo; and words that repeat the key idea.

It’s similar to Psy’s Gangnam Style, Katrina and the Waves’ Walking on Sunshine or ABBA’s Waterloo.

But just because these songs sound happy, do they make you feel happy? Would they make it into your personal top five pleasure-inducing tracks?

Your song selections are different to your friends because of the personal associations you have with them, including your personal taste. That’s why AI can’t generate the right songs for you if you ask it for “happy songs”.

You would be better off to start by looking at your own playlists and frequently played tracks to identify which ones actually make you feel good, personally.

Understanding meaning

It’s important to distinguish between pleasure-inducing tracks and meaningful songs.

Meaningful songs are linked to a range of emotions, identities, histories and social connections – but only some of those are pleasure inducing. Others connect to poignant and beautiful feelings such as grief and loss, whether that is missing home or missing people and creatures we love. This poignancy is distinct from hedonism, which is happiness without negative affect.

If you’re experiencing grief, for example, there may be a beauty in remembering your loved one, but it is connected to the pain of their absence. Choosing pleasure-inducing songs operates as an aesthetic distraction to take our mind away from the pain, which is a different (not necessarily worse or better) choice.

Sometimes meaning doesn’t come with a beautiful purpose. Like the love song that becomes the breakup song. Or the favourite artist whose death renders a song poignant rather than uplifting. Then the song may help with emotional processing, or it may not, it can just fulfil a desire for rumination – a thought we keep circling around without discharging the intensity or our perspective on it.

It might seem obvious that these events will change the way we feel when we listen to a song. But it can be surprisingly difficult to let go of music we love.

Sad songs can be enjoyable and/or a beautiful way of connecting to emotional experiences. But they can also intensify our negative emotions, which doesn’t always lead to resolution.

Being conscious and intentional in music choices is important, especially if you’re tending to ruminate. During down times in life, it is worth checking in after listening to make sure the song is helping you process and resolve, and not just intensify and maintain a negative state you would rather leave behind.

Finding what you love

But most days you are safe to let your instincts guide you. After all, there’s nothing more pleasurable than spending time listening to a banger.

In technical speak, we call these “preferred songs” – songs that might not be personally meaningful, or fill you with joy exactly, but they are just great tracks. Music you love, appreciate and rate.

But even identifying preferred songs is still personal. Despite what many people think, it’s very difficult to get agreement about what makes a good song. But it’s not difficult to identify the songs that you think are great. In fact, it’s a super fun thing to do.

Katrina McFerran, Professor and Head of Creative Arts and Music Therapy Research Unit; Director of Researcher Development Unit, The University of Melbourne