Our government has great aspirations. It has committed to end extinctions and expand our protected areas to cover 30% of every Australian ecosystem by 2030. This is part of its Nature Positive Plan, aligned with the 2022 Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity pact. The goal is not just to conserve nature but to restore what is being lost.

But how can these goals be reconciled with a budget that allocated more public money to carbon capture and storage than biodiversity?

This week’s federal budget was a new low point for investment in nature. Environmental groups roundly criticised the “bad budget for nature”, which delivered next-to-no money to protect and recover Australia’s unique and threatened biodiversity.

Research has shown Australians want at least 2% of the federal budget spent on nature. Instead, less than 0.1% of the budget spend will support biodiversity in some way. Over the past decade, biodiversity funding has gone down 25% relative to GDP.

Let’s say the government decided it was finally time to roll up the sleeves and do something. How would they go about it? What would it take to actually reverse the decline, as the government says it wants to in its Nature Positive approach?

Our threatened species populations have been declining by about 2-3% a year over the past 20 years. The first step is to stop the fall. Then the challenge is to restore dwindling species and ecosystems.

The Dow Jones For Threatened Species Goes Down, Down, Down

Australia now has a Threatened Species Index. Think of it like the Dow Jones for wildlife. It uses trend data from bird, mammal and plant species collected from over 10,000 sites to measure progress for nature in Australia.

Last year, Treasurer Jim Chalmers talked up the index as part of the first national “wellbeing budget”, which aimed to measure Australia’s progress across a range of social, health and sustainability indicators.

What does the index tell us? You can see for yourself. The health of our threatened species has fallen by about 2-3% a year since the turn of the century.

If, as is likely, the trend continues, it will lead to the extinction of many more of our unique native animals and plant species. It will signal the failure of the government’s Nature Positive policy and a global biodiversity tragedy.

Given we have had decades of successive decline, what would be needed to reach the goal of nature positive?

Nature positive actually has a very specific meaning. It would:

halt and reverse nature loss measured from a baseline of 2020, through increasing the health, abundance, diversity and resilience of species, populations and ecosystems so that by 2030 nature is visibly and measurably on the path of recovery.

This definition gives us a clear, measurable timeline for action, often described as nature’s answer to net zero.

To reach nature positive means halting biodiversity loss by 2030 so that in the future there is much more biodiversity, relative to a 2020 baseline.

What would that look like using the Threatened Species Index? To get on track with nature positive, we would have to stop the index declining, stabilise, and then increase from 2030 onwards.

Of course, strong environmental laws and aligned policies are needed to effectively prevent further loss of habitat.

But we also need to invest in restoring what has been lost. Scientists think this is possible with $2 billion a year to recover our most threatened native plants and animals, and another $2 billion annually to drive ecosystem restoration across Australia.

The Budget Is Not Nature Positive

In the budget papers, the government uses the Threatened Species Index as a performance measure for its nature positive goal. It expects the trajectory of the index to be “maintained or improved” out to 2027-28.

But given our species and ecosystems are steadily declining, year after year, to maintain a trajectory is simply to embrace the decline. It’s not nature positive at all. The government could make minor improvements, slowing the collapse, and claim it was improving the lot of nature.

Imagine if our GDP growth was negative and the government’s goal was merely to slow its decline over the next five years – there would be national uproar.

If the government is serious about nature positive – which is an excellent goal – it would be setting more ambitious targets. For instance, the goal could be for the index to climb back up to 2020 levels by the end of the decade.

Instead, Labor is planning for biodiversity decline to continue, while describing it as “nature positive”.

Watching over the steady decline of our species and calling it nature positive makes about as much sense as opening up new gas fields and calling it net zero.

Greenwashing Nature Positive

Unfortunately, this is not the first time the government has engaged in nature positive greenwash.

In coming weeks, the government will introduce bills to parliament to establish two new agencies, Environment Information Australia and Environmental Protection Australia. But there will be one bill missing – the reformed federal environment laws, intended to give teeth to the nature positive push.

The laws were pushed back indefinitely, to the shock of scientists and environmental groups.

But let’s be generous and say these laws finally make it to parliament after the next election. Would they be enough to stop our species losses and put the Threatened Species Index onto a nature positive trajectory?

It’s unlikely.

The consultation documents show the government is aiming to deliver “net positive outcomes”, whereby development impacts to threatened species and ecosystems are more than compensated for.

But we don’t know the detail. How much improvement is the government aiming for? In the draft laws, this figure is listed simply as “at least X%”.

Time To Aim Higher

It is hard not to feel dispirited over the government’s backtracking on its promise to:

not shy away from difficult problems or accept environmental decline and extinction as inevitable.

But we cannot give up. As the plight of nature worsens, even iconic species such as the koala and platypus are now at risk. As ecosystems collapse, our food security, health and wellbeing, communities and businesses will suffer.

Perhaps one day we will have a government able to grasp the nettle and actually tackle the nature crisis – for the sake of all of us. 

Megan C Evans, Senior Lecturer, Public Sector Management, School of Business, UNSW Sydney; Brendan Wintle, Professor in Conservation Science, School of Ecosystem and Forest Science, The University of Melbourne, and Hugh Possingham, Professor of Conservation Biology, The University of Queensland

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

Last night’s budget is another missed opportunity to arrest the poor and deteriorating state of the Australian environment.

Subsidising green industry in Labor’s Future Made in Australia policy may offer economic advantages if implemented well, but there is nothing in this budget to help address the immediate environmental crisis facing Australia.

The Story So Far

After being elected in 2022, Labor made a number of good promises. The new government legislated an emissions reduction target – a 43% cut by 2030 on 2005 figures and net zero by 2050. Last year, Labor reformed the Coalition’s only emissions monitoring program, the safeguard mechanism, to help deliver these reductions. (Recent research has cast doubt on the integrity of the system’s carbon credits). And the government signed an international biodiversity pact, which commits us to protect 30% of our land (currently at 22%) and halt biodiversity loss by 2030.

But Labor also promised to rewrite Australia’s main environment laws, the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which governs the protection of places and species, and approvals for significant projects. This was motivated by the horrendous bushfires in 2019–20 and a damning review, which found the laws were not up to the task of stopping environmental decline.

In the lead-up to tonight’s budget, Labor announced that the stronger laws had been indefinitely delayed. Instead, Australia would get a national environmental protection agency, Environment Protection Australia. While a strong and independent agency would improve compliance and monitoring, it will be enforcing ineffective laws until reforms are passed. Labor also shocked environmental groups by supporting a future for fossil gas, including opening up new gas fields.

Made In Australia

So if we’re not getting new environment laws, what is in the budget for the environment?

A whole lot for green industries. The 2024 budget’s centrepiece is the Future Made in Australia policy, a series of initiatives costing A$23 billion over ten years that focuses on subsidies for manufacturing industries including solar panels and green hydrogen.

Here, the Government is actively intervening in the market to push the economy towards specific ends – boosting green industries and making supply chains more resilient. As the budget papers state, one goal is to make Australia “an indispensable part of global net zero supply chains.”

In recent years western governments have embraced industrial subsidies, most notably seen in the CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act in the United States.

So what’s the government planning? Included in the announced package is:

$3.2 billion over ten years in additional funding to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. This includes $1.7 billion in grants for innovation in green metals, low carbon liquid fuels, and batteries.

$1.7 billion over 10 years for an additional round of Hydrogen Headstart. This will fund the difference between the cost to produce renewable hydrogen and the current market price for eligible firms. Also planned is an additional $2 a kilogram tax incentive for renewable hydrogen produced from 2027–28.

$7 billion over the medium term for tax incentives in critical mineral production. Firms will be eligible to rebate 10% of refining and processing costs of 31 critical minerals from 2027-28.

$1.5 billion over ten years for solar PV and battery manufacturing. This will fund grants to firms for manufacturing solar PV components at all stages of the supply chain and batteries.

Is this the right thing to do? Economists are usually pessimistic about government efforts to guide industry in this way, pointing to the difficulty of picking winners and the potential for funding to flow in the direction lobbyists want rather than on merit.

Nevertheless, there’s recent evidence industry policy can be effective in spurring long-term structural change to an economy – when done well. After all, targeted assistance and direction by government may have played a role in how East Asian nations such as Japan, Korea and China became manufacturing titans.

But what about the environmental outcomes of these subsidies? Will they turn Australia into a green export giant, shipping green hydrogen instead of LNG and make homegrown solar panels a reality? Will they help drive the green transition?

This is even less clear. Australia’s once-significant manufacturing sector began its sharp decline after we dropped tariffs and opened up to international competition from the 1980s.

Could Labor turn the tide? That will depend on whether the subsidies succeed in creating manufacturing sectors able to compete with international competition. It’s far from guaranteed. But it is possible.

And what about trade-offs between green industry and conservation? In the rush to secure lithium and critical minerals for the green transition, the government has invested $566 million to give mining companies free data and maps. This could do further damage to the environment, if new projects are built on land home to threatened species.

Where’s The “Conserved In Australia” Policy?

Nothing is in the budget to tackle our biodiversity and extinction crisis.

This is another missed opportunity. The postponed environment laws aside, the government could have addressed the severe lack of funding for conservation.

What about the goal of protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030? This will take funding to expand protected areas – and to actually conserve species in existing protected areas. Invasive species from deer to blackberries run riot in many national parks.

How much should the government be spending and for what? To give some examples:

– $5 billion would fund the purchase of private land for conservation and long-term management. Australia previously had a fund like this, which is why our protected area estate has grown so much.

– $1.7 billion a year is the expert estimate for how much it would cost to bring all of Australia’s threatened species under active management and recover their numbers.

– $2 billion a year for 30 years would restore 13 million hectares of degraded land, without touching farms or urban areas – about twice the size of Tasmania.

Our natural environment affects our national identity, our mental health, and even our future economic prosperity.

Yes, conservation costs money. But the costs may turn out to be very small relative to the benefits, not only for the diverse species we share Australia with but for its people too. People don’t just need manufacturing jobs – they need nature, too. 

Timothy Neal, Senior lecturer in Economics / Institute for Climate Risk and Response, UNSW Sydney

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

Australians have more pet cats than ever before – more than 5 million in total. With the growing number, expectations on pet owners are shifting.

Many cat owners are now voluntarily keeping their cats indoors or in secure runs, and local governments mandate it in some areas. But most pet cats in Australia still roam local streets and gardens.

Broader adoption of keeping cats safe at home would have large benefits for cat welfare, human health, local wildlife and even the economy. So, should pet owners be required to keep their pets contained to their property, as dogs are?

We put that question to thousands of people in a national survey in late 2023, and recently published the results.

We found most people support requiring owners to contain cats. Just one in 12 people (8%) are opposed. The time might be right for nationwide change in how we manage our pet cats.

Local Councils Are Embracing Cat Containment

From November 1, Geelong City Council will join a fast-growing group of local governments in urban and regional areas that require pet cats to be securely contained 24 hours a day.

More than a third of local councils in Australia now require cats to be contained overnight or 24 hours a day. Most are in the ACT and Victoria.

Given how good cats are at climbing and jumping, containing cats usually requires keeping them indoors or in secure runs.

The main reasons cited by local govenments for these regulations are:

• improving pet welfare: contained cats live longer and healthier lives with fewer vet bills because they are protected from traumatic injuries from car accidents, dog attacks and cat fights, infections, diseases and other misadventures.

• saving wildlife: four out of five cats allowed outside will hunt and kill an average of two to three animals per week. With millions of pet cats in Australia, each year this adds up to 6,000–11,000 animals killed in our suburbs per square kilometre and 323 million native animals killed nationally. Night curfews only protect nocturnal species such as possums.

• reducing nuisance to neighbours: containment results in less disturbance from cat fights and prevents the neighbour’s cat killing the birds and lizards living in your backyard or nearby park, which many community members value.

The Public Health Toll Of Roaming Cats

Another major benefit is less talked about. Stopping pet cats from roaming would greatly reduce rates of cat-borne diseases.

Several diseases which could not exist without cats can be passed to humans. These cost Australia more than $6 billion a year based on costs of medical care, lost income and other related expenses.

The most widespread of these diseases is toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can be passed to humans but must complete its life cycle in cats. Australian studies have reported human infection rates between 22% and 66% of the community.

Cat-borne diseases cause considerable community harm, with an estimated 8,500 hospitalisations and 550 deaths from acute infections and also from increased rates of car accidents, suicides and mental health issues in infected people.

Pet cats are crucial to the rates of these diseases in the community. In suburbs that do not require containment, you’ll find up to 100 roaming pet cats per square kilometre.

Eliminating stray cats from our suburbs is also important to reduce disease rates – just one of the reasons why people should not feed stray cats.

Most Of Us Support Containment

A policy requiring all cats to be contained has clear benefits. But would it have support? Rules only produce benefits if people follow them.

This is why colleagues at Monash University and I surveyed more than 3,400 people on whether they would support policies that “require cat owners to keep their cat contained to their property”.

We found a clear majority (66%) of people support cat containment. A strikingly small proportion of people, about one in 12 people (8%), are opposed. The remaining 26% were ambivalent, selecting “neither support nor oppose”.

Other surveys have found almost half (42% or 2.2 million) of Australia’s pet cats are already kept contained by their owners.

Some Councils Can’t Legally Require Cat Containment

Our findings suggest communities would broadly support their local councils if they moved to require cats to be contained.

While councils are responsible for pet issues, state and territory laws greatly influence what councils can and can’t do.

In New South Wales and Western Australia, state laws actually prevent local councils from requiring cat containment (except for in specific circumstances, such as in declared food preparation areas in NSW).

Rules Are Just The Start

To boost compliance, councils need to invest in communicating new rules and the reasons for them. After a grace period, council officers will also need to monitor and enforce the rules.

Communities may need support too, especially if there are costs involved. Councils could, for example, offer rebates for flyscreens to stop cats slipping out of open windows.

Working with other colleagues in 2020, we surveyed Australia’s local governments about their approaches to cat management. Most reported tiny budgets for cat management.

Local governments should not be left to shoulder the cost alone. Federal, state and territory governments are also responsible for Australia’s wildlife (and human health). These governments have a range of projects covering both feral and pet cats.

The Australian government collects A$3 billion a year in GST from spending on pets. Diverting a small proportion into responsible pet ownership programs would make an enormous difference.

Containment Has Wide Backing

Our research shows the community is ready for widespread reform of how we manage all these cats.

Requiring pet cats to be contained is a sound policy choice. But to realise the full benefits, we also need to invest in effective communication for communities, provide rebates to help contain cats, and make sure the rules are followed.

This research was a team effort, involving Kim Borg, Melissa Hatty and Emily Gregg for the national survey, and Sarah Legge, John Woinarski and Tida Nou for the research on cat impacts and management.

Jaana Dielenberg, University Fellow, Charles Darwin University

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

From around 1996 to 2010, Australia was gripped by the millennium drought. As water shortages bit hard, most of Australia’s capital cities built large seawater desalination plants – Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. Remote towns have also built smaller desalination plants.

Most cities didn’t actually use them much. The drought broke in 2010, and desalinated water is expensive. The exception is Perth, which has been hit by declining rainfall, a drying climate and overuse of groundwater. The city will soon open its third desal plant.

As climate change intensifies, other states are also looking to build more desal plants. In South Australia, for instance, there are plans to build one urgently in response to looming water shortages. The Eyre Peninsula, for instance, is expected to run out of drinking water within two years as groundwater runs dry.

But beyond the expense, many of these plants bring environmental problems of their own.

How Does Desal Work?

A desalination plant pipes in seawater, filters out the salt (usually using a process called “reverse osmosis”), and then flushes the salt back out to sea. This creates plumes of hyper-salty brine.

If you position a desal plant near a strong current, this isn’t a big issue – the salt is quickly diluted. But if you pump brine into a gulf or bay without much natural turnover of water, it can lay waste to entire ecosystems. And unfortunately, South Australia has two large gulfs – and two planned desal plants that could kill off giant cuttlefish or decimate mussel farms.

When BHP Billiton was looking to expand its lucrative Olympic Dam uranium and copper mine in the mid-2000s, it had a problem: not enough water. To solve it, the mining giant announced plans to build a desal plant at Point Lowly, in the upper Spencer Gulf.

This was immediately controversial. Point Lowly is very close to the breeding grounds of the famous giant Australian cuttlefish (Sepia apama), a tourist drawcard.

My research suggested the brine outflow from the desal plant would cause environmental harm to these spectacular breeding grounds.

Despite environmental concerns, the Olympic Dam expansion was eventually approved in 2011, and the approval for the Point Lowly desal plant carried forward to the new Northern Water partnership between the state government and the private sector, which involves BHP as a key player.

This, the government states, is designed to:

provide a new, climate independent water source for the Far North, Upper Spencer Gulf and Eastern Eyre Peninsula regions of South Australia, to enable the growth of industries crucial to achieving net-zero goals, including the emerging green energy and hydrogen industries

The government recently changed the preferred location to Cape Hardy, much further down the Spencer Gulf. From as early as 2028, it will produce up to 260 million litres (megalitres) of desalinated water a day for use in mining and green industries.

A separate smaller desal plant (24 megalitres a day) is also planned for Billy Lights Point near Port Lincoln, to provide water for the lower Eyre Peninsula.

If the government was hoping to avoid controversy by moving away from the cuttlefish, it did not succeed. Opposition has come from the local council, First Nations groups, and fishing and aquaculture industries.

The problem with the location at Billy Lights Point is, once again, what happens to the brine. Salty outflows could damage mussel farms, fisheries and ecosystems.

Super-Salty Brine Is Pollution

My research suggests these concerns are well founded.

While we might think brine is harmless – it’s salty, like the sea – this is not correct. Desalination produces brine that is twice as salty as seawater. When you pump it back into the sea, it can form a layer of heavier water that creeps along the seafloor as a so-called brine underflow.

Desal brine can be dangerous, especially in waters that don’t mix rapidly. Without sufficient mixing, the oxygen content of the brine underflow falls over time. Eventually, the brine underflow can turn into a dead zone where very little can survive.

Desalination plants also pump out harmful chemicals with the brine, including pre-treatment chemicals, anti-fouling agents, heavy metals, nutrients, organics, chlorine and acids.

This means we should think very carefully about where to build desalination plants. The Spencer Gulf is full of seagrass meadows, the nurseries of the sea, home to leafy seadragons, giant cuttlefish, king prawns and millions of larval and juvenile fish.

The brine can degrade or even destroy marine ecosystems. In the Arabian Gulf, where about half the world’s desal plants are located, researchers have found the pulses of brine “greatly threatens sensitive species”.

Given this marine pollution, any move to discharge desal brine into calm seas that have high ecological significance and do not flush rapidly is extremely risky.

At present, South Australia’s two planned desal projects do not seem to properly value environmental principles.

For instance, while the large Northern Waters project lists Cape Hardy as the preferred site, Point Lowly is still on the list of options. This ignores previous evidence showing the Spencer Gulf flushes slowly, which means a higher risk of environmental damage. And Cape Hardy is still within valuable and vulnerable marine habitats.

The smaller Port Lincoln desalination plant is expected to be operational by 2026 on Billy Lights Point, which borders Proper Bay and Boston Bay in the lower Spencer Gulf.

These bays are ecologically important, as they provide safe havens to marine larvae. They’re also part of the region’s coastal upwelling, a vital source of nutrients for whales and tuna.

The proposed intake and discharge locations of the Port Lincoln plant are within a few kilometres of valuable mussel and tuna farming operations.

Looking Forward

While Cape Hardy is environmentally more suitable for desal discharge than Point Lowly, it is still within the sheltered waters of Spencer Gulf. Hence, some environmental degradation is likely to occur here as well.

If authorities are determined to stick with brine-releasing desal, they should urgently look at sites outside Spencer Gulf, such as Ceduna or Elliston. Here, brine would be quickly diluted by the currents.

But there are other options not yet considered.

It is likely we will need more desalination plants as climate change intensifies. The best solution is a desal plant fully powered by renewables – and without brine discharge. How? By cleaning the brine and turning it into a valuable product: salt. 

Jochen Kaempf, Associate Professor of Natural Sciences (Oceanography), Flinders University

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

The southern pygmy perch hadn’t been seen in Bendigo Creek since the mid-19th-century goldrush, when a booming town sprang up around the central Victorian waterway. This attractive small fish, which displays bright colours when breeding, is no more than 6–8cm long. Once widespread, the species eventually became locally extinct across the Loddon River catchment, which includes the creek.

But today, thanks to the efforts of community volunteers, scientists and local authorities, there are several thriving local populations of this small fish.

Reintroducing species to their old habitat is complicated. For animal species, we need good information about where to source them from and how many to move. It’s essential to have good habitat ready for the newly restored population.

We should also know how genetically diverse the population is because that can affect its long-term success.

A successful reintroduction depends on researchers, environmental managers and local communities working together. That’s exactly what happened in Bendigo.

Pygmy Perch Range Has Shrunk

The southern pygmy perch (Nannoperca australis) was once found in many rivers and streams across New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. However, the combined pressures of habitat loss and degradation, invasive species such as redfin perch, carp and eastern gambusia, drought and drawing too much water for farming drove many populations to local extinction.

In 2015, recognising the importance of collaboration across management groups and communities, six regional bodies formed the Tri-State Murray NRM Alliance. They developed the “Magnificent Six” project to reintroduce six native freshwater fish species – all small and endangered – in the Murray-Darling Basin, which includes the Loddon River. The southern pygmy perch was first in line.

In 2018, through the tri-state alliance, a partnership between local government, environmental managers, an aquarium business, local community and fish hobbyists was formed. The Molecular Ecology Lab at Flinders University was brought in to provide guidance and genetics expertise. The lab had experience of successful captive breeding and reintroduction of southern pygmy perch in South Australia.

Everyone came together to plan the most effective course of action. We consulted local community members. We discussed where best to collect fish from and to move them. We planned planting efforts to restore suitable habitat.

Building Up New Populations

In September 2018, local volunteers – guided by environmental managers – collected more than 100 wild fish. These came from three creeks in two nearby river systems: the Campaspe and Avoca Rivers.

They took these fish to the Middle Creek Farm, a private aquarium business in Stratford, Victoria, to set up a captive breeding program. The aim was to make sure we had enough fish to sustain new populations. Over the next year, volunteers helped to breed and raise more than 600 fish for release.

At the same time, volunteers created new homes for these fish in three local wetlands by planting aquatic vegetation and building woody habitat. The combination of woody debris and dense reeds provides refuge from predators like aquatic birds and are particularly important nurseries for juvenile fish.

In January 2020, 800 fish from all three creeks were released across four wetlands, including restored urban wetlands and national parks. The team came back in September that year to monitor how they were doing.

A Triumph For Community Action Based On Expert Advice

Local communities can play an integral role in programs like this. To date, relatively few conservation programs include active public participation. Even fewer consider genetic information.

At every stage of the Bendigo reintroduction, we collected DNA from the fish by taking a small clipping of the tail fin. Our aim was to see how well the program had maintained genetic diversity. This is important for populations to persist in the long term.

We showed the genetic diversity of the parents was maintained. This diversity has helped the new populations to thrive.

Interestingly, we found the different source populations had unique genetic variation and the breeding program had caused some fish to become “mixed” (like hybrids). When we monitored the populations after release, we found more of these mixed fish surviving. That suggests genetic mixing might be important for southern pygmy perch.

This information helped us to make recommendations for future reintroductions elsewhere.

Everyone Benefits

The program was a huge success. All three populations are thriving – so much so that 2,800 fish were taken from our release sites to start a new population in another site within the Gunbower Forest along the Murray River last September. The species was last recorded there in 1997.

With their voracious appetite for mosquito larvae, these populations of pygmy perch may offer a natural solution for pest management. They are also a key food source for many native freshwater fish and waterbird species.

The community benefited too. Seven new landcare groups and more than 20 landholders are now part of reintroduction programs for other fish species. Volunteer organisations increased their social media and public footprint. Pygmy perch have also become popular fish in dams and backyard ponds.

Aquariums of southern pygmy perch are being used in high schools to teach students about fish conservation, pest management and water chemistry.

How Can You Get Involved?

Communities are working tirelessly to restore lost biodiversity across Australia. To help bring back a lost local species you can:

• get involved with your local community “Friends of” conservation groups as well as regional groups, which are great for driving change in your area

• approach local councils and government to provide support and contact relevant stakeholders

• call in university researchers, of course. Many of us would love to provide our expertise and skills to conservation efforts.

Together, we can improve the conservation status of threatened species and restore our declining biodiversity.

Sean Buckley, Lecturer in Molecular Ecology and Environmental Management, Edith Cowan University and Luciano Beheregaray, Matthew Flinders Professor of Biodiversity Genomics, Flinders University

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

For years, the electricity sector has been the poster child for emissions cuts in Australia. The sector achieved a stunning 26% drop in emissions over the past 15 years, while other sectors have hardly budged. The share of renewable energy has gone from 7.5% to more than 30% in that time.

But unfortunately, this impressive pace is not fast enough.

Investments in renewable energy plants slowed in 2023 – financial approvals for new solar farms shrank more than a third and no new wind farms won backing. By the end of that year, Australia had 56 renewable energy projects under construction, down from 72 a year earlier.

For Australia to achieve the federal government’s 43% emissions cut target by 2030, and the deeper and swifter cuts required after that, we need to accelerate. The federal government wants the electricity sector to be generating at least 82% from renewable sources by 2030. The electricity sector needs to be clean enough by that year to make electrification the better choice for sectors heavily dependent on fossil fuels, from transport to heavy industry to household gas.

And it won’t end there. After 2030, when other sectors start to electrify en masse, the electricity sector will need to keep building more and more new renewable capacity to keep up.

If it doesn’t, it simply won’t be possible to eliminate the remaining 56% of our emissions that come from producing and burning fossil fuels. And that’s before Australia even starts looking at expanding its industrial base to become a so-called “renewable superpower”.

There are three reasons the electricity sector isn’t achieving the required pace at the moment.

Not Enough Poles And Wires

New wind and solar farms need new transmission lines to get their electricity to users. That’s because the good sources of wind and sunshine aren’t in the same places as the existing transmission network. And even if they were, we’d still need to upgrade and build transmission because of the growth in demand.

The Australian Energy Market Operator estimates 50% of the transmission needed to deliver a clean, reliable, affordable energy supply in 2050 needs to be constructed in the next six years.

But most of these transmission lines are yet to be built.

Instead, renewable generators have had to connect to existing lines, which have become congested. So even when new renewable installations get approvals for construction, their output can be curtailed because they can’t get it to consumers. This has hit developer finances hard.

And many rural communities aren’t happy with the new transmission lines planned for their regions. While many of the required lines have been known about in the energy sector for years, the communities that will host them are only finding out about them now. Understandably, many object.

As well, bottlenecks in the planning approval bureaucracy mean things are slow to get built. This isn’t just about transmission lines: it also applies to new renewable generators and even upgrading roads so equipment and machinery can be used safely.

Coal Hanging On

There’s still uncertainty about when coal generators will leave the market.

We need to build replacement capacity for ageing coal generators before they retire but no one wants to build new generators to replace the coal if they aren’t sure when demand for their electricity will emerge.

Generators are required to declare their earliest exit date if that date is less than three-and-a-half years away, but there’s nothing to stop them pushing that date out. That’s what Delta Electricity did last year, when it changed the closure date for the Vales Point power station in New South Wales from 2029 to 2033.

On top of this, nervous state governments have started making opaque deals to pay coal power stations to stay open, as insurance against the slow pace of the renewables build.

Governments Aren’t Coordinating Well

Every state government on the east coast has a renewable energy target. So does the federal government. But these targets were set as arbitrary percentages linked to arbitrary dates, not chosen to deliver the cleanest, most reliable, cheapest energy system for consumers.

State and federal governments choose their targets in isolation, which drives up overall costs. To give just one example: both New South Wales and Queensland have established “renewable energy zones” in New England shire, located right across the border from each other. Developing these areas as a single zone should cost less overall, but no such interstate efficiency has emerged. Each state has gone its own way.

Is There A Way Out?

All of the above has led to a policy quagmire that has bogged down Australia’s energy transition.

In our report released last month, my colleagues and I argue the best way forward is to temporarily put aside a desire for neat, market-driven policies. Instead, we think governments and industry need to accept an approach that could feel ad hoc or disorganised at times in the next decade while coal exits are taking place.

During this time, governments will probably need to intervene regularly to coordinate new transmission, new generation, and coal exits, so the lights stay on.

Once coal is a no longer a substantial part of the market, it will be time for governments to step back. Beyond 2030, electricity demand is expected to keep growing, and the renewables building task will continue.

Governments need to start designing the rules that will govern this new electricity system. It requires asking a fundamental question: what will the respective roles, rights, and responsibilities of energy consumers, industry, and governments be in the future?

Keeping the system reliable will be a fundamentally different task when the amount of electricity generated depends on the weather. Market rules must change to ensure there is always sufficient generation available to meet demand in this new electricity system.

And carbon pricing – a political taboo for so long – will need to be discussed again. Even when the coal generators have closed, a vital share of our electricity will come from gas. The electricity sector needs a clear and enduring carbon price for the energy sector to guide gas-plant entries and exits, and ensure they pay for their emissions.

Governments will need to better integrate and orchestrate all forms of distributed energy resources, from rooftop solar panels to electric vehicles, particularly as electric vehicles become able to use their batteries to help power the grid.

Australia may be able to muddle through the next few years, but voters will not forgive their political leaders if they mess up the post-coal era and fail to deliver the trifecta of clean, affordable, and reliable energy. The hard work starts now.

Alison Reeve, Deputy Program Director, Energy and Climate Change, Grattan Institute

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

Australia’s unprecedented Black Summer bushfires in 2019–20 created ideal conditions for misinformation to spread, from the insidious to the absurd.

It was within this context that a bizarre story went viral on social media.

This was a tale of heroic wombats herding other animals into their fireproof burrows to save them from the flames. At the time, we explained this story was largely inaccurate. But now we’ve investigated in more detail, and confirmed it may contain a kernel of truth.

The burrows of common wombats are deep and complex. They can be over 15 metres long with multiple entrances and chambers. So, even if wombats don’t shepherd wildlife into their homes, their burrows might act as “fire refuges” – providing vital shelter, food, and even drinking water during and after a bushfire.

Wombat Burrows Are Not Just For Wombats

We set up 56 cameras in forests north of Albury, New South Wales, which burned during the Black Summer bushfires. Some areas suffered more than others, so we were careful to select sites that varied in how severely they burned.

Half of the cameras were pointed at wombat burrows and the other half were set up nearby – in areas with the same types of plants, but no burrows. Then we monitored the burrows from June 2021 to April 2022 to see which animals used them, and how.

We found 56 animal species at wombat burrow sites (19 mammal species, 33 bird and four reptile).

Native species such as bush rats, agile antechinus, lace monitors and birds such as the painted button-quail, were more abundant in and around burrows than nearby control sites. Even a threatened species, the heath monitor, was seen emerging from a burrow.

Wombat expert Barbara Triggs, who literally wrote the book on wombats, had seen several of these species “scurrying away from burrow entrances” and emerging “from small crevices in the the walls” of wombat burrows. So our results are supported by her, and others’, observations.

Overall, burrows were hotspots of mammal activity, with more mammal species recorded at burrows than control sites. These tended to be smaller mammals, presumably because they can use the burrows without bothering the wombats.

Bigger animals such as kangaroos and wallabies tended to avoid the burrows. They may have been wary of a encountering a cantankerous wombat. Wombats are known to defend their territories.

We observed some fascinating behaviour at wombat burrows. In total, 31 species were found interacting with the burrows. This included 30 species inspecting the entrance, 11 foraging (feeding in or directly around the lip of the burrow), and ten entering or emerging from burrows.

We also saw animals drinking and even bathing in pools at burrow entrances that temporarily filled with water after rain.

While water was not scarce during our study period, this suggests wombat burrows are providing a valuable ecosystem function that might help other wildlife. It’s an interesting observation that warrants further investigation.

Burrow use by several native wildlife species was highest in areas that burned most severely. This supports the idea that wombat burrows act as a kind of refuge for native wildlife after fire.

Underground Networks

Our results are just the tip of the iceberg. Globally, many burrowing species provide habitat for others. From the American badger to the giant armadillo, burrows provide shelter and resources for species across many ecosystems.

Closer to home, sand goanna burrows provide shelter for at least 28 animal species. And bilby burrows have been described as an “outback oasis” for their role in supporting birds, reptiles and mammals.

We’re not the first to find animal burrows offer refuge after fire. A US study published in 2018 found gopher tortoise burrows in burned areas had 8.5 times more wildlife species than burrows in nearby unburned areas.

Help Wombats Help Others

The star of our research is the bare-nosed wombat. While not listed as threatened with extinction, their numbers have declined markedly since European colonisation.

Our research adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests protecting wombats will benefit various species across many Australian ecosystems.

As large and severe fires become more common in forests across southeastern Australia, our wildlife will need all the help they can get – including the humble wombat burrow.

Grant Linley, PhD Candidate in Ecology, Charles Sturt University and Dale Nimmo, Professor in Ecology, Charles Sturt University

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

The Southern Ocean, a region critical to Earth’s climate, hosts vast blooms of microscopic ocean plants known as phytoplankton. They form the very basis of the Antarctic food web.

Using a fleet of robotic floats, our study published in Nature today reveals that windblown dust delivers enough iron to support a third of the Southern Ocean’s phytoplankton growth. Knowing this will help us understand how global warming will affect key climate processes phytoplankton are involved in.

The Southern Ocean acts as a climate “shock absorber”. Its cold waters and vast area capture up to 40% of human-generated carbon dioxide (CO₂) absorbed by the planet’s oceans each year.

Human-generated CO₂ mainly enters the ocean as it dissolves at the surface. However, biological processes that transfer vast quantities of CO₂ from the surface to the deep ocean play a critical role in the ocean’s natural carbon cycle.

Even slight changes to these processes in the Southern Ocean could weaken or strengthen the climate shock absorber. This is where phytoplankton play a key role.

Phytoplankton: Tiny But Mighty

Like plants on land, phytoplankton convert CO₂ into biomass through photosynthesis. When phytoplankton die, they sink into the deep ocean. This effectively locks away the carbon for decades, or even hundreds of years. This is known as the biological carbon pump, and it helps to regulate Earth’s climate.

Phytoplankton need nutrients and light to flourish. Nitrogen, in the form of nitrate, is one of these essential nutrients and is plentiful in the Southern Ocean. During the bloom period in spring and summer, phytoplankton consume nitrate.

This offers scientists a unique opportunity – by measuring how much nitrate disappears seasonally, they can calculate the growth of phytoplankton and the carbon sequestered in their biomass.

But there’s a twist. Iron, another essential nutrient, is in short supply in the Southern Ocean. This shortage stunts phytoplankton growth, lowering the efficiency of the biological carbon pump.

Dust Boosts Life In The Southern Ocean

Iron is commonly found in soil. Winds carry iron-rich dust from the continents to the oceans. This supply of dust-derived iron can trigger phytoplankton blooms, greening stretches of the ocean and strengthening the carbon pump.

Historically, to study the effects of iron fertilisation on phytoplankton – whether the iron came from dust, other natural sources, or was deliberately added – scientists had to embark on expensive research voyages to the remote Southern Ocean.

However, insights from such experiments were restricted to small regions and short periods during certain seasons. Little was known about the impact of dust on phytoplankton all year round across the whole of the Southern Ocean.

To address this gap, we turned to robots.

Ocean Robots Follow The Trail Of Dust

Over the past decade, research organisations have deployed a fleet of robotic ocean floats worldwide. These robots tirelessly track ocean properties, including the nitrate concentration.

In our study, we analysed nitrate measurements at 13,600 locations in the Southern Ocean. We calculated phytoplankton growth from nitrate disappearance and combined these growth estimates with computer models of dust deposition.

With this new approach, we uncovered a direct link between the supply of dust-derived iron and phytoplankton growth. Importantly, we also found the dust doesn’t just coincide with phytoplankton growth – it actually fuels it by supplying iron.

We used this relationship to build productivity maps of the Southern Ocean — past, present or future. These maps suggest that dust supports roughly a third of the phytoplankton growth in the Southern Ocean today.

During ice ages, a combination of drier conditions, lower sea levels and stronger winds meant dust deposition on the Southern Ocean was up to 40 times greater than today.

When we apply dust simulations of the last ice age to our newfound relationship, we estimate that phytoplankton growth was two times higher during these dustier times than it is today.

So, by fuelling phytoplankton growth, dust likely played an important role in keeping atmospheric CO₂ concentrations low during ice ages.

Why Does It Matter?

Global warming and land use changes could rapidly change dust delivery to the ocean in the future.

These shifts would have important consequences for ocean ecosystems and fisheries, and our research provides the tools to help forecast these changes.

To keep global warming below 1.5˚C, it is imperative that we find safe and effective methods for actively removing CO₂ from the atmosphere. One proposed and controversial strategy involves fertilising the Southern Ocean with iron, mimicking the natural processes that decreased CO₂ during ice ages.

Our results suggest such a strategy could boost productivity in the least dusty parts of the Southern Ocean, but uncertainties remain around the ecological consequences of this intervention and its long term effectiveness in capturing carbon.

By studying how nature has done this in the past, we can learn more about the possible outcomes and practicality of fertilising the ocean to mitigate climate change.

Jakob Weis, Postdoctoral research associate, University of Tasmania; Andrew Bowie, Senior Research Scientist in Marine Biogeochemistry, University of Tasmania; Christina Schallenberg, Research Scientist, CSIRO; Peter Strutton, Professor, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, and Zanna Chase, Professor, University of Tasmania

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

The past decade has seen an explosion of new research into some of the most fascinating sounds in the sea: the vocalisations of whales and dolphins.

Scientists have uncovered how humpback whales learn songs from neighbouring populations, so that these songs travel from western Australia to South America. They discovered bowhead whales singing 184 different songs over three years, and learned how bottlenose dolphins use signature whistles to shore up alliances.

Researchers have also showed that sperm whale vocal dialects are more different the more they are in contact with each other across the entire Pacific, suggesting these dialects function as ethnic markers. Advancing technology in the form of drones, acoustic tags and recorders mean such insights are accumulating rapidly.

Much of what whales and dolphins signal seems to relate to identity within social contexts. This can include identifying alliance members, or members of long-term social units and clans, or a particular population or species. Vocal communication also builds and reinforces social bonds and coordinates cooperative foraging.

We have also seen the resurrection of an old idea: that hiding behind all these findings is really a human-like language. If we can just find the right tools, the thinking goes, we can decode it and start talking to whales like we talk to our neighbours.

The hottest new tool is AI. Reading some of the press around the topic, you could be forgiven for thinking such conversations are imminent.

Two recent studies stand out for the dramatic claims they make about whale language. One details a humpback responding to the playback of a call with a similar one (but then ultimately losing interest).

This study’s importance was to demonstrate that such playback studies are possible, because playing back an animal’s calls and observing their reaction is a tested method for uncovering the meanings and functions of signals.

It’s not, however, the first playback to whales or dolphins, and neither, as the scientists claimed, were they “conversing” with the whale. If this was a “conversation”, then we’ve been having more insightful “conversations” with other species for decades – there have been over 600 such playback studies on birds.

The second study is a detailed analysis of patterns of clicks, called codas, produced by sperm whales. It shows that the whales appear to synchronously change the tempo of their codas when using them in exchanges with each other.

Such synchronous chorusing is not unique to whales. It happens across the animal kingdom, from fireflies to primates. Few animal displays are as breathtakingly synchronised as the four-part chorusing of plain-tailed wrens, while happy wrens use pair-specific duets to signal commitment to mates.

Nonetheless, the sperm whale findings are exciting, and fit in with our general understanding of codas having a social bonding function. But the scientists also tried to force these tempo changes into a “phonetic alphabet”, “like the International Phonetic Alphabet for human languages”, and it is this latter claim that has grabbed headlines.

There is, however, no evidence that sperm whales use these different tempos in anything like the complex sequences that characterise human language. We find better evidence for complex sequencing rules in Bengal finches. I wonder why we don’t see headlines about phonetic alphabets or imminent conversations with these birds?

Don’t Believe The Hype

We’ve been closely studying cetacean vocal behaviour in the wild and in captivity for several decades now. Compare that to how quickly you or I can start exchanging ideas with another person we don’t share a language with – because we use our theory of mind to understand each other as communicative agents.

If language was there, I think we would have found it by now. The most powerful language detector we know of sits between our ears, and we used it to effortlessly learn the language of our childhood as toddlers. As the story of Helen Keller shows, language finds a way.

Persuading the BBC not to describe sperm whale clicks as “language” in their Blue Planet II series was the highlight of my science communication career. Why?

A lot of complex communication is going on in cetaceans, much of which we still don’t understand. However, I am convinced that we should drop the stifling and anthropocentric focus on language. It crowds out other perspectives on what is going on – for example, the relationship between rhythm-based communication and music might be a better way to understand the bonding function of coda synchrony in sperm whales.

We should be wary of ranking species on a single dimension relative to humans, as if all evolution is a path to something like us (much like early anthropologists ranked societies by their progress toward western “perfection”). Instead, let’s take ourselves off the top of the ladder and see other animals as distinct branches of an evolutionary tree.

Both of the research groups promoting talking to whales are linked to, or name themselves after, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti). The leaders of one group, Project Ceti, argue that understanding whale “language” will help us when we meet ET.

We’ve been here before. John Lilly also leaned into Seti, promoting the idea that dolphins were an alien intelligence with a complex language. His weak evidence ultimately evaporated in a cloud of hype and hallucinogens.

Unfortunately, his claims kept the important discovery of bottlenose dolphin signature whistles in the shadows for far too long, and cast a cloud of disrepute over the entire field of cetacean communication that took decades to disperse. It would be tragic if today’s important insights suffered the same fate because of irresponsible claims and a narrow focus on language.

We should strive to understand and value these awesome creatures for what they are, not for how they might sooth our cosmic loneliness.

Luke Rendell, Reader in Biology, University of St Andrews

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

Swimming through the crystal clear waters of the Maldives, a nation renowned for its marine life, it could be easy to forget that these delicate ecosystems stand on the frontline of climate change and that seagrass habitats are in crisis globally.

Now, my research, which combined hundreds of hours of fieldwork with thousands of satellite images, has uncovered something unexpected: Maldivian seagrasses have expanded three-fold over the last two decades – and island populations could be playing a part.

I also discovered that seagrass is surprisingly three times more likely to be found next to inhabited islands, rather than uninhabited. So this flowering plant seems to benefit from living in seas close to humans.

Seagrasses grow along coasts all around the world. They can help guard against climate change yet they are frequently underappreciated. In the Maldives, seagrass meadows are dug up to maintain the iconic white beaches that are a frequent feature of honeymoon photos.

Important marine habitats have declined in the Maldives. Amid this backdrop of environmental uncertainty, I have spent more than three years studying seagrasses here alongside a team of scientists. We found that seagrasses are faring remarkably well and one of the most plausible drivers could be the supply of nutrients from densely populated areas, such as tourist resorts.

Every day, human activities could provide valuable nutrients for seagrass habitats in an otherwise nutrient limited environment. Food waste is traditionally discarded into the sea from the beach and rain can wash excess fertilisers from farmland into the ocean. As human populations and fertiliser use have both increased, we suspect that seagrass meadows have started to thrive and expand as a result of this increased nutrient supply.

Additionally, building work around islands may create more suitable habitats for seagrass. Land reclamation is widespread across the country as the population has expanded by 474% since 1960.

During this development, sand is dug up from the seabed and some inevitably spills into the water. The structure of seagrass meadows can slow down local water currents, promoting suspended sand grains to sink and creating more sediment for future generations of seagrass to grow into.

Currently, nutrient inputs seem to be creating just the right conditions for seagrasses. But if nutrients continue to increase, there is a risk that the seagrasses will be outcompeted by seaweeds and smothered. Continued land reclamation works that disregard seagrass may also remove this important habitat. So the future of this Maldivian success story may therefore largely lie in our hands.

The Ecotourism Paradox

Although seagrass removal has done little to curb habitat expansion, it highlights a troubled relationship with the tourism industry upon which so many jobs in the Maldives depend. Because it can ultimately make water depths shallower, seagrass can limit boat access and mooring, and therefore interfere with daily life. The proliferation of seagrass in areas of domestic refuse has understandably damaged its image in the eyes of the public.

But, by making coastal waters shallower, seagrasses reinforce coastal protection. And by growing close to refuse sites, they absorb excess nutrients and clean the water of pathogens. Despite being a vital tool in the fight against climate change, seagrass clearly has an image problem on the islands.

As a marine ecologist, I firmly believe that conservation scientists - and ecotourists - have an important role to play in conveying the value of seagrasses. Conservationists must also fully appreciate the challenges that meadow expansion can bring to local communities, and understand how the needs of conservation and tourism may differ.

There is hope. A campaign called #ProtectMaldivesSeagrass, recently launched by Blue Marine Foundation and Maldives Underwater Initiative, led to 37 resorts (out of a total of 168) pledging to protect their seagrass meadows. Additionally, the data from my research can be used to protect seagrass habitats and quantify their value to people and nature.

Hopefully, the unexpected – yet welcome – success of seagrass in the Maldives is a cause for conservation optimism. And perhaps tourist resorts can learn to love their newly expanding neighbours.

Matthew Floyd, PhD Candidate, Marine Ecology, Northumbria University, Newcastle

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

A mighty river is flowing out of the Amazon rainforest, and it’s not the one you’re thinking of. In the first kilometre above the forest canopy, a “flying river” is transporting moisture evaporated from Amazonian trees southwards along the Andes mountains towards Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state in Brazil.

Almost the entire state – an area larger than the UK – is currently affected by unprecedented floods. The flying river has acted like a firehose, fuelling five months of rainfall in just two weeks, further enhanced by a strong jetstream located in just the wrong position above the region. And, based on future projections of climate change, this situation will likely get worse as the temperature rises.

Since the beginning of May, those massive floods in Rio Grande do Sul have made world headlines. In the state’s capital, Porto Alegre, the Guaíba river is more than five metres above its normal level, breaking a record set in 1941. The death toll is 149 and growing, with 108 still missing. The floods have displaced more than 600,000 people and directly or indirectly affected more than 2 million, in 446 of the 497 municipalities in the state.

In various municipalities, the water and energy systems collapsed, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes with no power or drinking water. Schools suspended classes and the state’s main roads and airport are closed.

While the southern part of the country is under water, a heatwave caused record-breaking temperatures in the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. For scale, this is similar to all of northern France being flooded while Barcelona swelters in 40°C heat.

This is not the first time the southernmost part of Brazil has been affected by such large-scale disasters. Similar weather systems, featuring moisture from the Amazon near the surface and the jetstream crossing the Andes high above, were associated with floods between September and November 2023, as well as major floods in 1997 and 1983.

A combination of factors makes these floods more likely. For instance, warm ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific (still currently the case, even as El Niño starts to decay) is associated with these weather systems, as are abnormally warm tropical Atlantic temperatures, which add more moisture to the air brought south in the flying river.

Things To Come

Is this event a sign of things to come for southern Brazil? As the atmosphere warms, it can carry more water, which means there is the potential to form massive clouds and heavy rains. This is a bit like buying a more absorbent sponge: it can hold more water but when you squeeze, more water falls out.

In fact, we are already observing this. Compared with the floods in 1941, this time the excessive rainfall was concentrated in a much shorter period, meaning the water rose much faster. Future climate projections already indicate that a warmer atmosphere results in an intensification of the flying rivers from the Amazon into south Brazil and adjacent regions, and more precipitation.

We have analysed results from state-of-the-art climate models that are able to simulate storms across South America in detail, just a few kilometres across. These indicate that extreme rainfall like that happening now is likely to become more frequent in the future, and such risks may in fact be underestimated by the previous generation of climate models.

These simulations, run under UK-Brazil and South America-US partnerships, are being used to assess such risks in southern Brazil and right across South America. Early results suggest that, as in Africa, parts of Europe, North America, India and elsewhere, short but very intense rainfall is likely to happen more often as the planet warms, irrespective of the unique weather systems that may affect particular regions.

Marcia Zilli, Postdoctoral Researcher in Climate Dynamics, University of Oxford; Caio Coelho, Senior Research Scientist, Center for Weather Forecast and Climatic Studies (CPTEC), National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Inpe), and Neil Hart, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, University of Oxford

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

Thirty years ago, while counting barnacles, limpets and seaweeds along rocky shores, I started noticing a daily tide of litter, mostly plastic. As a marine biology PhD student at Liverpool University, I kept removing it, but the next day, there’d be more.

I’m now a leading international expert on microplastics, a term I coined on May 7 2004 to describe fragments of plastic measuring as small as a millionth of a metre. As I work to help reduce the grip of plastic pollution on our planet, the solutions are clear to me.

Regulators, governments and citizens all urgently need to turn off the tide of plastic pollution at its source by reducing the production of plastics. But having just returned from the UN global plastics treaty negotiations in Ottawa, Canada, it’s frustrating to see the lack of consensus among nations about how to address this global problem.

Disturbed by the scale of the plastic contamination I first noticed on that beach in 1993, I felt compelled to act. I recruited students and the local community to help with the annual Marine Conservation Society’s beach clean. We recorded what we found on printed templates.

Back then, a new tool was just becoming available for data compilation: the Excel spreadsheet. The budding scientist within drove me to tabulate what we removed, based on the categories on the printed templates that included bottles, bags, rope and netting. Suddenly, it struck me that the most numerous items had no category. Fragments of larger plastic items, which appeared by far the most numerous were not being recorded. I got curious and wondered what the smallest plastic pieces on the shore were.

When I began teaching a few years later, I challenged my students to find the smallest pieces of plastic on the beach. Looking amongst the sand grains, there they were – tiny blue and red fibres and fragments.

An almost forensic journey ensued to confirm their identity. In collaboration with a polymer chemist, we confirmed the tiny fragments were common plastic polymers – polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) – that presumably formed via mechanical degradation and were accumulating as fragments smaller than the grains of sand themselves.

I was hooked on discovering more about this new form of contamination. Working initially with postgraduate students at the University of Plymouth where I was lecturing, we found that these pieces were common on the shore and in seabed mud and we showed they were eaten by marine life. Most alarmingly, we used archived samples of plankton that had been collected decades previously to demonstrate that the abundance of microplastics had increased significantly since the 1960s and 1970s.

I pulled together nearly a decade of this research into a one-page summary entitled “Lost at sea: where is all the plastic?” That paper, published in the journal Science 20 years ago, was the first to use the term microplastics in this context. Within a couple of weeks, this became a worldwide news story.

Everyone wanted to know whether microplastics were harmful. I set out to establish the wider distribution and determine whether they might be harmful to humans and wildlife.

Despite huge media and policy interest, funding was a challenge. One anonymous reviewer commented that there will never be enough plastic in the oceans to cause the sort of harm Thompson wants to investigate.

Over the years that followed, my team and I showed that microplastics were common on shorelines worldwide, they were abundant in the deep sea, in Arctic sea ice and in multiple species of fish. They weren’t just polluting marine environments. They were present in rivers and snow from near the summit of Mount Everest. Everywhere we looked, we found evidence of microplastics.

By 2008, the term microplastic was highlighted by the EU’s flagship marine strategy framework directive, a policy introduced to maintain clean, healthy, productive and resilient marine ecosystems. It stipulated that “the quantities of plastic and microplastic should not cause harm in the marine environment”.

We demonstrated that, if ingested, microplastics could transfer from the gut to the circulatory system of mussels and that nanoparticles could pass through the bodies of scallops within a matter of hours. We demonstrated the potential for chemical transfer to wildlife and confirmed that the presence of microplastics could have negative consequences, reducing the ability of organisms to put on weight.

A UK parliamentary environmental audit committee requested a special report on microplastics in 2016. I was called to give evidence, and perhaps prompted by comments from my colleagues, MP Mary Creagh referred to me as the “godfather of microplastics” and so it entered the public record.

There are now thousands of studies on microplastics published by researchers worldwide. Policy interventions resulting from this work include the UK ban on plastic microbeads in rinse-off cosmetics, and EU legislation to prohibit intentional addition of microplastics to products which could prevent hundreds of thousands of tonnes of microplastics entering the environment.

However, the largest source of microplastics is the fragmentation of larger items in the environment. So ultimately, we need to take action to reduce the production of a wider range of plastic products than just those containing microplastics.

Without action, plastic production could triple by 2060. Yet, some nations seem set on a path to increase production rather than reduce it.

Treaty Negotiations

Last week, I was in Ottawa where 180 nations debated the content of the global plastic pollution treaty, a text that contains more than 60 references to microplastics.

What can be done to halt this accumulation? Microplastics are almost impossible to remove. Even for larger items, clean up won’t solve the problem. Novel materials such as biodegradable plastics may offer benefits in specific circumstances but won’t solve plastic pollution.

I left the negotiations with mixed emotions. Pleased that the scientific community had delivered sufficient hard evidence – including some of my own research – on plastic pollution to initiate the need for this global treaty. Saddened that 180 nations found it so hard to reach a consensus on the way forward. Negotiations failed to stipulate that independent scientists should even be included in formal expert working groups.

Like many scientists who helped deliver the evidence of harm, it’s immensely frustrating to potentially be sidelined from an international process that hopes to deliver solutions. It may be hard for some to swallow – I saw one delegate holding a single-use plastic water bottle behind his back during negotiations. Contrary to the outcome of those midnight discussions in Ottawa, the focus must be on prevention by reducing global production of plastic polymers and ensuring any plastic items we do produce are essential, safe and sustainable.

Richard Thompson, Professor of Marine Biology, University of Plymouth

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

Every spring, hundreds of thousands of birds leave their winter habitat on Poyang, the largest freshwater lake in China, and fly north over the most densely populated region on Earth to reach their breeding grounds in Siberia. As with any long-distance journey you might take, these birds need to make stops where they can find a good meal and a chance to refuel.

Migratory birds must make use of food that is only available seasonally. Grass-eating birds like geese follow fresh, green shoots that appear as the season unfolds and the geese move northwards. The brief window when this young, spring grass is at its most nutritious and abundant can last as little as three weeks.

Such a fine-tuned strategy can become a liability. Geese can only eat when they arrive in the right place at the right time, but climate change has disrupted when and how long this seasonal food source is available. Migratory birds may arrive too late in one area if rising temperatures have ushered spring in earlier, for example. If birds cannot replenish their energy stores during migration they risk their ability to breed successfully when they reach their destination – and could even starve.

Along with colleagues, I have investigated the impact of climate change on 16 migratory waterfowl in Asia over the past 21 years. We compared how well a series of stopover sites on their migration route would fare as food sources as the climate changes and found that it is challenging for birds to solely rely on eating enough tasty grass to make the journey safely.

Fortunately, in other research which involved attaching satellite tracking devices to migratory geese and swans, we discovered other food sources on their route from Lake Poyang to Siberia.

Leftover Seeds Can Help Birds Breed

I tagged 246 birds in total: 102 greater white-fronted geese, 74 tundra bean geese, 58 swan geese (an endangered species) and ten tundra swans which stopped over in the Northeast China plain before heading to their breeding grounds in Siberia.

Do the seasons feel increasingly weird to you? You’re not alone. Climate change is distorting nature’s calendar, causing plants to flower early and animals to emerge at the wrong time.

This article is part of a series, Wild Seasons, on how the seasons are changing – and what they may eventually look like.

Some birds can stay over a month in this region. Vast wetlands were once common here, offering important foraging and roosting areas for east Asian waterbirds preparing for the next leg of their journey to the high Arctic. Most have since been converted to cropland growing soybeans, corn, and rice.

The loss of wetlands as farmland has expanded and is a worrying trend globally. It has forced waterbirds to turn from natural vegetation to agricultural land as a source of food.

In the Northeast China Plain, migrating birds eat seeds left over after harvesting. As soon as the snow melts, these seeds are ready for hungry beaks to dig out. Leftover seeds mean that birds which do arrive before spring has started can still find sufficient food.

What’s Good For The Goose…

In fact, we found that birds tend to forage on seeds first and then shift their diets to spring vegetation as it emerges, taking advantage of both wetland and farmland habitats. Farmland seeds will become more and more important as natural habitats decline.

Mechanised harvests, which tend to leave more seeds in the field, could provide more food for birds. But protecting wetlands from destruction is still critical, and that will require limiting how much farmland is reclaimed and the intensity of cattle grazing. Lowering these forms of disturbance and encouraging bird-friendly tourism would help swans and geese use both types of habitat during their stopover.

If healthy wetlands accompany farmland, birds can eat natural vegetation when farmers sow their crops and so minimise their impact on crop yields. Seeing birds as part of the landscape, and not as intruders on farmland, can help preserve this biodiversity on the wing.

Yali Si, Assistant Professor of Ecology, Leiden University

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

The weather is warmer and the nights are lighter. What are those black, curved silhouettes looping in the sky?

Assuming you are looking at birds and not attending the World Boomerang Championships, those shapes will likely be the UK’s only breeding member of the Apodiformes (a grouping that includes the hummingbirds): the common swift (Apus apus), harbinger of summer.

People in the UK tend to think of these birds as theirs, but really, they are tropical African species that spend a few months of the year at temperate latitudes. Competition for food, shelter and mates is intense in the tropics, so swifts evolved migration to take advantage of the seasonal boom in plant growth at temperate latitudes. Their breeding range stretches from Ireland to China and birds from the eastern edge of their range make epic annual round trips of 30,000km.

For swifts, migration to temperate latitudes should mean access to lots of flying insects to feed their young and much less competition from other species to eat them. Like other aerial insect feeders, swifts can’t stay through the winter as there is nothing to eat and so nothing to keep them here.

Do the seasons feel increasingly weird to you? You’re not alone. Climate change is distorting nature’s calendar, causing plants to flower early and animals to emerge at the wrong time.

This article is part of a series, Wild Seasons, on how the seasons are changing – and what they may eventually look like.

These birds are much-loved symbols of the changing seasons. So how are they faring as rising temperatures change when seasons arrive and what form they take?

Swifts Getting Swifter

Swifts are arriving on average about five days earlier in the UK than they were in the 1960s, but they are also leaving significantly earlier too – the only common migrant bird to do so in the UK. Many other species are deciding to extend their summer residency and have multiple broods.

There is still variation between years, but the swifts were very late this year. In this wet, cold spring, I saw my first here in the Longdendale Valley of Derbyshire in England on May 3; by way of comparison, in the unseasonably sunny weather of spring 2020, I saw my first Longdendale swift as early as April 19.

Cold and wet weather is bad for anything that eats flying insects, which aren’t active in these conditions and are more difficult to catch even if they were. One way swifts can weather these challenges is by going on very long foraging trips far from their nest sites to avoid storms. Adults and nestlings can also lower their metabolic rate while sitting on the nest (a phenomenon called torpor) to save energy.

Swifts struggle with prolonged wet periods. A recent study linked an increase in rainfall in June and July from 1975 to 2015 with higher nest failure rates, smaller broods and lower survival of swifts in their first year of life, as they can’t find enough food to feed themselves or their chicks. This is likely to be compounded by potential declines in their invertebrate prey, which are very sensitive to weather conditions like temperature and rainfall.

Cold, inclement springs like this year’s may also kill large numbers of swifts as they migrate through the Mediterranean by preventing them refuelling, leading to starvation, although there have also been instances of heatwaves killing large numbers of swifts as they overheat in their nests in roof cavities in the same region, something which might become a problem in the UK in future.

The cues of birds to migrate come both from an internal clock and factors in their environment, like changes in the seasons. Evidence suggests that species which are not adjusting their migratory schedules in the face of global change are more likely to be in decline and swifts do not appear to be as flexible as some other species in arriving earlier.

Tailored Swift Bricks

Longer-distance migrants are then more likely to be declining than shorter ones, but scientists’ understanding of the role of climate change in driving declines is still limited and complicated by so many other facets of global change.

Beyond reducing the carbon emissions and habitat destruction associated with our diets and lifestyles (and voting for politicians who take these challenges seriously), providing swift nest boxes may be another way people can help.

A campaign by Hannah Bourne-Taylor, a nature writer, to mandate the installation of “swift bricks” in new UK housing stock, could make up for the loss of nest sites in the eaves of older buildings – if only the government would support it.

Given all the difficulties swifts face and the joy that so many people derive in watching and listening to them careering across our summer skies, then we really should be supporting any efforts that may make a difference.

Alexander C. Lees, Reader, Manchester Metropolitan University

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

From May 15-17, 2024, American leaders including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy will be attending a global conference on environmental issues. The host? The Vatican.

The summit, “From Climate Crisis to Climate Resilience,” will focus on human adaptation, not just trying to mitigate climate change. “We need to embark on building climate resilience so that people can bend the emissions curve and bounce back from the climate crisis safer, healthier, wealthier to a sustainable world,” the Pontifical Academy of Sciences said in a statement announcing the workshop.

The Catholic Church might seem a surprising institution to convene a climate change event. But many saints, activists and religious leaders have called on their faith to inspire care for the Earth. Pope Francis in particular has been vocal about the risks of climate change, especially its impact on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

Here are five aspects about Francis’ views – and Catholicism’s broader relationship with the environment – that scholars have written about for The Conversation.

1. God’s Creation

Care for the Earth has a long Catholic lineage, dating back centuries.

“One of the basic beliefs of Christianity is that the material world was created directly by God, and thus fundamentally connected with God’s goodness,” explained Joanne M. Pierce, a religious studies scholar at College of the Holy Cross.

One saint who took that teaching to heart was Hildegard of Bingen, who died in the 12th century. A German expert on herbal medicines and botany, she was also a writer, and she “espoused a kind of ‘green’ theology, called viriditas.”

Another Catholic saint famous for his love of nature is Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology: an Italian friar described as treating animals “with the same dignity as human beings.”

2. Faith – And Reason

In fact, when Pope Francis published an encyclical on the environment in 2015, he took its title from one of his namesake saint’s poems: “Laudato si.”

The encyclical links concern for climate change with Catholic teachings. But it is not just meant for Catholics; Francis also makes science-based arguments that people can appreciate with or without religious faith, noted Lawrence Torcello, a philosopher at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

“Laudato si” is a notable “example of how reason ought to be incorporated into public discourse,” Torcello wrote. In a time as polarized as our own, arguments need to be framed in a way that anyone can understand, even if they don’t agree, “regardless of private religious or parochial commitments.”

3. An Influential Messenger

Similarly, University of Michigan business scholars Andrew Hoffman and Jenna White zoomed in on the pope’s ability to speak to people beyond divides: Catholics and non-Catholics, Republicans and Democrats, people who care deeply about climate change and others that are skeptical about it.

In the United States, they pointed out, debates over climate change are often more about worldviews than about scientific proof. “Calling on people to protect the global climate because it is sacred … will create far more personal commitment than a government call for action on economic grounds or an activist’s call on environmental grounds,” the pair wrote.

4. Environmental Front Line

Francis has often highlighted climate change’s unequal impact on people across the globe. That was on display in 2019, when the Vatican hosted a “Synod of the Amazon” – a region especially threatened by environmental destruction.

“As a theologian who studies religious responses to the environmental crisis, I find the pope’s effort to learn from the indigenous people of the Amazon noteworthy,” wrote University of Dayton professor Vincent Miller.

“Some might dismiss this synod as just a meeting,” he acknowledged. But “the Synod of the Amazon marks a significant shift from high-minded papal exhortations about taking climate action to a global religious community that gives voice to those living on the front lines of ecological destruction.”

5. Warnings And Wonder

In 2023, Francis released an addendum to “Laudato Si.” Like the original document, it linked environmental, social and technological challenges – such as by rebuking wealthy countries and individualistic attitudes for ignoring climate change’s impact.

In the pope’s eyes, “all life exists in relationships,” wrote Lisa Sideris, an environmental ethicist at UC Santa Barbara: nature, human beings and the divine. “Francis’ social critique, I believe, stems from his vision of life – one filled with awe for the depth of meaning and mystery to be found in an interconnected world.”

Part of the problem, as Francis presents it, is that people have forgotten just how deeply bound together we are – a theme likely to be front and center at this week’s summit.

This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Molly Jackson, Religion and Ethics Editor, The Conversation

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

In 2017, then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull alighted from a helicopter to announce a grand plan: Snowy Hydro 2.0. It would turn the famous hydroelectric scheme into a giant battery, ready to power the green transition.

Turnbull no doubt expected his announcement would associate his leadership with the positive aura of the enormous post-war Snowy scheme, since mythologised as the foremost nation-building achievement of the 20th century.

But bad press has plagued Snowy 2.0. Recent news of a tunnel collapse is the latest episode in ongoing mechanical problems. There have been reports of environmental mismanagement, bogged tunnelling machines and cost blowouts. The constant stream of bad stories have outweighed any nation-building glow.

Or has it? Snowy 1.0 took 25 years to complete. It was a huge task to divert the Snowy River inland through tunnels, bolstering water supplies in the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers and generating power through hydroelectricity. Workers died. Costs blew out. But the mythology of the project grew, partly driven by promotional films depicting the project as a source of national pride and power.

A Tale Of Two Projects

Snowy 2.0 is overseen by a government-owned corporation, Snowy Hydro. Its public relations program includes social media, an onsite Discovery Centre and a YouTube channel with monthly video updates narrated by Snowy 2.0 personnel.

To date, the biggest boon for the project has been the three-part SBS series, Building the Snowy, first broadcast in August 2023. While not formally a product of Snowy Hydro, the series has an upbeat tone. Extensive use of archival footage strongly links current works to the celebrated post-war scheme.

Despite these efforts, Snowy 2.0 is now nationally known for slow progress and cost blowouts. The negative perception is fair. Snowy Hydro bosses admit there have been unanticipated setbacks.

Is it too late to change these perceptions? Not necessarily. Energy projects can be powerfully reimagined and legitimated in the public sphere. The original Snowy Scheme of the 1950s offers a formidable template.

This wasn’t by accident. Sir William Hudson, an engineer tasked with managing the Snowy scheme, had witnessed the successful promotion of Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal policies in the United States, including the construction of the monumental Hoover Dam.

Hudson decided to follow suit, investing heavily in promotion. This, it turned out, was wise. The scheme’s early years were fraught. Political wrangling meant the scheme was started under Commonwealth defence powers until it was formalised by state legislation in Victoria and NSW in 1959. It could easily have been cancelled or curtailed.

As the building progressed, workers began to die in accidents – a tally which would reach 121. States continued to disagree about the allocation of water for irrigation.

Hudson had to convince both the public and politicians of its merits. In addition to the usual press releases and newsreels, Hudson turned the works into a tourist attraction, taking people into the mountains by the busload.

Documentaries By The Dozen

From the 1950s to the 1970s, the Snowy Mountain Authority sponsored a prolific photographic section, which put out huge volumes of photos – and around 130 documentaries.

Some of these weren’t aimed at a wide audience, such as safety training films or recruitment films to sustain the workforce.

But there were dozens which deliberately set out to create a favourable image of the scheme. The experienced cinematographer Harry Malcolm produced many of these films, which were shown at film festivals, schools and community group screenings.

The films made much of the spectacular alpine environment. Some showed the lives and accommodation of workers and their families in company towns such as Khancoban and Cabramurra. Only a few mentioned the multicultural workforce the scheme is known for.

Titles include Where Men and Mountains Meet (1963), Challenge of the Great Divide (1967) and Where the Hills Are Twice as Steep (1958). This last features a male narrator speaking from the perspective of Mt Kosciuszko, describing a chronology from deep time to colonisation to the problems of irrigation and electricity the scheme was meant to solve.

A high point was Conquest of the Rivers (1957), which won awards at film festivals and circulating internationally.

The semi-fictionalised documentary tells the story of Tom Carpenter who leaves his drought-affected home west of the Great Dividing Range with his small family and travels to Cooma to work on the Snowy.

Conquest of the Rivers emphasises a better future, created by the labour of male bodies as they carve paths inside mountains. The film draws on wartime tropes of capable masculinity.

Taken together, these documentaries offered a stabilising discourse for the nation against the massive social change brought by the large Baby Boomer generation.

By 1960, the films had done their work. There was widespread enthusiasm for the project and its future was guaranteed.

There’s a telling quote from Tom Mitchell, a critic of the scheme, in Margaret Unger’s Voices from the Snowy:

In 1960 Upper Murray people suffered from a strange disease known as ‘Snowyitis’ which consisted of an overwhelming enthusiasm for the Snowy Scheme, almost rising to the fervour of a Billy Graham crusade. And yet, if asked, no one could really define the benefits

These films were never meant to be even-handed. Instead, Harry Malcolm’s films were a potent mix of truth and illusion, distracting from real problems such as deficient safety standards, low worker morale, and alarmingly, no planning for floods until after devastating floods on the Murray in 1956.

Could History Repeat?

Just like the original Snowy scheme, the future of Snowy 2.0 is not assured. Its original backer has left politics. Enormous engineering challenges have yet to be overcome.

Could Snowy 2.0 be reframed as 1.0 did? It is possible. But it would require a much more imaginative storytelling regime, beyond photos of large tunnelling machines or commentary from engineers.

To make it successful in the public eye, it should harness the new story of our time – the essential energy transition away from fossil fuels and the creation of a new grid. It should connect this project in the mountains to the needs of people around the nation, appealing to the senses and conjuring up the desired future.

And it cannot be only in the realm of PR – Snowy 2.0 must make our environmental plight better, not worse. 

Belinda Smaill, Professor of Film and Screen Studies, Monash University and Kate Fitch, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media, Monash University

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

The summer of 2023 was the warmest in the non-tropical areas of the northern hemisphere for 2,000 years, a new study has shown.

Across this vast area of land, encompassing Europe, Asia and North America, surface air temperatures were more than 2°C higher in June, July and August 2023 than the average summer temperature between AD1 and 1890, as reconstructed from tree ring records.

While climate change is a global phenomenon, warming on a regional scale is often stronger. And it is regional climate change, not the global average temperature, that people experience.

The Paris agreement aims to limit climate change to below 2°C and ideally 1.5°C of warming, but these figures refer to global temperature change, usually averaged over 20 years. The authors of the new research argue that these targets have already been breached at a regional scale in the northern hemisphere summer.

There were 2,295 deaths associated with five heatwaves in summer 2023 in the UK. The authors of the new study wanted to understand how unusually warm the summer of 2023 was in the northern hemisphere compared with the past.

To do that, they turned to one of the most useful tools for taking Earth’s temperature over thousands of years: rings that grow annually in tree trunks anywhere on the planet where the climate is seasonal.

Two Millennia Of Tree Rings

The extreme warmth of 2023 was caused by greenhouse gas emissions and amplified by El Niño, the warm phase of a natural climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean.

To find out what the climate was like in the recent past, scientists analyse weather station records to see if a particular year was warmer or cooler than previous ones. The longest instrumental record available is the Central England Temperature series and that only goes back to 1659, which is not long enough to place recent warming in context.

To find out how warm it is now compared with two millennia ago, scientists use climate proxies. These are natural archives like ice cores and sediments that store a record of the climate in the layers they accumulate over time.

Trees grow in lots of different places and sensitively record past climate information for much of the globe. Trees grow one ring a year in seasonal climates, so there is no doubt about the date a particular ring formed.

To study past climate, tree ring scientists analyse how wide or narrow a ring is in a particular year, how dense the wood is or its chemical composition.

Tree-ring growth is sensitive to many climate variables, but in conifer trees growing at northern hemisphere treelines (the point at which trees can no longer grow due to cold temperatures, high winds or low moisture) it is summer temperature that most strongly controls tree ring growth. In a warm summer, such trees will tend to produce wide, dense rings.

A period in which trees from a particular region all grew wide, or narrow, rings, if accurately cross-referenced with many trees, indicates an unusual phase in the climate which affected the trees’ growth.

The authors of the new study were looking for trees which faithfully recorded past summer temperatures. They combined records from thousands of these trees across hundreds of sites in North America and Canada, the UK and Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia and Japan. The tree ring records were produced by scientists working laboriously to take tree core samples, measure the rings and share the data.

This huge tree ring archive revealed that the northern hemisphere summer of 2023 was warmer than the average of every year between AD1 and 1890 by 2.2°C. When compared to the very coldest year of the last two millennia, AD536, when a large volcano erupted and cooled the planet for several years, summer 2023 was found to be nearly 4°C warmer than that year.

What Will Future Forests Show?

As greenhouse gas emissions rise, enhancing Earth’s greenhouse effect, people can expect more frequent and severe climate events. In the past, very warm years globally generally happened during El Niño events, such as in 2016.

However, greenhouse gas levels are now so high that, for the first time in 2017, the planet experienced a very warm year during El Niño’s opposite, the La Niña phase, which has a cooling effect on global temperatures.

The new study found that 2023 even broke the 2016 record as it was 0.23°C warmer than the last El Niño-amplified summer. Greenhouse gas emissions are now so high that, when climate records are broken, they break in large step changes, rather than small increments.

The thousands of trees sampled for this study, from mountain forests around the northern hemisphere, face increasingly tough growing conditions. Were the scientists to revisit them they would find, in many places, trees stressed by heat and drought.

A single drought between 2012 and 2016 in California killed more than 200 million trees. Tree deaths in France have increased by over 80% in the last decade, a pattern seen around the globe as a result of hotter droughts.

Forests contain 80% of biodiversity living on land and sustain the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people. Trees also regulate the global climate and store carbon from the air, while slowly building up a record in their rings of our failure to halt dangerous climate change.

The extreme heat of 2023 highlights the need for urgent climate action. If the world rapidly decarbonises, future scientists will hopefully see the climate’s recovery quietly recorded in the tree ring records of Earth’s remaining forests.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
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Mary Gagen, Professor of Physical Geography, Swansea University

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

I slip the needle through a small loop of black thread, pull it tight and snip. Done. I have just tied off the very last stitch on an embroidered scroll that has taken me more than 500 hours across 19 months to complete.

All of my artwork is extremely labour-intensive. But I have to admit, this is a bit excessive, even for me. It’s not surprising that I have been asked more than once “why not just outsource the labour?” and even “what is the point?”

I always sigh and think enviously of plumbers. I am 100% sure hardworking tradies are never asked to justify the point of their work.

Why do I work so hard? There is no one easy answer, it’s different every time. The labour intensity of my processes adds time into the equation and this both carries meaning and can change the meaning of the work as it goes on (and on and on). I always learn something unexpected.

I put my little scissors down and, before busting out the bubbles, I snap a picture for Instagram because #selfpromotion, but also because this is news, albeit of a very slow-breaking kind. This is what I’ve learned after stitching for seemingly endless hours: while no news may be good news, “slow news” is even better.

My embroidered scroll is titled Impossible Numbers. It started as my attempt to memorialise the estimated 3,000,000,000 non-human lives lost in the devastating bushfires of 2019–20, a number impossible to actually comprehend.

Doomscrolling An Emergency

During that long and awful summer Sydney was often shrouded in an eerie orange haze. You could smell smoke. Ash fell. But, like many Australians, I experienced the worst of it by doomscrolling fast news.

I was both horrified and fascinated by images of fires so huge and hot they generated their own weather, by pictures of houses reduced to smoking skeletal outlines that somehow remained standing, by headlines comparing the fires to armageddon and the apocalypse.

This hyperbolic language implies we are locked in a war of good versus evil. Even headlines in the vein of “Firefighters battle blazes” pit us (people) against them (the forces of nature). And in the heat of the moment the language of war feels right. I’ve succumbed to it myself. But it is dangerous. This language reinforces the idea we can dominate nature; it frames the fires as a conflict that we can end by winning.

I will admit watching a goat-toting woman berate a sitting prime minister left me with a short-lived, but mildly satisfying, feeling of shared righteous indignation. But mostly doomscrolling just fuelled my sorrow and left me feeling impotent as, inevitably, the fast news cycled on to the next crisis (and the next, and the next).

Slowing It Down

In October 2022, I finally stopped trying to process the bushfires, and all their terrifying implications, through the fast-news language of war. I picked up a needle instead.

Of course 3,000,000,000 stitches would be too many, even for me, so I decided to stitch a grid of some 15,000 squares, which I filled with innumerable stitches – a nod to the endless stream of pixels that usually deliver our news.

I started wanting to honour the 3 billion dead, that impossible number, but after months of stitching I realised I was “writing” a kind of slow-news story. It may sound ridiculous, but this tactic has been used before. The Bayeux Tapestry is a slow-news story that documents the Norman conquest of England through embroidery. It took years to stitch, and some 950 years later it is still in circulation.

As an alternative to doomscrolling easily digestible fast-news stories of good triumphing (or not) over evil, I have created an actual fabric scroll which depicts a stylised firestorm building in intensity until it becomes all-consuming.

Despite mimicking pixels, Impossible Numbers is resolutely handmade. It is too messy, too crude, to be anything else. It is bleedingly obvious (and there was blood) the will of a person is inextricably stitched into this image of devastating fire. Human labour is literally entangled in this artwork; it shows us as part of the picture, part of nature. And this is good news

Impossible Numbers doesn’t have a victorious ending, or any ending at all. The scroll is not fully unrolled. There is no end in sight: the story isn’t over, it’s ongoing.

In this way it points to the future; a future in which we are not fighting nature. And this is good news too.

If you don’t have a spare 500 hours to process the news into slow news, don’t worry. By the time I finally tied my last knot, I found I had transformed my fear and rage into something tangible, something both magnificent and beautiful (if I do say so myself), no longer about me.

It is now a slow-news story that is no longer about a particular event; something everyone can share. This is why I do the work.

Impossible Numbers is on display as part of The Blake Prize at the Casula Powerhouse, Sydney, until July 7.

This article is part of Making Art Work, our series on what inspires artists and the process of their work.

Tracey Clement, Lecturer in Visual Art and McGlade Gallery Director, Australian Catholic University

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

At Cumberland City Council in the western suburbs of Sydney, one man – Councillor Steve Christou – persuaded the council to ban books about same-sex parenting from the council’s libraries.

The change was short-lived. People fought back. More than 40,000 signed a petition to lift the ban.

Only two weeks later, the Council reversed its decision, voting decisively (13-2), following impassioned pleas by residents, and with many people protesting on the streets.

Librarians Under Attack

Librarians are leaders in the fight against book bans. They have faced significant backlash for their efforts. Australian Library and Information Association CEO Cathie Warburton has reported that

people are going into libraries, grabbing books off the shelves, reading them out loud and saying “These shouldn’t be here”, calling librarians horrible names and threatening doxxing and physical violence. It’s incredibly distressing.

Book banning efforts are often highly coordinated. People distribute lists of books that may (or may not) be in the collections of their local libraries. These culture-war attacks on libraries and librarians are often motivated by grievances against progress, such as LGBTQ+ visibility and acceptance, and other forms of diversity.

But they are also part of a wider reactionary movement. The issues extend beyond the specific content of individual books. Calls for book bans are evidence of a broader moral panic that presents a real danger to individuals and society at large.

Libraries and librarians are common targets because they are easy for the public to access, and because they represent (and foster) learning, ideas, imagination, equality, choice and barrier-free access to information for all.

Would-be book banners have very rarely read the books they challenge. When books are read, they are far less likely to be banned.

Histories Of Censorship

The Cumberland episode is only the latest in the global struggle for freedom of information access. Such censorship dates back at least as far as Shakespeare. The first American book ban occurred in 1637, when Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan was suppressed for its criticisms of Puritanism.

The issue remains highly contentious in the United States. PEN America’s latest report shows a 33% rise in the number of book challenges in US public schools, with almost 6,000 instances of books banned since 2021.

The Alabama House of Representatives recently passed Bill HB385. If it passes the Senate, the bill will override libraries’ book challenge policies. Librarians would have seven days to remove contentious material or face criminal penalties.

Australia also has a long history of censorship. Many titles we now consider “classics” faced bans, including Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, James Baldwin’s Another Country and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. As literary historian Nicole Moore documented, it was once “routine to have your suitcase searched [for obscene materials] on the way into Australia from another country”.

More recently, in March 2023, Maia Kobabe’s award-winning memoir Gender Queer was removed from a Queensland library, and faced many other challenges, globally. Bernard Gaynor, the conservative Catholic activist who led the call to ban the book, is taking the Minister for Communication and the Australian Classification Review Board to the Federal Court of Australia. The decision will come later this year.

Censorship remains a local – and global – concern.

Information Access For All

Professional librarians have battled these kinds of challenges for decades. The American Library Association, founded in 1876, issued its first anti-censorship notice in 1939, in response to Nazi book burning and other international attempts to suppress information.

In 1953, the American Library Association issued their Freedom to Read statement, with ongoing support for libraries challenging book bans across the United States.

In a joint statement, the Australian Library and Information Association and the Australian Public Library Alliance explain that libraries “defend equity of access to information” and “cater for all members of the library community”.

This position reflects global standards for information access upheld by libraries worldwide. It includes the key principle that the “perception that material may offend or cause controversy to a person or a group of people is not, of itself, a reason to limit purchase or provision of an item containing that material”.

The International Federation of Library Associations states that censorship “runs counter to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. Libraries are expected to:

• provide collections and services that are free of intentional censorship

• base decisions on professional considerations (e.g., quality, currency, format, cost, etc.), rather than limiting based on political or religious considerations or cultural prejudice

• educate people on issues of censorship and encourage them to practise freedom of expression and freedom of access to information

• advocate for removal of censorship restrictions affecting libraries and society at large.

Policies And Procedures

Librarians do more than handle attempts to ban books. They develop policies and procedures designed to ensure free access to information, for everyone. They are expert professionals, whose jobs often require difficult selection decisions and challenging conversations with angry or offended community members.

Libraries already have established processes to handle removal requests. They apply guidance from professional associations, including resources like the Selection & Reconsideration Policy Toolkit for Public, School, & Academic Libraries.

Requests to remove materials often start with informal conversations to address concerns and educate complainants about the library’s mandate for equitable access based on the whole community’s needs and interests. A formal process often requires a written submission. Library staff will then reconsider the book in light of the library’s collection policy.

Removing books from a collection does happen, as librarians must ensure the collection remains useful and relevant. Libraries routinely consult with community members and seek feedback to ensure collections match community needs. They also review materials to ensure outdated works (for example, older editions) are replaced with texts that include current information.

These are some of the routine, behind-the-scenes tasks, which collections librarian Scarlet Galvan explains are critical to ensure “collections are for use, not reinforcing assumptions”.

The Need For Community Involvement

Librarians rely on individuals and communities to stand up and oppose censorship, as residents did in Cumberland. Vocal community and government support for libraries is critical to battling book bans. Many other professions, such as journalism and teaching, also play critical roles in documenting censorship and countering book challenges.

So how can you help? By signing petitions, speaking up at council meetings, volunteering to serve on a library board, voting for candidates who support libraries, and borrowing books about diverse families to ensure they have a circulation record of being used and valued.

As the outcry over the short-lived Cumberland City Council ban shows, everyday Australians value libraries and the information they provide to their communities. Public support is needed to defend against future attacks and to send a message to governments that banning books is not acceptable.

Lisa M. Given, Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University and Sarah Polkinghorne, Research Fellow, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University

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

Our family dog used to have a rather noticeable extra eyelid that became especially apparent when he dozed off, usually upturned on the rug. This is the fleshy curtain seen at the corner of each eye, closest to the nose. It’s also commonly called the nictitating (literally “blinking”) membrane.

You may have noticed these “third” eyelids on your pets appear occasionally, perhaps during their sleepy moments, or when they’re enjoying a bit of affection. But what does this unusual structure actually do? And why don’t we have one as well?

Third eyelids sweep in a generally horizontal direction across the eye, instead of vertically as the upper and lower lids do. They’re actually a specialised fold of the conjunctiva – the thin, moist membrane that coats the other lids and the exposed white of your eye (the sclera). They’re found in many mammalian species, but are not unique to them. Birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish can also have a third eyelid.

The structure varies too; in many species a cartilage skeleton provides support, while others contain glands that secrete tears. This variation is probably to help animals adapt to multiple different environments – to the sea, the air and even arboreal habitats in trees.

Several different studies have examined third eyelids to help understand their role in hedgehogs, kangaroos and brown bears.

And research has shown the third eyelid functions much as the upper and lower lids do. It protects the eye, and sweeps away any invading debris. It also distributes tears across the eye’s surface, keeping it moist and preventing ulcers forming. This is particularly important in brachycephalic (flat-faced) dogs, like pugs and King Charles spaniels, whose protruding eyes are not as well protected compared to other breeds.

In The Wild

Both domestic and wild animals (including species from canine, feline and equine families) need eye shielding and protection from foreign bodies. Wild animals may need them even more, since they might be exploring grasslands, or contending with bites and scratches from prey or rival animals.

Preventing, trapping and removing debris is crucial for desert animals like camels, where sand and dirt might damage the eye. Their third eyelid is partially transparent and this helps camels retain some vision in the middle of a sandstorm, while covering their eyes.

In bushlands, aardvarks also have third eyelids, perhaps to protect their eyes as they root around for insects.

The third eyelid may offer protection from water, and a translucent membrane can aid underwater vision of aquatic animals, including manatees (curiously, manatees come from the order Afrotheria, which also includes aardvarks). Larger species of sharks (blues for instance) typically protect their eyes with their third eyelid when hunting and feeding.

For birds, fast air currents can prove equally damaging. So, in birds of prey like falcons, the eyelid is used during rapid flight in hunting. Often air gusts will set off third eyelid blinking in these birds (including owls) as a natural protective reflex.

In other avian species, it might protect against damage from sharp-beaked offspring. Imagine a bird returning with a prize of food to a nestful of voraciously hungry chicks, all pecking and scrabbling to get their share.

Studies suggest third eyelids play a unique role in woodpeckers, whose skulls undergo vibration trauma when drilling a tree trunk with their beak. Two problems arise as a result of this forceful head banging – damage to the softer eye tissue, and sawdust being thrown into them. In this case, the third eyelid may act as both a seatbelt and a visor.

In polar regions, where the white landscape reflects sunlight, ultraviolet rays can damage the eye. This can lead to temporary loss of vision – a condition known as snow blindness. So it’s possible that some arctic animals like polar bears have third eyelids that absorb UV light. There’s no established evidence of this yet, but their third eyelids are clear, assisting them in being skilled marine hunters.

Evolutionary Loss

Humans and most primates (except lemurs and the calabar angwantibo, from the Lorisidae family) have evolved to the point where a proper third eyelid is no longer needed. Human and primate eyes are less likely to be damaged by hunting, rivalry and the environment. Plus, human eyes are highly sensitive and able to recognise and respond to danger by closing more quickly.

But the third eyelid isn’t entirely gone. Humans have a remnant of it called the plica semilunaris. This crescent-moon fold can be seen at the corner of our eyes too. Have a look yourself in the mirror.

Some scientists have argued the plica can still help drain tears. There are two small ducts at the angle of our eyelids, which allow excess and old tears to escape into the nasal cavity. That explains why you get a runny nose when you cry.

But would getting our true third eyelid back be of any use to us? Maybe the alien in Men in Black could offer an opinion. Perhaps it could allow us to naturally keep our eyes cleaner, less irritated, or dislodge that contact lens that won’t come out.

We’ll just have to accept we don’t share the clever nature of our pets’ third eyelids. But then we also can’t compete with their night vision, acute hearing or sense of smell. It’s a long list.

Dan Baumgardt, Senior Lecturer, School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol

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

In one sense, Let It Be director Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s 1970 film documenting The Beatles’ recording sessions of January 1969, and their famous concert on the rooftop of the Apple building, could be viewed as something of a coda to the main event.

At the time, both the film and the accompanying album of the same name reached the public a month after the band’s break up was announced. In the present day, its rerelease follows Peter Jackson’s epic Get Back docuseries, which drew on the 60 hours of raw footage of the same sessions to provide a more complete account of the recordings.

So, why the fuss? Rereleases and remasters are a standard feature of both the film and music industries, and The Beatles’ media and commercial juggernaut has arguably led the way in this for a long time. First, there’s the sheer length of time since the film was last generally available – more than 50 years.

The answer also partly lies in the distinctive way in which, beyond their huge financial success, the narrative of The Beatles as a band has been woven into popular music and wider history. Peter Jackson’s 2020 series in many respects superseded Hogg’s film, providing a fuller picture of the sessions, which also fed into the Abbey Road album, the band’s last recording (even though Let It Be was released afterwards).

Same Events, Different Perspectives

A highlight of both the film and series was the concluding rooftop concert, but Jackson’s programme was widely acknowledged for adding context to the band’s closing chapter. The hours of jamming and studio high-jinks revealed moments of camaraderie and a less rancorous atmosphere than had previously been thought.

So, beyond the events themselves, there’s an element of historiography at play here – a concern with how history is written and constructed. Since Let It Be’s original release, The Beatles have become an increasingly important aspect of popular music, and wider social history. Beyond the mystique acquired by inaccessibility for so long, the film gains interest as a document of how the band’s last days as an active unit were framed, and experienced, at the time.

In purely functional terms, it’s obviously easier to give a more complete account of the recording sessions in the nearly eight hours afforded by Peter Jackson’s Get Back than the one and a half hours available to Lindsay-Hogg on Let It Be.

Moments of discord appear in both, notably the famous encounter between a taciturn George Harrison – who walked out during the sessions – telling a cajoling Paul McCartney, about a guitar part: “I’ll play, you know, whatever you want me to play. Or I won’t play at all, if you don’t want me to play.”

These are diluted in the long stretch of Get Back, but become part of the central narrative of Let It Be. Filmmakers’ editorial decisions shape their stories, but are informed by their own contexts. Lindsay-Hogg was editing the film at a time when the band had just split, and trying to salvage a viable product from a somewhat chaotic process, since he’d originally been taken on to produce a television documentary and concert broadcast.

Re-tooling it as a film was a response to the band dropping the idea of a major event, the now legendary rooftop performance only emerging as a process of back and forth compromise.

Conversely, one of the iconic elements of Jackson’s Get Back series shows Paul McCartney coming up with the bare bones of the song of the same name more or less impromptu, and the pleasure in seeing how it develops. But that relies on the more leisurely pacing of the long form allowed by primary release on a streaming platform, as opposed to the editorial constraints of a cinema (or even television) release.

The streaming format was, of course, a long way off in the future when Lindsay-Hogg was working with the band. Jackson’s series also works more profoundly because of the classic status Get Back (the song) has accrued over half a century. For Lindsay-Hogg filming in 1969, it was just another jam – albeit by the world’s most famous band. In 2020, much of the audience was witnessing the genesis of a song they’d known their whole lives.

Framing Popular Music History

Get Back reviews the longitudinal process of a band at work, and one whose working processes had influenced many of the acts that followed in their wake. The Beatles’ success helped to shape the very idea of a band combining multiple songwriters and friends into a social, creative and business unit.

Their split was big news, and mattered in a way that the re-combinations of musicians into new working units had not done previously. Let It Be was tied into that historical moment, and the presence in the room of Lindsay-Hogg’s cameras helped to define it.

Viewed at the arrival of the 1970s, as the preeminent band of the 1960s announced their demise, Let It Be told the story of an ending, enhanced by the technical fact that it was blown up from a 16mm print, for TV, to 35mm for the cinema, adding a dark, grainy patina to the proceedings, now alleviated in the remastering process.

Now in 2024, it’s a document in a wider archive of Beatles lore and helps to inform the process of how the history of popular music is written.

Adam Behr, Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University

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

One of the wildest wonders of nature is the ability of some animals to reproduce by splitting in half. There is still so much we don’t know about this process. So the discovery of a 155-million-year-old starfish fossil frozen partway through this process, published in a new study, could give scientists incredible new insights.

Our planet is teeming with invertebrates that, to our human eyes, may seem alien in the way they live and reproduce.

The starfish, or asteroid, is part of a group of animals called the echinoderms or spiny skinned animals that also includes sea lilies, sea urchins and sea cucumbers. They are found in almost every corner of our oceans and spend part of their life as microscopic larvae before developing into adults.

Starfish are among the oldest living animals on our planet. They appeared in a form we would recognise almost 480 million years ago and have survived five mass extinctions.

The reason for their evolutionary success could be in their ability to reproduce both sexually and asexually – by literally splitting in two and growing into two new animals. This is known as fissiparity. It is still sometimes observed in modern starfish and comes with the advantage of forming numerous offspring in a relatively short time and without “costing” the parent a great amount of energy or time.

Sexual reproduction, on the other hand, requires starfish and brittle stars to come together in huge numbers to spawn. The disadvantage of fissiparity is that this type of reproduction can result in a lack of genetic diversity in the population.

Biologists call the process of splitting in two parts fragmentation. Only a small number of animals can do this. For example, the common garden earthworm, which many gardeners have watched in amazement as one animal suddenly becomes two. Biologists can also watch starfish and brittle stars doing this in their labs or in marine stations.

But, until now, scientists weren’t sure how old this form of reproduction was. This phenomenon is most often seen in worm-like animals, and worm fossils are rare.

However, starfish can also split in two and have a much better fossil record. These animals still dominate our oceans, the deep seas are a carpet of them.

Rebirth Of A Fossil Star

In the past ten years, Ben Thuy, a palaeontologist, has revolutionised the way we look at the evolution and biology of a group of starfish-like animals called the brittle stars or ophiuroids.

First by looking at how these animals have evolved, survived and then thrived in response to mass extinction events or ecological pressure. His work, studying the way their skeleton is made up of calcite plates, has changed our view of not only how the modern brittle star body shape appeared in the fossil record but also how we classify these animals.

In palaeontology, we are always searching for that key fossil that radically changes our view of how life evolved and developed on this planet. For example, the 2021 discovery of 480-million-year-old starfish-like animals in the Anti-Atlas mountains in Morocco helped us understand how these animals first appeared.

Such fossils are the holy grail of palaeobiology. They can give us a snapshot of the history of life and show us the moment a new animal first evolved on our planet.

Only a few animals make it into the fossil record, and many of these are in fragments as they often fall apart once the body has decayed. However, Thuy’s brittle star discovery appears to show a brittle star in the process of reproducing asexually. The fossil has already been “born”. One half of the body appears to be fully developed while the other half shows signs of regeneration with three smaller arms clearly visible.

This discovery means that we know that these animals were reproducing in this way 90 million years before the asteroid collision that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Scientists don’t always agree on what a fossil shows. There is a chance the brittle star fossil is a new species or an unusual individual that happens to have six arms rather than the typical five.

There are many examples of starfish that have more than five arms, including species such as Coscinasterias calamaria or 11 armed starfish. They can also gain an extra arm through natural genetic variation in the population similar to eye colour in humans.

But the study authors used comparative studies of other brittle stars that appear to have undergone regeneration to argue that their fossil originally had six arms before it split in two. Therefore, the authors say, the fossil must be the result of clonal fragmentation and the first in the fossil record.

If they’re right, fossils have allowed us to see the moment a new starfish was born in deep time.

Aaron W. Hunter, Science Guide & Visiting Researcher, Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge

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

For nearly 200 years, Florence Nightingale’s name has been synonymous with gentle compassion and mercy.

In the mid-19th century, Nightingale became perhaps the most celebrated woman of her era – second only to Queen Victoria – for instituting sanitation practices that sharply cut death rates among British soldiers fighting in the Crimean War. A handsome bronze statue in London’s Waterloo Place has immortalized Nightingale as a slight, graceful figure carrying a lamp, the embodiment of selfless womanhood.

But this iconic image overshadows many other accomplishments. Nightingale also transformed nursing into a respectable profession, founded the world’s first nursing school, used the relatively new science of statistics to improve health care outcomes and redesigned hospitals. She was also one of Western history’s first advocates of health care for all.

Over the five years I spent researching and writing my biographical novel about Nightingale, “Flight of the Wild Swan,” published March 12, 2024, my vaguely sentimental notions about her were replaced by respect for her visionary achievements. I resolved to bring into sharper focus this woman who, along with her legendary work as a war nurse, spent half a century pioneering advances in health care.

The 19th century ushered in a series of revolutionary medical advancements. Nightingale’s contributions were a significant part of this era.

Called To Serve The Suffering

Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820, to William and Frances Nightingale, a wealthy British couple. The Nightingales raised their two daughters, Florence and her sister Parthenope, on two estates in England. William homeschooled the girls, giving them the equivalent of his own Cambridge University education.

From an early age, Nightingale displayed a formidable intellect, with a particular interest in mathematics. At 16, she experienced a transcendent call to serve the suffering, a call that eventually coalesced into her determination to become a nurse. Her family objected, however, because nursing was an unsuitable occupation for young Victorian women of privilege. It was considered disreputable work with a status even lower than that of servants.

But Nightingale gradually overcame her family’s objections, receiving training in Germany and France. In 1853, she became the superintendent of a small hospital in London for “distressed gentlewomen.” The majority of her patients were educated, unmarried governesses whose health had broken down under the strain of long hours of work and negligible pay.

A little over a year later, she was on her way to the Crimean War.

Bringing Sanitation To Medicine

In October 1854, Nightingale brought 38 female nurses under her supervision to Scutari Barrack in Constantinople – today’s Istanbul. Originally a gargantuan stone barracks for the Turkish army, Scutari was now a British hospital housing thousands of wounded English and Irish soldiers.

At Scutari, she and her nurses found few provisions, little medicine or edible food, and overcrowded hospital wards full of rats, lice and raw sewage. More soldiers were dying of cholera and other infectious diseases than of battle wounds. Nightingale and her nurses set to work cleaning and procuring food, soap, bandages, medicine, clean bedding and clothes for patients. As living standards improved, Scutari’s appalling death rate began to decline.

It was there that Nightingale’s reputation as the “Angel of the Crimea” and the “Lady with the Lamp” began. Wartime journalists telegraphed their newspapers with dramatic accounts of her work. These stories ignited the public’s imagination and created the indelible image of a slight, feminine figure carrying her lamp through hospital wards at night.

In January 1855, British Prime Minister Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, dispatched a newly formed Sanitary Commission to the Crimea to investigate high mortality rates in the military hospital. Nightingale observed firsthand the dramatic decline in death rates as the commission cleaned out the hospital’s befouled sewer systems, limewashed its walls – in effect killing surface bacteria – and made numerous other sanitation improvements.

Nightingale was already a proponent of hygiene, fresh air and proper diet in medical care; this experience made her a committed sanitarian.

When the war ended in 1856, Nightingale returned home, permanently bedridden with chronic brucellosis, then called “Crimean fever.” This didn’t stop her from spending the rest of her life applying herself to improving health care systems in Great Britain and other countries.

Using Numbers To Cure

Statistics was a relatively new science in Nightingale’s time, but it aligned with her early interest in mathematics. Ultimately, Nightingale would come to believe that statistics used to help reduce mortality rates were “the true measure of God’s purpose.”

Collaborating with William Farr, a leading figure in applying statistics to epidemiology, Nightingale analyzed extensive data on army mortality rates during the Crimean War, proving that most deaths were attributable to preventable diseases rather than battlefield injuries. She was particularly innovative in her use of graphic diagrams such as her famous “rose,” or “coxcomb,” diagram, rightly believing that attractive visuals were more impactful than the dry numbers tables favored by the era’s statisticians.

As a result, in 1858, in recognition of her use of the statistical method in army sanitary reform, Nightingale was inducted into the Royal Statistical Society as the organizations’s first female fellow. In 2020, the Royal Statistical Society established an annual Florence Nightingale Award for Excellence in Health and Care Analytics.

In a revolutionary step, Nightingale extended her statistical methods and data visualization to other areas, ranging from hospital administration and health care management to public sanitary reform and the sources of preventable diseases. These analyses further exposed the causes of both military and civilian mortality.

Educating Future Nurses

In 1860, seeking to elevate nursing into both a science and an art, Nightingale founded the world’s first school of nursing: the Nightingale Training School for Nurses at St. Thomas’ Hospital, London.

The female students – numbering 20 to 30 at a time – lived at school and wore nurses’ uniforms to rigorous classes on anatomy, surgical nursing, physiology, chemistry, sanitation and ethics. By the 1880s, Nightingale had accepted the newer “germ theory” of disease spread, and this became part of the curriculum.

At the conclusion of the one-year program, Nightingale sent her nurses into the world as certified and paid health professionals.

By the turn of the century, the school had graduated nearly 2,000 certified nurses. Known as “Nightingales,” they fanned out across Great Britain to practice skilled patient care, develop nursing care systems, teach, train and mentor.

The Nightingale Training School became a pioneering model for nursing education throughout Great Britain. Similar schools would be established in Africa, America, Australia, Canada and other countries.

Nightingale also wrote a bestselling book, 1859’s “Notes on Nursing,” that guided Victorian wives in keeping members of their households healthy.

Advocating For Public Health

Nightingale’s long, ultimately successful effort to bring trained nurses and midwives into England’s and Ireland’s notorious workhouses has gone largely unacknowledged.

During Victorian times, paupers in workhouses who became ill could be cared for only by other destitute workhouse residents. Nightingale wrote numerous articles emphasizing the need for public health nurses to care of the sick in these institutions, and during the 1860s she called for the abolition of England’s harsh poor laws.

As a result of these efforts, workhouse nursing reforms gradually spread across England.

I believe that a more fully realized understanding of Nightingale’s life and achievements beyond being “the lady with the lamp” can provide an inspirational role model for those considering careers in nursing, medical science and public health today.

Melissa Pritchard, Professor Emeritus of English and Women’s Studies, Arizona State University

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

Physicists consider black holes one of the most mysterious objects that exist. Ironically, they’re also considered one of the simplest. For years, physicists like me have been looking to prove that black holes are more complex than they seem. And a newly approved European space mission called LISA will help us with this hunt.

Research from the 1970s suggests that you can comprehensively describe a black hole using only three physical attributes – their mass, charge and spin. All the other properties of these massive dying stars, like their detailed composition, density and temperature profiles, disappear as they transform into a black hole. That is how simple they are.

The idea that black holes have only three attributes is called the “no-hair” theorem, implying that they don’t have any “hairy” details that make them complicated.

Hairy Black Holes?

For decades, researchers in the astrophysics community have exploited loopholes or work-arounds within the no-hair theorem’s assumptions to come up with potential hairy black hole scenarios. A hairy black hole has a physical property that scientists can measure – in principle – that’s beyond its mass, charge or spin. This property has to be a permanent part of its structure.

About a decade ago, Stefanos Aretakis, a physicist currently at the University of Toronto, showed mathematically that a black hole containing the maximum charge it could hold – called an extremal charged black hole – would develop “hair” at its horizon. A black hole’s horizon is the boundary where anything that crosses it, even light, can’t escape.

Aretakis’ analysis was more of a thought experiment using a highly simplified physical scenario, so it’s not something scientists expect to observe astrophysically. But supercharged black holes might not be the only kind that could have hair.

Since astrophysical objects such as stars and planets are known to spin, scientists expect that black holes would spin as well, based on how they form. Astronomical evidence has shown that black holes do have spin, though researchers don’t know what the typical spin value is for an astrophysical black hole.

Using computer simulations, my team has recently discovered similar types of hair in black holes that are spinning at the maximum rate. This hair has to do with the rate of change, or the gradient, of space-time’s curvature at the horizon. We also discovered that a black hole wouldn’t actually have to be maximally spinning to have hair, which is significant because these maximally spinning black holes probably don’t form in nature.

Detecting And Measuring Hair

My team wanted to develop a way to potentially measure this hair – a new fixed property that might characterize a black hole beyond its mass, spin and charge. We started looking into how such a new property might leave a signature on a gravitational wave emitted from a fast-spinning black hole.

A gravitational wave is a tiny disturbance in space-time typically caused by violent astrophysical events in the universe. The collisions of compact astrophysical objects such as black holes and neutron stars emit strong gravitational waves. An international network of gravitational observatories, including the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory in the United States, routinely detects these waves.

Our recent studies suggest that one can measure these hairy attributes from gravitational wave data for fast-spinning black holes. Looking at the gravitational wave data offers an opportunity for a signature of sorts that could indicate whether the black hole has this type of hair.

Our ongoing studies and recent progress made by Som Bishoyi, a student on the team, are based on a blend of theoretical and computational models of fast-spinning black holes. Our findings have not been tested in the field yet or observed in real black holes out in space. But we hope that will soon change.

LISA Gets A Go-Ahead

In January 2024, the European Space Agency formally adopted the space-based Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, mission. LISA will look for gravitational waves, and the data from the mission could help my team with our hairy black hole questions.

Formal adoption means that the project has the go-ahead to move to the construction phase, with a planned 2035 launch. LISA consists of three spacecrafts configured in a perfect equilateral triangle that will trail behind the Earth around the Sun. The spacecrafts will each be 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) apart, and they will exchange laser beams to measure the distance between each other down to about a billionth of an inch.

LISA will detect gravitational waves from supermassive black holes that are millions or even billions of times more massive than our Sun. It will build a map of the space-time around rotating black holes, which will help physicists understand how gravity works in the close vicinity of black holes to an unprecedented level of accuracy. Physicists hope that LISA will also be able to measure any hairy attributes that black holes might have.

With LIGO making new observations every day and LISA to offer a glimpse into the space-time around black holes, now is one of the most exciting times to be a black hole physicist.

Gaurav Khanna, Professor of Physics, University of Rhode Island

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

Scientific discovery doesn’t always require a high-tech laboratory or a hefty budget. Many people have a first-rate lab right in their own homes – their kitchen.

The kitchen offers plenty of opportunities to view and explore what physicists call soft matter and complex fluids. Everyday phenomena, such as Cheerios clustering in milk or rings left when drops of coffee evaporate, have led to discoveries at the intersection of physics and chemistry and other tasteful collaborations between food scientists and physicists.

Two students, Sam Christianson and Carsen Grote, and I published a new study in Nature Communications in May 2024 that dives into another kitchen observation. We studied how objects can levitate in carbonated fluids, a phenomenon that’s whimsically referred to as dancing raisins.

The study explored how objects like raisins can rhythmically move up and down in carbonated fluids for several minutes, even up to an hour.

An accompanying Twitter thread about our research went viral, amassing over half a million views in just two days. Why did this particular experiment catch the imaginations of so many?

Bubbling Physics

Sparkling water and other carbonated beverages fizz with bubbles because they contain more gas than the fluid can support – they’re “supersaturated” with gas. When you open a bottle of champagne or a soft drink, the fluid pressure drops and CO₂ molecules begin to make their escape to the surrounding air.

Bubbles do not usually form spontaneously in a fluid. A fluid is composed of molecules that like to stick together, so molecules at the fluid boundary are a bit unhappy. This results in surface tension, a force which seeks to reduce the surface area. Since bubbles add surface area, surface tension and fluid pressure normally squeeze any forming bubbles right back out of existence.

But rough patches on a container’s surface, like the etchings in some champagne glasses, can protect new bubbles from the crushing effects of surface tension, offering them a chance to form and grow.

Bubbles also form inside the microscopic, tubelike cloth fibers left behind after wiping a glass with a towel. The bubbles grow steadily in these tubes and, once they’re big enough, detach and float upward, carrying gas out of the container.

But as many champagne enthusiasts who put fruits in their glasses know, surface etchings and little cloth fibers aren’t the only places where bubbles can form. Adding a small object like a raisin or a peanut to a sparkling drink also enables bubble growth. These immersed objects act as alluring new surfaces for opportunistic molecules like CO₂ to accumulate and form bubbles.

And once enough bubbles have grown on the object, a levitation act may be performed. Together, the bubbles can lift the object up to the surface of the liquid. Once at the surface, the bubbles pop, dropping the object back down. The process then begins again, in a periodic vertical dancing motion.

Dancing Raisins

Raisins are particularly good dancers. It takes only a few seconds for enough bubbles to form on a raisin’s wrinkly surface before it starts to rise upward – bubbles have a harder time forming on smoother surfaces. When dropped into just-opened sparkling water, a raisin can dance a vigorous tango for 20 minutes, and then a slower waltz for another hour or so.

We found that rotation, or spinning, was critically important for coaxing large objects to dance. Bubbles that cling to the bottom of an object can keep it aloft even after the top bubbles pop. But if the object starts to spin even a little bit, the bubbles underneath make the body spin even faster, which results in even more bubbles popping at the surface. And the sooner those bubbles are removed, the sooner the object can get back to its vertical dancing.

Small objects like raisins do not rotate as much as larger objects, but instead they do the twist, rapidly wobbling back and forth.

Modeling The Bubbly Flamenco

In the paper, we developed a mathematical model to predict how many trips to the surface we would expect an object like a raisin to make. In one experiment, we placed a 3D-printed sphere that acted as a model raisin in a glass of just-opened sparkling water. The sphere traveled from the bottom of the container to the top over 750 times in one hour.

The model incorporated the rate of bubble growth as well as the object’s shape, size and surface roughness. It also took into account how quickly the fluid loses carbonation based on the container’s geometry, and especially the flow created by all that bubbly activity.

The mathematical model helped us determine which forces influence the object’s dancing the most. For example, the fluid drag on the object turned out to be relatively unimportant, but the ratio of the object’s surface area to its volume was critical.

Looking to the future, the model also provides a way to determine some hard to measure quantities using more easily measured ones. For example, just by observing an object’s dancing frequency, we can learn a lot about its surface at the microscopic level without having to see those details directly.

Different Dances In Different Theaters

These results aren’t just interesting for carbonated beverage lovers, though. Supersaturated fluids exist in nature, too – magma is one example.

As magma in a volcano rises closer to the Earth’s surface, it rapidly depressurizes, and dissolved gases from inside the volcano make a dash for the exit, just like the CO₂ in carbonated water. These escaping gases can form into large, high-pressure bubbles and emerge with such force that a volcanic eruption ensues.

The particulate matter in magma may not dance in the same way raisins do in soda water, but tiny objects in the magma may affect how these explosive events play out.

The past decades have also seen an eruption of a different kind – thousands of scientific studies devoted to active matter in fluids. These studies look at things such as swimming microorganisms and the insides of our fluid-filled cells.

Most of these active systems do not exist in water but instead in more complicated biological fluids that contain the energy necessary to produce activity. Microorganisms absorb nutrients from the fluid around them to continue swimming. Molecular motors carry cargo along a superhighway in our cells by pulling nearby energy in the form of ATP from the environment.

Studying these systems can help scientists learn more about how the cells and bacteria in the human body function, and how life on this planet has evolved to its current state.

Meanwhile, a fluid itself can behave strangely because of a diverse molecular composition and bodies moving around inside it. Many new studies have addressed the behavior of microorganisms in such fluids as mucus, for instance, which behaves like both a viscous fluid and an elastic gel. Scientists still have much to learn about these highly complex systems.

While raisins in soda water seem fairly simple when compared with microorganisms swimming through biological fluids, they offer an accessible way to study generic features in those more challenging settings. In both cases, bodies extract energy from their complex fluid environment while also affecting it, and fascinating behaviors ensue.

New insights about the physical world, from geophysics to biology, will continue to emerge from tabletop-scale experiments – and perhaps from right in the kitchen.

Saverio Eric Spagnolie, Professor of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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

Collectors relish so-called “hidden mother photographs” as historical oddities.

These 19th-century images contain very young children held still by half-obscured adults who crouch behind chairs or lurk at the margins of pictures, their protective arms stabilizing babies. The heads and shoulders of the adults are sometimes draped in textiles or summarily cut off, or their bodies are partially tucked behind decorative mats that frame the centered child.

The startling realization that Victorian infants were not reclining on cozy blankets but on comfortable laps fuels breathless online attention. Eager resellers of flea-market finds advertise hidden mother photographs using terms like “spooky wonderful,” “cutie creepy” and “bizarre.” Articles about them tend to imply a treasure hunt for hiddenness – for adult knees or noses, poised hands, bosoms, hat brims and skirts.

But this common framing reduces their cultural importance to sensationalism: Look at how kooky our ancestors were!

As someone who has studied the history of these photos, I find myself drawing an unlikely connection between these stiff, sepia portraits and modern candid snapshots of mischievous children delighting their adoring mothers. Both are part of the tradition of sentimental image-making that surrounds the iconic figure of mother and child.

Exposure times in 19th-century photography were very long by current standards – 20 to 60 seconds – which helps explain why trusted adults were needed to soothe infant subjects into the stillness necessary to take a portrait. But this technological limitation doesn’t explain why their mothers were half-erased from these photos, which has led scholars to argue that Victorian women were effaced by their culture, and casual viewers to assume that the photographers who produced these visual gaffes were hilariously bad at their craft.

But my research has shown that Victorian photographers were documenting children at a moment of widespread desire to focus cultural attention – and therefore camera lenses – on childhood as a precious time that ought to be protected. And the partial obfuscation of mothers was not inconsistent with images of beloved children, because to cherish is to hold.

These are, in short, images of care.

Evolving Photographic Forms

Photography was a new technology in the 19th century. Early photographers coated thin metal plates with light-sensitive material, exposed them behind the camera’s lens and developed the plates through precise chemical processes. Each exposure yielded a unique and unreproducible picture directly on the metal.

The fragile daguerreotypes of the early 1840s launched a period of constant experimentation. Photographers eventually perfected sturdier tintypes – also unreproducible images on metal plates – and later revolutionized the medium with glass negatives that enabled multiple prints of the same image. These prints required special paper made light sensitive with a coating of ammonium chloride stabilized in albumen, or egg white. With this process, photography became widely viable as a profession, a hobby and an art. In the 1880s, at the height of its production, the Dresden Albumenizing Company required 60,000 eggs a day to meet worldwide demand for its high-quality photographic paper.

Comparing an 1860s tintype with an 1890s gelatin silver studio print shows the evolution of photographic processes.

The studio portrait is characterized by crisp focus, strong contrast between lights and darks, beautiful mid-tones to contour the baby’s cheek, and artful studio lighting to capture alert infant eyes and the gleam of a mother’s cuff button. The tintype is its opposite in every aspect: Its flattened quality and narrower tonal range are hallmarks of this less technically advanced photographic process.

But in both portraits, the sturdy hands of the loving mother stabilize the child.

Picturing Tender Connections

Scholars don’t know who was first to use the term hidden mother, although some think it emerged around 2008. A photography exhibit at the Venice Biennale by Linda Fregni Nagler and a lyric photo essay by Laura Larson, both published in 2013 and titled “Hidden Mother,” cemented the moniker, which ironically erases the children who are the focal point of these portraits.

One baby picture in particular – a tintype from the 1850s – tells a story about the development of photographic technology and its role in documenting the fleeting, tender moments of childhood.

The baby’s softness is enhanced by comparison with her mother’s strong jawline. The child’s contemplative gaze suggests deep comfort, snuggled as she is against her mother’s side. The contrast between soft and sharp focus is not just one of emotion but the effect of the little one’s slight movement during the necessarily long exposure time.

The baby’s placidity is partly attributable to the presence of a third figure in this photo. This child appears to be a twin: One of her tiny hands is covered protectively by another, equally small, at the end of another arm clad in an identical dress with braided trim. Grounded in their mother’s lap, these babies exist in a triangulated embrace that memorializes the intimacy of family connections.

Putting the original mat, with its oval cutout, back on the photo makes the baby seem to float, removing the embraces that support her. It also suggests where the moniker for these images, hidden mother, came from. But hands, bodies and the power of touch are central to such images.

Valuing The Mother-Child Bond

Modern viewers often assume that 19th-century customs consigned mothering to the margins. But I argue that this is a projection of ahistorical ideas.

It is a strikingly modern tendency to celebrate women’s ability to have both children and careers, without accounting for how one person will then manage two full-time jobs. Such celebration obscures the labor and time parenting requires in favor of the platitude that if we do what we love, for those we love, it is not work.

Contemporary biases, I suggest, may hide mothers far more than did 19th-century portrait conventions. These images remind thoughtful viewers that babies are held and nursed, soothed and protected, nurtured and guided into independence not by abstract notions of being the right kind of mother, not by oddities, but by embodied human beings.

The historical phenomenon of hidden mothers might be productively renamed “cherished child photographs.” This label more accurately identifies their child subjects and centers the relationship, the cherishing, that is at their heart. It also offers a fruitful avenue for tender contemplation of mothers, children, and the myriad forms of motherwork and bodies who perform them, on Mother’s Day and beyond.

Andrea Kaston Tange, Professor of English, Macalester College

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

If you go to the beach and dip a bucket in the sea, you might at first think it contains lifeless water. But examine that water under a microscope and you will see your bucket contains a universe of microscopic life, in the form of beautiful and fascinating plankton.

Plankton are mostly microscopic algae and animals found throughout Earth’s oceans, seas and lakes, although a few species are visible to humans. Unlike fish, plankton can’t swim against the current. Instead, they drift through the water, floating at the will of the waves and tides. Plankton are critical to marine ecosystems and to humans, but often glide under the radar of our interest.

As a plankton ecologist who has worked to raise their profile globally, I hope I can convince you that these creatures deserve your attention.

Phytoplankton, the algae plankton, are single-celled organisms. Many of them have chlorophyll, a green pigment (like land plants) they use for photosynthesis to produce the oxygen we breathe. Throughout time, phytoplankton have produced roughly half of Earth’s oxygen, making our atmosphere inhabitable today.

Like land plants, phytoplankton form the base of the marine food web. While cows graze grass on land, zooplankton, tiny marine animals, eat phytoplankton.

Zooplankton include one of Earth’s most abundant animals, the copepod: a microscopic crustacean ranging in size from 0.5 to 15mm. Large copepods are eaten by larval fish, which scientists also classify as plankton since they are too weak and small to swim against the ocean currents. These larvae grow into fish that are eaten by animals higher up the food web, such as sharks, birds and humans.

Planktonic krill, a shrimp-like crustacean up to 5cm in size, make up most of the diet of the largest vertebrate to ever live on Earth, the blue whale. Blue whales eat by filtering seawater through their comb-like baleen, pushing out water while keeping the plankton in their mouth.

Unlike most sharks, basking sharks and whale sharks don’t have teeth, and eat copepods, krill and other plankton. It’s amazing to think that microscopic animals are the diet of such huge creatures.

Life Cycles

Some zooplankton, like copepods and krill, spend their entire lives in the water column between the surface and bottom of the sea, rather than on the seafloor. Other zooplankton only live in the water column during their larval stages, before maturing and settling to the sea floor or, like larval fish, developing the ability to swim against the currents.

In spring, the sea is full of planktonic crab larvae, flicking their tails to swim as they hunt small copepods and other plankton. Crab larvae don’t look like adult crabs: they have huge spines on the tops and bottoms of their heads, and are long and thin rather than round with pincers. As crab larvae grow through their life stages, they look more and more like their adult selves until, finally, they drop to the sea bottom.

Lobsters, mussels, limpets and barnacles also live as plankton in their larvae stages.

Astonishing Diversity

Scientists estimate there are around 100,000 plankton species in the sea. Plankton communities vary throughout the Earth’s seas and oceans, particularly with latitude. Warmer waters generally have lower plankton biomass and abundance, and consist of species with smaller body sizes.

Jellyfish, my favourite type of zooplankton, are among the biggest plankton. Despite their large size (up to 120 metres long in the case of the Lion’s Mane jellyfish), jellyfish are still considered plankton because they can’t swim against the currents and tides. Instead, they pulse through the water.

There are other types of plankton which are much smaller. These are the pico- and nano-plankton that are too small to see with a classic microscope. These tiny plankton absorb nutrients from, and help decompose, waste such as faeces, dead organisms and other biological material from other parts of the food web. This microbial loop wasn’t discovered until the 1980s.

There is so much about plankton that we still don’t know, and there are thousands of species yet to be discovered.

Climate Change Canaries

Plankton are extremely sensitive to changes in their environment, which means they respond quickly to alterations in sea temperature and acidity. As sea temperatures rise, warm water plankton communities are shifting away from the equator, into newly temperate environments, while cold water plankton communities are being squeezed poleward.

In the North-east Atlantic ocean, for example, plankton have shifted 1,000 miles northward since the 1960s. But these aren’t the same individuals moving – this is the whole plankton community shifting, over millions of individual lifespans.

Some plankton groups use calcium carbonate, or chalk, to form their shells. As the oceans acidify, plankton that depend on calcium carbonate struggle to form their shells, which protect them from predators and give their bodies structure.

Coccolithophores, a phytoplankton group covered in calcium carbonate liths (external plates), developed malformations in laboratory experiments that manipulated seawater pH. We are not yet sure of the extent that wild populations of coccolithophores are affected by pH change, but they are certainly important to both marine food webs and the removal of atmospheric carbon.

Plankton may be tiny but phytoplankton blooms, which are dense aggregations of microscopic single-celled phytoplankton, can span hundreds of kilometres across the ocean’s surface, and are visible from space using satellites.

These huge blooms sink to the sea floor when the plankton die, transporting carbon to the deep sea and helping to fight climate change.

While plankton blooms like this are usually natural phenomena, they may also occur due to excess nutrients from farming or sewage. If blooms are too big or too concentrated due to excess nutrients, they can cause hypoxic (no oxygen) dead zones on the seafloor. These kill everything that lives there, including animals that can’t escape this deadzone quickly.

There are few groups that are so biodiverse and important for how our oceans, indeed our entire planet, function. The next time you are on a boat or at the beach and look out at the sea, remember that each drop of water is full of microscopic life that makes our planet what it is.

Abigail McQuatters-Gollop, Associate Professor of Marine Conservation, University of Plymouth

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

The largest field of pyramids in Egypt – consisting of 31 pyramids built over a millennium, including the famous Great Pyramid at Giza – lies along a narrow strip of land in the desert several kilometres west of the Nile River.

The Nile was at the heart of ancient Egyptian civilisation, and the location of so many pyramids some distance away from the river has until now not been fully explained.

In a new study published in Communications Earth & Environment, we addressed this puzzle. When the pyramids were built they sat next to a now-vanished branch of the Nile, which likely provided transport for workers and their materials.

A Changing River

Like other rivers, the Nile adjusts and changes over time in response to climate change, floods and droughts. People and places also move with the river. In the past, civilisations fell and rose on its ebb and flow.

The Nile has not always looked or functioned the way it does now. By reading the landscape in Egypt, traces of the former river and its branches can be found hidden just beneath the land surface.

Now obscured by areas of cultivation and urban settlements, buried by centuries of mud from the modern river, the old channels and their stories have largely been lost to time. Once a mosaic of waterways and wetlands, the Nile is ready to share its secrets again.

Many scholars have discussed and sought answers to the mysteries of the Nile. Previous research has documented evidence for the existence of parts of ancient waterways or wetlands, particularly near the Giza pyramids.

Upstream near Luxor, Nile migration patterns have been investigated, and downstream abandoned channels have been discovered in the Nile Delta. Yet until now we did not have a comprehensive map and understanding of the waterways that fed the extensive pyramid chain from Lisht to Giza in the past.

The Ahramat Branch

Using satellite imagery, high-resolution digital elevation data and historical maps, we identified and traced the long path of a previously unknown channel of the Nile. What we have called the Ahramat Branch once flowed along the Western Desert margin of the Nile floodplain, close to the ancient pyramids.

Many of the pyramids, built during the Old Kingdom (roughly 2700–2200 BCE) and the Middle Kingdom (2050–1650 BCE), have causeways that lead to the branch. Many of these paths terminate in temples that may have acted as river docks in the past.

This suggests the Ahramat Branch was active during multiple phases of pyramid construction and was probably used as a transportation waterway for workmen and building materials to the sites.

Some pyramids have longer or differently angled causeways than others, indicating the builders adapted their construction approaches to the changing riverscape and local conditions at the desert margin.

Other pyramids were connected to inlets associated with tributaries of the Ahramat Branch on the edge of the Western Desert. In all, analysis of the ground elevation of 31 pyramids and their proximity to the floodplain helped explain the position and relative water level of the Ahramat Branch during the time between the Old Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period (roughly 2649–1540 BCE).

Digging Deep

Once we had mapped the Ahramat Branch, we surveyed the landscape and its shape, and took deep core samples of soil and sediment to study the structure and sedimentology of the former river. We also worked with archaeologists, scientists and members of local communities to gather more context for our work.

The path of the defunct waterway lies between 2.5 and 10.25 kilometres west of the modern Nile river.

Our research suggests the branch ran for about 64 kilometres, was between two and eight metres deep, and between 200 and 700 metres wide. This is similar to the width of the river today.

At one of the sites we examined, near the town of Jirzah, the Ahramat Branch has a symmetrical channel shape. It has also been filled in with muddy and sandy sediment different to other surrounding deposits and the underlying bedrock. This indicates that the old channel has been slowly buried by fine sediment deposited by floods, as the main flow diverted towards the path of the modern river.

What Happened To The Ahramat Branch?

Over time, the Ahramat Branch moved eastward and eventually water stopped flowing along it. We don’t know exactly why. Perhaps the Ahramat Branch and its daughter, the modern river, were active together for a time.

The river may have gradually moved to the lower-lying floodplain, towards the current location of the Nile. It is also possible that tectonic activity tilted the whole floodplain to the northeast.

A third possibility is that an increase in windblown sand may have filled up the river’s channel. Increases in sand deposition are most likely related to periods of desertification in the Sahara desert in North Africa.

The movement and diminishing of the Ahramat Branch might also be explained by an overall reduction in water flow due to reduced rainfall and greater aridity in the region, particularly during the end of the Old Kingdom.

This research shows that a multidisciplinary approach to river science is needed to gain a better understanding of dynamic river landscapes. If we want to understand and protect the rivers we have today – and the environmentally and culturally significant sites to which they are inextricably tied – we need a greater appreciation of the interconnected factors that affect rivers and how they can be managed.

Timothy J. Ralph, Associate Professor, Macquarie University; Eman Ghoneim, Professor and Director of Space and Drone Remote Sensing Lab, University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Suzanne Onstine, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Memphis

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

Many Australians with disability feel on the edge of a precipice right now. Recommendations from the disability royal commission and the NDIS review were released late last year. Now a draft NDIS reform bill has been tabled. In this series, experts examine what new proposals could mean for people with disability.

At $14.4 billion over four years, the federal budget’s biggest savings come from efforts to rein in the cost of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The government also plans to invest $213.8 million to fight fraud and co-design NDIS reforms with people with disability. Previous estimates show up to 20% of NDIS expenditure may be fraudulent.

Alongside his “back on track” reform bill in March, NDIS Minister Bill Shorten, announced a taskforce to tackle overcharging that can mean participants pay more than people outside the scheme for the same product or service.

Chaired by the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC), the taskforce will collaborate with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission and the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) to combat this so-called “NDIS tax”. But how does this taskforce work and will it be effective?

Overcharging NDIS Participants

Currently, the NDIA (which administers the NDIS) provides individual funding to NDIS participants to purchase a range of reasonable and necessary goods and services from providers. The NDIA also has guidelines that set the maximum prices registered providers can charge NDIS participants for each item. For example, the capped price for cleaning services is around $54 per hour ($76 per hour in remote areas and $81 in very remote areas.)

However, there have been reports of providers charging the maximum price set by the NDIA as soon as a client is identified as an NDIS participant. Some providers employ a “twin pricing” strategy, charging an NDIS participant more than they would charge a non-participant. For example, a provider might charge an NDIS participant $130 for a waterproof mattress protector but charge everyone else $90 for the same item.

Previously, these activities were not necessarily fraudulent. However, the NDIS Code of Conduct was amended in December last year, making it illegal for the NDIS providers to charge a higher price for goods for a participant “without a reasonable justification”.

What Can NDIS Participants Do?

NDIS participants are one of the key contributors to the operation of the new taskforce. They can report suspicious overcharging activities.

For example, if they are purchasing a shower chair, they could do a quick online search and obtain several quotes. If they believe they have been overcharged, they should double-check their service agreement to verify they have received the agreed-upon chair, then contact their service provider for an explanation. Ultimately, if they cannot resolve the issue, they can report the case to the taskforce.

Participants can also contact the ACCC if they receive a faulty product or one that does not match their agreement. And they can report providers who intimidate them into signing a contract or pressure them to purchase services they do not need.

What Happens Next?

Once the taskforce is tipped off, they can initiate an investigation, although the NDIS participant may not be notified of the process or the outcomes.

The taskforce will investigate suspected illegal overcharging of NDIS participants, misleading conduct, unfair contract terms, and anti-competitive agreements set by service providers.

Providers who are found in breach of the NDIS Code of Conduct may face unscheduled site visits, receive compliance notices, be permanently banned, incur financial penalties, and even face criminal sanctions where fraud is suspected.

Will The Taskforce Be Effective?

Co-designed NDIS taskforces that operate mainly based on participant reports can certainly work. The Fraud Fusion Taskforce, established in 2022 to disrupt NDIS fraud and criminal activity, led to more than 2,000 tip-offs in February 2024 alone. Some of these investigations have led to prosecutions.

The ACCC taskforce could be particularly effective in combating price differentiation for tangible goods purchased by NDIS participants, such as wheelchairs, pillows and assistive technology for vision or hearing. But it is important to note some participants may lack the time, skills or capacity required to compare prices and report them to the taskforce.

Controlling price differentiation for services such as those provided by occupational therapists, in-home support and physiotherapists is more complicated.

Service providers may charge the maximum price for a variety of reasons. For one thing, becoming a registered NDIS provider is costly because of administrative expenses and costs related to quality and risk control. There are also expenses associated with registration, compliance and regular audits. And the price of services might depend on the provider’s level of experience and location. The flexibility of service providers and their reputation can also be factors.

Participants with more than one disability might require complex services, and providers could charge a higher price to serve participants with greater needs.

A Pricing Model That Needs Redesign

As part of its findings, the NDIS Review said the scheme’s pricing model did not encourage quality and efficiency, with price caps acting more like “price anchors” than “price ceilings”. The 2024–25 budget pledges $5.3 million to investigate pricing reforms to “strengthen transparency, predictability, and alignment”.

These are important because the current model can encourage service providers to focus on profitability rather than on improving service quality. And the fee-for-service approach can encourage over servicing that discourages capacity building, particularly for people with complex disabilities.

While the ACCC taskforce may well prove effective in controlling unfair overcharging of goods, a review of the pricing model for services is also needed to minimise exploitation of the system.

Mona Nikidehaghani, Senior Lecturer in Accounting, University of Wollongong

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

New Caledonia’s capital city, Noumea, has endured widespread violent rioting over the past 48 hours. This crisis intensified rapidly, taking local authorities by surprise.

Peaceful protests had been occurring across the country in the preceding weeks as the French National Assembly in Paris deliberated on a constitutional amendment that would increase the territory’s electoral roll. As the date for the vote grew closer, however, protests became more obstructive and by Monday night had spiralled into uncontrolled violence.

Since then, countless public buildings, business locations and private dwellings have been subjected to arson. Blockades erected by protesters prevent movement around greater Noumea. Four people have died. Security reinforcements have been deployed, the city is under nightly curfew, and a state of emergency has been declared. Citizens in many areas of Noumea are now also establishing their own neighbourhood protection militias.

To understand how this situation has spiralled so quickly, it’s important to consider the complex currents of political and socioeconomic alienation at play.

The Political Dispute

At one level, the crisis is political, reflecting contention over a constitutional vote taken in Paris that will expand citizens’ voting rights. The change adds roughly 25,000 voters to the electoral role in New Caledonia by extending voting rights to French people who’ve lived on the island for ten years. This reform makes clear the political power that France continues to exercise over the territory.

The current changes have proven divisive because they undo provisions in the 1998 Noumea Accord, particularly the restriction of voting rights. The accord was designed to “rebalance” political inequalities so the interests of Indigenous Kanaks and the descendants of French settlers would be equally recognised. This helped to consolidate peace between these groups after a long period of conflict in the 1980s, known locally as “the evenements”.

A loyalist group of elected representatives in New Caledonia’s parliament reject the contemporary significance of “rebalancing” (in French “rééquilibrage”) with regard to the electoral status of Kanak people. They argue after three referendums on the question of New Caledonian independence, held between 2018 and 2021, all of which produced a majority no vote, the time for electoral reform is well overdue. This position is made clear by Nicolas Metzdorf. A key loyalist, he defined the constitutional amendment, which was passed by the National Assembly in Paris on Tuesday, as a vote for democracy and “universalism”.

Yet this view is roundly rejected by Kanak pro-independence leaders who say these amendments undermine the political status of Indigenous Kanak people, who constitute a minority of the voting population. These leaders also refuse to accept that the decolonisation agenda has been concluded, as loyalists assert.

Instead, they dispute the outcome of the final 2021 referendum which, they argue, was forced on the territory by French authorities too soon after the outbreak of the COVID pandemic. This disregarded the fact that Kanak communities bore disproportionate impacts of the pandemic and were unable able to fully mobilise before the vote. Demands that the referendum be delayed were rejected, and many Kanak people abstained as a result.

In this context, the disputed electoral reforms decided in Paris this week are seen by pro-independence camps as yet another political prescription imposed on Kanak people. A leading figure of one Indigenous Kanak women’s organisation described the vote to me as a solution that pushes “Kanak people into the gutter”, one that would have “us living on our knees”.

Beyond The Politics

Many political commentators are likening the violence observed in recent days to the political violence of les événements of the 1980s, which exacted a heavy toll on the country. Yet this is disputed by local women leaders with whom I am in conversation, who have encouraged me to look beyond the central political factors in analysing this crisis.

Some female leaders reject the view this violence is simply an echo of past political grievances. They point to the highly visible wealth disparities in the country. These fuel resentment and the profound racial inequalities that deprive Kanak youths of opportunity and contribute to their alienation.

Women have also told me they’re concerned about the unpredictability of the current situation. In the 1980s, violent campaigns were coordinated by Kanak leaders, they tell me. They were organised. They were controlled.

In contrast, today it is the youth taking the lead and using violence because they feel they have no other choice. There is no coordination. They are acting through frustration and because they feel they have “no other means” to be recognised.

There’s also frustration with political leaders on all sides. Late on Wednesday, Kanak pro-independence political leaders held a press conference. They echoed their loyalist political opponents in condemning the violence and issuing calls for dialogue. The leaders made specific calls to the “youths” engaged in the violence to respect the importance of a political process and warned against a logic of vengeance.

The women civil society leaders I have been speaking to were frustrated by the weakness of this messaging. The women say political leaders on all sides have failed to address the realities faced by Kanak youths. They argue if dialogue remains simply focused on the political roots of the dispute, and only involves the same elites that have dominated the debate so far, little will be understood and little will be resolved.

Likewise, they lament the heaviness of the current “command and control” state security response. It contradicts the calls for dialogue and makes little room for civil society participation of any sort.

These approaches put a lid on grievances, but they do not resolve them. Women leaders observing the current situation are anguished and heartbroken for their country and its people. They say if the crisis is to be resolved sustainably, the solutions cannot be imposed and the words cannot be empty.

Instead, they call for the space to be heard and to contribute to a resolution. Until that time they live with anxiety and uncertainty, waiting for the fires to subside, and the smoke currently hanging over a wounded Noumea to clear.

Nicole George, Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Queensland

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

A $300 energy rebate for all households from July 1 and a 10% increase in Commonwealth Rent Assistance are key measures in a budget targeting cost-of-living relief that put downward pressure on inflation.

Delivered by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Tuesday night, the budget also freezes the maximum cost of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) prescriptions for everyone for the year of 2025 and concession card holders for five years.

As Chalmers told federal parliament, “this is a budget for the here and now and it’s a budget for the decade to come”.

After an estimated surplus of $9.3 billion this financial year, a deficit of $28.3 billion is forecast for next financial year, before rising to $42.8 billion in 2025-26. The projected deficits then reduce to smaller but still substantial amounts in the following two years. Across the budget period, deficits total $112.8 billion.

The various cost-of-living measures are expected to take 0.5 of a percentage point off inflation over the coming year, as the government tries to boost the prospect of an interest rate fall before the election.

Looking to boost growth in the longer term, the budget invests $22.7 billion in a Future Made in Australia package over a decade to “help make us an indispensable part of the global economy”. This funding is loaded into the latter stages of the decade.

This includes $13.7 billion for production tax incentives for green hydrogen and processed critical minerals “so industries are rewarded for scale and success”.

A $1.7 billion Future Made in Australia Innovation Fund aims to “develop new industries like green metals and low carbon fuels” and $520 million is allocated “to deepen net zero trade and engagement with our region”.

‘Rigor’ For Future Made In Australia Fund

The policy will have a National Interest Framework to impose “rigour” on government decisions.

The energy relief, which will be provided through the states and providers, costs $3.5 billion over three years and will also extend to one million small businesses, which will get $325.

Households will benefit from the energy help at the same time as all taxpayers receive a tax cut, which is worth an average of $36 a week.

The boost in Commonwealth Rent Assistance – coming after a 15% rise in last year’s budget – will cost $1.9 billion over five years. New investment in housing is $6.2 billion.

Chalmers said the budget showed the government was “realistic about the pressures people face now – and optimistic about the future”.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers told his news conference that on inflation it was “not mission accomplished because people are still hurting.”

International uncertainty combined with cost-of-living pressures and high interest rates will slow the economy, with growth forecast at 1.75% this financial year and 2% in the next.

Unemployment is set to rise to 4.5% by the June quarter next year. Unemployment is currently at 3.8%

“I want Australians to know that despite everything coming at us, we are among the best placed economies to manage these uncertainties and maximise our opportunities,” Chalmers said.

He said the government was limiting real spending to an average of 1.4% a year since it came to office. It will be an estimated 3.6% in the coming financial year.

The budget contains earlier announced changes to the indexation arrangements for HELP student debt and placement payments for teaching, social work and nursing students.

There is $2.2 billion to deliver more key reforms in aged care. The budget also includes unspecified provisions for wage rises in aged care and child care.

Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor said: “In this budget, Labor has added $315 billion of new spending, at a time when we need restraint.

"After two years in office and three Labor budgets, the government is no closer to dealing with its homegrown inflation crisis – which means more pressure on cost of living and interest rates higher for longer.”

Greens leader Adam Bandt said: “This band-aid budget is a betrayal of renters, women, students and mortgage holders. Labor’s offering a future for coal and gas that will wreck the climate, unleash corporate greed, and throw ordinary people to the wolves”.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

Deciding whether to wait and see if your health condition improves or go to a GP can be a difficult task. You might be unsure about where to go, whom to see, how much it will cost and whether you’ll need to take time off work.

These choices can create significant barriers to accessing health care in Australia. There is often limited information available about the pros and cons of the different options. Often, we stick to what we know, unaware of better alternatives.

But making the wrong decision about how to access care can impact both your health and finances. So what are your options? And what policy reforms are needed to improve affordable access to care for all Australians?

How Quickly Can I Be Seen?

Access depends on how long it takes you to speak to a GP, or be seen in an emergency department, or by a community pharmacist, or a nurse practitioner whom you can see directly. Access depends on where you live and the time of day.

The rise of telehealth means GPs now get paid to talk to you on the phone, which is great for many minor ailments, medical certificates, repeat scripts or getting test results. Call centres such as Healthdirect have been available for some time and now virtual emergency departments can also see you online.

There are even GPs who only provide their services online if you can pay. A phone call can save you valuable time. Before COVID, you needed to take half a day off work to see a GP, now it takes five to ten minutes and the GP even calls you.

Things get more tricky outside of normal working hours and at weekends – appointments are harder to come by, it is unlikely you will be able to see a GP whom you know, and out-of-pocket costs might be higher.

If you can’t wait, your local emergency department is likely to be more accessible, or you might be lucky enough to live near a bulk-billed Medicare urgent care clinic, where you don’t need an appointment. Tomorrow’s federal budget will include funding for another 29 urgent care clinics, on top of the 58 already operating.

But things are much worse if you live if a rural or remote area, where choice is limited and you need to wait much longer for GP appointments or travel long distances. Telehealth helps but can be expensive if it is not with your usual doctor.

Who Will I See?

Access depends on who you will see. At the moment, this will usually be your GP (or, depending on the severity of your health concern, your community pharmacist or local emergency department staff). But to see your preferred GP you might need to wait as they are usually very busy.

But a review of “scope of practice” in primary care aims to free up GPs’ time and use their skills more effectively.

So in future, you could receive more of your health care from qualified nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and other health professionals.

But which tasks can be delegated to other health professionals is a significant bone of contention for GPs. For GP practices facing significant cost pressures, safely delegating tasks to other less costly health professionals also makes good business sense.

How Much Will It Cost?

Access depends on out-of-pocket costs. Bulk billing of GP services reached a peak of 89.6% in the September quarter of 2022 but plummeted to 76.5% by the September quarter of 2023.

Last November, bulk billing incentives for children under 16 and those on concession cards were tripled, and between November and December 2023 bulk billing had increased from 76.5% to 77.7%.

They key issue for patients is that it remains uncertain whether a GP will bulk bill you. You often don’t know this until you get into the consultation, at which point you can’t back out. Unless the whole practice bulk bills and so it is guaranteed, it’s entirely up to the GP whether you are bulk billed. It’s difficult to think of any other service where you don’t know how much you will pay until after you have used it.

How Can Policymakers Improve Access To Care?

Government policies to strengthen primary care have focused on giving patients improved access through telehealth, urgent care clinics and Strengthening Medicare initiatives, which are currently being developed.

But uncertainty surrounding out-of-pocket costs can deter people from seeking medical attention, or delay care or go instead to the emergency department or urgent care clinic where there is no out-of-pocket cost.

Cost is a factor that leads to 20% of those with a mental health problem and 30% of those with chronic disease to delay or avoid visiting a health professional. Those most in need are more likely to miss out on necessary visits and prescriptions, sometimes with disastrous consequences. A recent study shows people can die if they stop heart medications due to increased out-of-pocket costs.

The next task for policymakers should be developing policies to guarantee there are no out-of-pocket costs for those on low incomes. This could be a worthwhile investment in our health and should be included in tomorrow’s budget.

Anthony Scott, Professor of Health Economics, Monash University

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

With the new Amy Winehouse biopic “Back to Black” in U.S. theaters as of May 17, 2024, the late singer’s relationship with alcohol and drugs is under scrutiny again. In July 2011, Winehouse was found dead in her flat in north London from “death by misadventure” at the age of 27. That’s the official British term used for accidental death caused by a voluntary risk.

Her blood alcohol concentration was 0.416%, more than five times the legal intoxication limit in the U.S. – leading her cause of death to be later adjusted to include “alcohol toxicity” following a second coroner’s inquest.

Nearly 13 years later, alcohol consumption and binge drinking remain a major public health crisis, not just in the U.K. but also in the U.S.

Roughly 1 in 5 U.S. adults report binge drinking at least once a week, with an average of seven drinks per binge episode. This is well over the amount of alcohol thought to produce legal intoxication, commonly defined as a blood alcohol concentration over 0.08% – on average, four drinks in two hours for women, five drinks in two hours for men.

Among women, days of “heavy drinking” increased 41% during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with pre-pandemic levels, and adult women in their 30s and 40s are rapidly increasing their rates of binge drinking, with no evidence of these trends slowing down. Despite efforts to comprehend the overall biology of substance use disorders, scientists’ and physicians’ understanding of the relationship between women’s health and binge drinking has lagged behind.

I am a neurobiologist focused on understanding the chemicals and brain regions that underlie addiction to alcohol. I study how neuropeptides – unique signaling molecules in the prefrontal cortex, one of the key brain regions in decision-making, risk-taking and reward – are altered by repeated exposure to binge alcohol consumption in animal models.

My lab focuses on understanding how things like alcohol alter these brain systems before diagnosable addiction, so that we can better inform efforts toward both prevention and treatment.

The Biology Of Addiction

While problematic alcohol consumption has likely occurred as long as alcohol has existed, it wasn’t until 2011 that the American Society of Addiction Medicine recognized substance addiction as a brain disorder – the same year as Winehouse’s death. A diagnosis of an alcohol use disorder is now used over outdated terms such as labeling an individual as an alcoholic or having alcoholism.

Researchers and clinicians have made great strides in understanding how and why drugs – including alcohol, a drug – alter the brain. Often, people consume a drug like alcohol because of the rewarding and positive feelings it creates, such as enjoying drinks with friends or celebrating a milestone with a loved one. But what starts off as manageable consumption of alcohol can quickly devolve into cycles of excessive alcohol consumption followed by drug withdrawal.

While all forms of alcohol consumption come with health risks, binge drinking appears to be particularly dangerous due to how repeated cycling between a high state and a withdrawal state affect the brain. For example, for some people, alcohol use can lead to “hangxiety,” the feeling of anxiety that can accompany a hangover.

Repeated episodes of drinking and drunkenness, coupled with withdrawal, can spiral, leading to relapse and reuse of alcohol. In other words, alcohol use shifts from being rewarding to just trying to prevent feeling bad.

It makes sense. With repeated alcohol use over time, the areas of the brain engaged by alcohol can shift away from those traditionally associated with drug use and reward or pleasure to brain regions more typically engaged during stress and anxiety.

All of these stages of drinking, from the enjoyment of alcohol to withdrawal to the cycles of craving, continuously alter the brain and its communication pathways. Alcohol can affect several dozen neurotransmitters and receptors, making understanding its mechanism of action in the brain complicated.

Work in my lab focuses on understanding how alcohol consumption changes the way neurons within the prefrontal cortex communicate with each other. Neurons are the brain’s key communicator, sending both electrical and chemical signals within the brain and to the rest of your body.

What we’ve found in animal models of binge drinking is that certain subtypes of neurons lose the ability to talk to each other appropriately. In some cases, binge drinking can permanently remodel the brain. Even after a prolonged period of abstinence, conversations between the neurons don’t return to normal.

These changes in the brain can appear even before there are noticeable changes in behavior. This could mean that the neurobiological underpinnings of addiction may take root well before an individual or their loved ones suspect a problem with alcohol.

Researchers like us don’t yet fully understand why some people may be more susceptible to this shift, but it likely has to do with genetic and biological factors, as well as the patterns and circumstances under which alcohol is consumed.

Women Are Forgotten

While researchers are increasingly understanding the medley of biological factors that underlie addiction, there’s one population that’s been largely overlooked until now: women.

Women may be more likely than men to have some of the most catastrophic health effects caused by alcohol use, such as liver issues, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Middle-aged women are now at the highest risk for binge drinking compared with other populations.

When women consume even moderate levels of alcohol, their risk for various cancers goes up, including digestive, breast and pancreatic cancer, among other health problems – and even death. So the worsening rates of alcohol use disorder in women prompt the need for a greater focus on women in the research and the search for treatments.

Yet, women have long been underrepresented in biomedical research.

It wasn’t until 1993 that clinical research funded by the National Institutes of Health was required to include women as research subjects. In fact, the NIH did not even require sex as a biological variable to be considered by federally funded researchers until 2016. When women are excluded from biomedical research, it leaves doctors and researchers with an incomplete understanding of health and disease, including alcohol addiction.

There is also increasing evidence that addictive substances can interact with cycling sex hormones such as estrogen and progesterone. For instance, research has shown that when estrogen levels are high, like before ovulation, alcohol might feel more rewarding, which could drive higher levels of binge drinking. Currently, researchers don’t know the full extent of the interaction between these natural biological rhythms or other unique biological factors involved in women’s health and propensity for alcohol addiction.

Looking Ahead

Researchers and lawmakers are recognizing the vital need for increased research on women’s health. Major federal investments into women’s health research are a vital step toward developing better prevention and treatment options for women.

While women like Amy Winehouse may have been forced to struggle both privately and publicly with substance use disorders and alcohol, the increasing focus of research on addiction to alcohol and other substances as a brain disorder will open new treatment avenues for those suffering from the consequences.

For more information on alcohol use disorder, causes, prevention and treatments, visit the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Nikki Crowley, Assistant Professor of Biology, Biomedical Engineering and Pharmacology, Penn State

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

Ahead of today’s federal budget, health minister Mark Butler last week announced an investment of A$49.1 million to help women with endometriosis and complex gynaecological conditions such as chronic pelvic pain and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).

From July 1 2025 two new items will be added to the Medicare Benefits Schedule providing extended consultation times and higher rebates for specialist gynaecological care.

The Medicare changes will subsidise $168.60 for a minimum of 45 minutes during a longer initial gynaecologist consultation, compared to the standard rate of $95.60. For follow-up consultations, Medicare will cover $84.35 for a minimum of 45 minutes, compared to the standard rate of $48.05.

Currently, there’s no specified time for these initial or subsequent consultations.

But while reductions to out-of-pocket medical expenses and extended specialist consultation times are welcome news, they’re only a first step in closing the gender pain gap.

Chronic Pain Affects More Women

Globally, research has shown chronic pain (generally defined as pain that persists for more than three months) disproportionately affects women. Multiple biological and psychosocial processes likely contribute to this disparity, often called the gender pain gap.

For example, chronic pain is frequently associated with conditions influenced by hormones, among other factors, such as endometriosis and adenomyosis. Chronic pelvic pain in women, regardless of the cause, can be debilitating and negatively affect every facet of life from social activities, to work and finances, to mental health and relationships.

The gender pain gap is both rooted in and compounded by gender bias in medical research, treatment and social norms.

The science that informs medicine – including the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease – has traditionally focused on men, thereby failing to consider the crucial impact of sex (biological) and gender (social) factors.

When medical research adopts a “male as default” approach, this limits our understanding of pain conditions that predominantly affect women or how certain conditions affect men and women differently. It also means intersex, trans and gender-diverse people are commonly excluded from medical research and health care.

Minimisation or dismissal of pain along with the normalisation of menstrual pain as just “part of being a woman” contribute to significant delays and misdiagnosis of women’s gynaecological and other health issues. Feeling dismissed, along with perceptions of stigma, can make women less likely to seek help in the future.

Inadequate Medical Care

Unfortunately, even when women with endometriosis do seek care, many aren’t satisfied. This is understandable when medical advice includes being told to become pregnant to treat their endometriosis, despite no evidence pregnancy reduces symptoms. Pregnancy should be an autonomous choice, not a treatment option.

It’s unsurprising people look for information from other, often uncredentialed, sources. While online platforms including patient-led groups have provided women with new avenues of support, these forums should complement, rather than replace, information from a doctor.

Longer Medicare-subsidised appointments are an important acknowledgement of women and their individual health needs. At present, many women feel their consultations with a gynaecologist are rushed. These conversations, which often include coming to terms with a diagnosis and management plan, take time.

A Path Toward Less Pain

While extended consultation time and reduced out-of-pocket costs are a step in the right direction, they are only one part of a complex pain puzzle.

If women are not listened to, their symptoms not recognised, and effective treatment options not adequately discussed and provided, longer gynaecological consultations may not help patients. So what else do we need to do?

1. Physician knowledge

Doctors’ knowledge of women’s pain requires development through both practitioner education and guidelines. This knowledge should also include dedicated efforts toward understanding the neuroscience of pain.

Diagnostic processes should be tailored to consider gender-specific symptoms and responses to pain.

2. Research and collaboration

Medical decisions should be based on the best and most inclusive evidence. Understanding the complexities of pain in women is essential for managing their pain. Collaboration between health-care experts from different disciplines can facilitate comprehensive and holistic pain research and management strategies.

3. Further care and service improvements

Women’s health requires multidisciplinary treatment and care which extends beyond their GP or specialist. For example, conditions like endometriosis often see people presenting to emergency departments in acute pain, so practitioners in these settings need to have the right knowledge and be able to provide support.

Meanwhile, pelvic ultrasounds, especially the kind that have the potential to visualise endometriosis, take longer to perform and require a specialist sonographer. Current rebates do not reflect the time and expertise needed for these imaging procedures.

4. Adjusting the parameters of ‘women’s pain’

Conditions like PCOS and endometriosis don’t just affect women – they also impact people who are gender-diverse. Improving how people in this group are treated is just as salient as addressing how we treat women.

Similarly, the gynaecological health-care needs of culturally and linguistically diverse and Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander women may be even less likely to be met than those of women in the general population.

Challenging Gender Norms

Research suggests one of the keys to reducing the gender pain gap is challenging deeply embedded gendered norms in clinical practice and research.

We are hearing women’s suffering. Let’s make sure we are also listening and responding in ways that close the gender pain gap.

Michelle O'Shea, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, Western Sydney University; Hannah Adler, PhD candidate, health communication and health sociology, Griffith University; Marilla L. Druitt, Affiliate Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, and Mike Armour, Associate Professor at NICM Health Research Institute, Western Sydney University

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

Sport has a role to play in creating a culture of respect, yet women in sport are often seen as “less than” on almost every measure: salaries, sponsorship, broadcasting, leadership, access, media, coaching, officiating, uniforms and support.

Research shows three out of four Australian men are gender equality supporters, but very few (17%) prioritise taking any action.

As Australia grapples with a “national crisis” of violence against women, what can men in sport do to help?

What Does The Research Tell Us?

Rigid gender norms can play a part in fuelling male violence against women and children. And sport is an arena, excuse the pun, where rigid gender norms flourish.

When it comes to sport and gendered violence, a special level of toxic attack and misogyny is reserved for women who “dare” to play, watch and work in sport, and this is particularly heightened for women of colour and/or presumed to be from the LGBTQI+ community, whether identifying or not.

Sport also regularly promotes alcohol and gambling, with evident impacts on women and children – whenever there are big sporting events, violence against women by spectators increases.

Players, coaches, commentators and officials repeatedly avoid sanctions, or get a slap on the wrist, and go on to secure leadership roles in sport, sometimes despite allegations of serious gender-based offences.

The message this sends to younger players and fans is that misogyny is acceptable and that “heroes” are beyond reproach. This green-lights sexism, and completely undermines any messages around equality.

Tracey Gaudry has held a trifecta of roles relevant to this discussion. Not only was she previously a former champion cyclist, and former CEO of Hawthorn Football Club, she has also been Respect Victoria’s CEO.

Back in 2020 she nailed the confluence of issues:

“Gender inequality is a driver of violence against women and it can start out small. Because sport comes from a male-dominant origin, those things build up over time and become a natural part of the sporting system and an assumed part.”

What Are Sports Codes And Teams Doing?

Professional sport organisations and clubs have been trying to address abusive behaviour towards women for decades. Both the AFL and NRL began developing respect and responsibility programs and policies 20 years ago, yet the abuse, and the headlines, continue – against both women in the game, and at home.

There are also opportunities for clubs to take action even if their governing bodies don’t. Semi-professional rugby league club the Redfern All Blacks, for example, are showing leadership: players who are alleged to be perpetrators are banned from playing until they’re prepared to talk about it openly, and prove they are committed to changing their behaviour.

Education is also vital.

At the elite level, most codes are trying to educate those within their sports – the NRL’s Voice Against Violence program, led by Our Watch, is the same organisation the AFL has recently partnered with.

The NRL also implements the “Change the Story” framework in partnership with ANROWS and VicHealth, which includes a zero tolerance education program for juniors transitioning into seniors.

What More Should Be Done?

The AFL’s recent minute silence gesture to support women affected by violence does not go far enough.

Men, especially those in leadership positions, can take action by actively dishonouring the men who have abused women.

Some of the men we celebrate around the country for their service as players, presidents, life members and coaches have been abusive towards women and children.

Recently, the AFL demanded Wayne Carey – who has a long history of domestic violence allegations and assault convictions – be denied his NSW Hall of Fame Legend status. The next step is to see Carey struck off his club and AFL honour rolls.

The same treatment should apply to other convicted abusers such as Jarrod Hayne and Ben Cousins – the list goes on.

To take a stand on violence against women, award winners who have been convicted for, or admitted to, abuse against women should be explicitly called out with an asterisk next to their names – “dishonoured for abuse against women”.

And current and future awards must be ineligible to abusers. Serious crimes should mean a life ban for all roles in sport.

If there is a criminal conviction, or an admission of disrespectful behaviour (abuse, sexism, racism, ableism or homophobia), then action must immediately be taken to strip them of their privileges.

What About The Grey Area Of Allegations?

One tricky challenge for sport organisations is how to deal with allegations that don’t result in criminal convictions.

The legal system has systematically failed to protect women from sexual predators, so we can’t rely solely on a conviction to act.

In 2019, the NRL introduced a discretionary “no fault, stand down” rule for players charged with serious criminal offences, and/or offences involving women and children. Under this rule, players must stand down from matches until the matter is resolved.

All sports should, as a baseline starting point, be following suit.

Where To From Here?

It’s time sport organisations and fans acknowledged two things can be true: good, even great, athletes, coaches or administrators can be bad humans.

Sporting codes need a zero-tolerance approach for abuse of women which should apply to fans, players, coaches, umpires, referees and administrators.

All codes should strongly consider implementing the “no fault, stand down” rule similar to the NRL. Perpetrators should not be allowed back into high-profile roles. Supporters must also be held to account – if fans can be banned for racism, they can be banned for sexism.

At all levels and across all sports, we must send the message from the ground up: misogyny is unacceptable and the consequence for your bad behaviour is that you are no longer welcome.

Catherine Ordway, Associate Professor Sport Management and Sport Integrity Lead, University of Canberra and Ginger Gorman, Editor of the feminist academic blog BroadAgenda at the Faculty of Business, Government and Law at University of Canberra., University of Canberra

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

Governments and their agencies wield awesome power. At times, it is quite literally the power over life and death. That is why in any functioning democracy, we have robust checks and balances designed to make sure power is exercised responsibly and with restraint.

So, what message does a sentence of more than five years in prison for someone who exposed credible allegations of war crimes by Australian soldiers send?

On Tuesday, ACT Supreme Court Justice David Mossop despatched the former military lawyer David McBride to prison for five years and eight months, for passing classified military documents to journalists. Those documents formed the basis of the ABC’s explosive “Afghan Files” investigation, revealing allegations that Australian soldiers were involved in the unlawful executions of unarmed civilians.

It is hard to think of any whistleblowing more important.

McBride’s case forced us to confront the way our own troops had been conducting the war in Afghanistan, as well as the government’s ongoing obsession with secrecy over the public interest.

McBride had been concerned about what he saw as systemic failures of the SAS commanders, and their inconsistency in dealing with the deaths of “non-combatants” in Afghanistan. In an affidavit, he said he saw the way frontline troops were being

improperly prosecuted […] to cover up [leadership] inaction, and the failure to hold reprehensible conduct to account.

He initially complained internally, but when nothing happened he decided to go public. In 2014 and 2015, McBride collected 235 military documents and gave them to the ABC. The documents included 207 classified as “secret” and others marked as cabinet papers.

It is hard to deny the truth of what McBride exposed. The Brereton Inquiry later found what a parliamentary briefing described as “credible information” of 23 incidents in which non-combatants were unlawfully killed “by or at the direction of Australian Special Forces”. The report said these “may constitute the war crime of murder”.

Brereton went on to recommended prosecutions of the soldiers who were allegedly responsible. Yet, the first person to face trial and be sent to prison in the whole debacle is not any of those who might have been responsible for alleged killings, but the man who exposed “misconduct” in the Australian Defence Force.

Much has been made of McBride’s reasons for going to the media, but this focus on motives is a form of misdirection. Whistleblowers take action for a host of reasons – some of them less honourable than others. But ultimately, what matters is the truth of what they expose, rather than why.

That is why we recognise media freedom as an essential part of a healthy democracy, including the right – indeed the responsibility – of journalists to protect confidential sources. Unless sources who see wrongdoing can confidently expose it without fear of being exposed and prosecuted, the system of accountability falls apart and gross abuses of power remain hidden.

It is also why the formal name for Australia’s whistleblower protection law is the “Public Interest Disclosure Act”.

This law is designed to do what it says on the tin: protect disclosures made in the public interest, including those made through the media. It recognises that sometimes, even when the law imposes certain obligations of secrecy on public servants, there may be an overriding interest in exposing wrongdoing for the sake of our democracy.

As a highly trained and experienced military lawyer, McBride knew it was technically illegal to give classified documents to the media. The law is very clear about that, and for good reason. Nobody should be able to publish government secrets without a very powerful justification.

But nor should the fact that a bureaucrat has put a “secret” stamp on a document be an excuse for covering up serious crimes and misdemeanours.

In McBride’s case, the judge accepted the first premise, but rejected the second.

This is why my organisation, the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, is advocating for a Media Freedom Act. The act would oblige the courts to weigh up those competing public interests – the need for secrecy in certain circumstances against the sometimes more compelling need to publish and expose wrongdoing – rather than assume secrecy as a given.

It is hard to overstate the impact this case is likely to have on anybody with evidence of government misdeeds. Do they stay quiet and live with the guilt of being complicit, or do they speak up like McBride and others, and risk public humiliation, financial ruin and possibly even prison?

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has committed to reforming the whistleblower protection regime, and before the last election, promised to set up an independent Whistleblower Protection Authority. Those commitments are laudable, but they ring hollow while McBride sits in prison and another prominent whistleblower, Richard Boyle from the Australian Taxation Office, faces trial later this year.

It is hard to see the former military lawyer being locked in a cell, and say Australia is either safer, or better because of it.

Peter Greste, Professor of Journalism and Communications, Macquarie University

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

The tragic death of Manly rugby league player Keith Titmuss in 2020 due to exertional heat stroke is a reminder of the life-threatening nature of the condition.

Titmuss died after a pre-season training session which was “more likely than not inappropriate”, according to the magistrate who oversaw a recent inquest.

Deputy NSW coroner Derek Lee made several recommendations in reviewing Titmuss’ death in the hope of reducing the chance of it happening again.

So, what is exertional heat stroke, and what should athletes and coaches know about it?

What Is Exertional Heat Stroke?

Exertional heat stroke is the most severe form of a spectrum of conditions classified as exertional heat illness.

During sport and exercise, the body is challenged to maintain an ideal core temperature of about 36-38°C.

This is because exercise produces a massive amount of internal heat, which needs to be released from the body to avoid overheating. Hot and humid conditions stress the ability of an person to release this internal heat, as well as potentially adding to the heat load.

If someone’s body is unable to control the rise in core temperature during physical activity, it may ultimately display central nervous system dysfunction. Signs of this include loss of muscle control in the arms and legs, combativeness, seizures, or loss of consciousness.

A highly elevated core temperature (typically, but not always, above 40°C) and multi-organ damage and failure are also characteristics of exertional heat stroke.

In one study, 27% of people suffering severe exertional heat illness died. But even those who survive often face long-term negative health consequences, such as an increased risk of cardiovascular disease later in life.

How Often Does Exertional Heat Stroke Occur?

Less severe forms of exertional heat illness (termed as heat exhaustion and heat injury) are more common during sport and exercise than exertional heat stroke. However, the life-threatening nature of the condition means precautions must be considered, especially for summer sports.

The condition strikes “weekend warriors” through to elite athletes and military personnel. A recent paper published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport reported there were 38 deaths in Australia from exertional heat stroke from sport and exercise between 2001 to 2018.

However, exertional heat illness cases are thought to be broadly underreported.

In an effort to reduce the risk of future cases of exertional heat stroke in rugby league, Coroner Lee made recommendations following the inquest into the death of Titmuss.

1) Mandatory 14-day heat acclimatisation training

The human body can adapt quickly (in one to two weeks) to repeated gradual exposure to hot and humid environments, which ultimately reduces the risk of heat illness.

Research shows that pre-season heat acclimatisation protocols reduce the risk of heat illness in team sport athletes.

2) Consider screening and classifying players for exertional heat stroke risk

The United States National Athletic Trainer’s Association recommends players be screened for heat illness when competing in hot and humid conditions.

This process seems intuitive, but we lack a standardised and validated questionnaire.

Other important risk factors include hydration status, prior history of heat illness and/or recent viral illness or infection, body composition (high body fat percentage), and age (older people).

3) Identify cooling strategies that are relevant and effective

Cooling interventions that serve both as a prevention (during play) and treatment (for a victim) should be considered in hot and humid conditions.

In terms of cooling interventions, the evidence suggests cold water immersion, cold water or ice ingestion, cooling garments (such as ice vests or ice towels), portable fans (with or without additional wetting of the skin), or additional breaks in play can help.

The type of sport will influence the decision about which cooling intervention/s are possible.

Other considerations include the level of resourcing (amount of finances and support staff), type of sport (the number of athletes who need an intervention will differ between team vs individual sports) and game demands (continuous exercise vs sports that have regular breaks).

Is There Anything Else That Athletes And Coaches Can Consider?

Many elite sport organisations in Australia and abroad are working with researchers to develop modernised heat policies that look to reduce the risk of heat illness for elite competition.

An example is the revamped Australian Open tennis heat policy.

At the community level, coaches and athletes can consult Sports Medicine Australia’s online tool. This provides an estimation of risk according to the type of sport and current geographical location.

Sporting and educational organisations should also consider better education for administrators, staff, and athletes to reduce the risk of exertional heat stroke in players.

Samuel Chalmers, Senior Lecturer in Human Movement, University of South Australia and Orlando Laitano, Assistant Professor, University of Florida

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

We know vaccines have been a miracle for public health. Now, new research led by the World Health Organization has found vaccines have saved an estimated 154 million lives in the past 50 years from 14 different diseases. Most of these have been children under five, and around two-thirds children under one year old.

In 1974 the World Health Assembly launched the Expanded Programme on Immunization with the goal to vaccinate all children against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), measles, polio, tuberculosis and smallpox by 1990. The program was subsequently expanded to include several other diseases.

The modelling, marking 50 years since this program was established, shows a child aged under ten has about a 40% greater chance of living until their next birthday, compared to if we didn’t have vaccines. And these positive effects can be seen well into adult life. A 50-year-old has a 16% greater chance of celebrating their next birthday thanks to vaccines.

What The Study Did

The researchers developed mathematical and statistical models which took in vaccine coverage data and population numbers from 194 countries for the years 1974–2024. Not all diseases were included (for example smallpox, which was eradicated in 1980, was left out).

The analysis includes vaccines for 14 diseases, with 11 of these included in the Expanded Programme on Immunization. For some countries, additional vaccines such as Japanese encephalitis, meningitis A and yellow fever were included, as these diseases contribute to major disease burden in certain settings.

The models were used to simulate how diseases would have spread from 1974 to now, as vaccines were introduced, for each country and age group, incorporating data on increasing vaccine coverage over time.

Children Are The Greatest Beneficiaries Of Vaccines

Since 1974, the rates of deaths in children before their first birthday has more than halved. The researchers calculated almost 40% of this reduction is due to vaccines.

The effects have been greatest for children born in the 1980s because of the intensive efforts made globally to reduce the burden of diseases like measles, polio and whooping cough.

Some 60% of the 154 million lives saved would have been lives lost to measles. This is likely due to its ability to spread rapidly. One person with measles can spread the infection to 12–18 people.

The study also found some variation across different parts of the world. For example, vaccination programs have had a much greater impact on the probability of children living longer across low- and middle-income countries and settings with weaker health systems such as the eastern Mediterranean and African regions. These results highlight the important role vaccines play in promoting health equity.

Vaccine Success Is Not Assured

Low or declining vaccine coverage can lead to epidemics which can devastate communities and overwhelm health systems.

Notably, the COVID pandemic saw an overall decline in measles vaccine coverage, with 86% of children having received their first dose in 2019 to 83% in 2022. This is concerning because very high levels of vaccination coverage (more than 95%) are required to achieve herd immunity against measles.

In Australia, the coverage for childhood vaccines, including measles, mumps and rubella, has declined compared to before the pandemic.

This study is a reminder of why we need to continue to vaccinate – not just against measles, but against all diseases we have safe and effective vaccines for.

The results of this research don’t tell us the full story about the impact of vaccines. For example, the authors didn’t include data for some vaccines such as COVID and HPV (human papillomavirus). Also, like with all modelling studies, there are some uncertainties, as data was not available for all time periods and countries.

Nonetheless, the results show the success of global vaccination programs over time. If we want to continue to see lives saved, we need to keep investing in vaccination locally, regionally and globally.

Meru Sheel, Associate Professor and Epidemiologist, Infectious Diseases, Immunisation and Emergencies Group, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney and Alexandra Hogan, Mathematical epidemiologist, UNSW Sydney

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