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Wildfires are the new “polar bear”, routinely used by the media to epitomise the climate crisis and the threat of major natural hazards. This is despite most fire on Earth being harmless, even ecologically beneficial.

But are wildfires really getting more extreme? Climate sceptics have challenged this claim. They point to a global decline in the area burned and argue the attention given to wildfire is a distracting form of media confirmation bias.

Importantly, not all fire is equal. Most fires are small. Others release enormous amounts of energy. Energetically extreme fires have an outsized impact on the Earth system, injecting vast smoke plumes into the atmosphere comparable to volcanic eruptions. They release huge stores of carbon and cause major damage to ecosystems and societies, sometimes obliterating entire towns or suburbs.

So are these extreme fires getting worse? Yes they are, as our new research, published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, shows. We chart the rapid growth of energetically extreme wildfires across the planet over the past two decades.

Extreme Fires Are On The Rise

We analysed 88 million observations of wildfire from NASA’s MODIS satellites. These satellites pass overhead several times a day. They record fires and the energy they release – known as fire radiative power.

Using this 21-year dataset, we identified energetically extreme fires, defined as the top 0.01% for fire radiative power. Our findings conclusively show there has been a strong upward trend in extreme fire events over the past two decades. Their frequency and intensity more than doubled from 2003 to 2023.

The past seven years included the six most extreme in the 21-year period. This increase occurred in lockstep with global heating, with 2023 smashing temperature records and also having the most intense fires.

Northern Hemisphere And Australia Hit Hard

The fastest increases were in the temperate conifer forest and carbon-rich boreal forest of the northern hemisphere. Recent fires there have released immense amounts of smoke and carbon, threatening to intensify warming.

Last year, extreme fires in Canada blanketed tens of millions of people in the eastern United States in smoke. The fires resulted in dangerous air quality, which is a bigger killer than the flames themselves.

While the frequency of extreme fires increased during both day and night, the rate of increase was fastest at night. We saw this same pattern in last year’s early-season fires in Queensland.

Increasing nighttime fire is significant because rising humidity at night usually slows the growth of fire. This trend means firefighters are getting less respite at night.

Australia was a major hotspot of intense fire. Our land of booms and busts was characterised by sporadic extreme years, such as the devastating 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires. These coincided with a period of record heat and drought.

The area burned in 2023 in northern Australia was even larger than the extent of the Black Summer bushfires. These recent fires in arid Australia occurred a year after heavy rains and extensive grass growth. When the grass dries out, it provides fuel loads that allow very large fires to form.

What’s To Blame?

There’s little doubt climate change is contributing to much of the global increase in extreme fire events. Climate change is causing the air over land to become drier, which in turn makes fuel dryer, allowing more complete combustion. It is also leading to longer summers and worsening fire weather.

Last year was 1.48°C hotter than pre-industrial levels. It gave us a glimpse of what a typical year of 1.5°C of warming (the targeted limit under the Paris Agreement) might look like.

The way we manage ecosystems likely also plays an important role in the increase in extreme fires.

In particular, many years of suppressing almost all fires has caused a build-up of fuel in some ecosystems. Attempting to suppress all fires paradoxically predisposes forests to burn under the very worst of conditions. Fire suppression becomes impossible, resulting in very large fires.

How Do We Manage Fire In A Hotter Climate?

Fire is an essential part of nature, and the health of fire-adapted ecosystems depends on it. We need to adapt our management of fire to sustainably live alongside it in a heating climate.

Humans have a major effect on shaping fire regimes through the way we engineer and manage environments. A key part of managing fire in a heating climate must involve managing ecosystems so fires do not become overly hot.

The path forward must embrace old and new approaches. It must welcome the deep wisdom of Indigenous fire management. For millennia, Indigenous Australians skilfully cultivated low-intensity fire regimes. They did this through frequent use of fire fine-tuned to the local ecology.

But reintroducing low-intensity fire to ecosystems that have accumulated large fuel loads under long-term fire suppression is not always straightforward. Some emerging techniques like mechanical thinning offer promise for helping to reintroduce fire into overgrown situations in the bushland-urban fringe. When coupled with controlled fire, mechanical thinning could help reduce the fire risk of overgrown vegetation and allow cool fire regimes to be used again.

People may be uncomfortable with chainsaws or goats in their nearby patch of bush. But the new climate we are entering calls for open-minded and meticulous testing of all available tools. Like all ecological processes, the right mitigation approaches will depend on the local ecological context.

While the area burned on Earth may be declining in some locations, extreme fires are on the rise. We must respond with a multi-pronged approach. That includes making strong progress on slowing climate change while rapidly adapting our management of built and wild landscapes.

Calum Cunningham, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Pyrogeography, University of Tasmania; David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania, and Grant Williamson, Research Fellow in Environmental Science, University of Tasmania

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

Last summer, the Great Barrier Reef suffered its worst mass coral bleaching event. Our new data show the devastating damage the bleaching caused to a reef at Lizard Island – a finding that does not bode well for the rest of the natural wonder.

A colleague collected drone imagery from Lizard Island’s North Point Reef in March this year, and we replicated his image collection this month. The results show more than 97% of bleached corals on North Point Reef are now dead.

This is the first quantitative assessment of coral mortality from the last mass bleaching event. We don’t know how much coral died beyond this reef. But we do know that, according to other aerial surveys, almost one-third of the Great Barrier Reef experienced “very high” and “extreme” levels of coral bleaching last summer.

Clearly, if Australia wants to maintain the world-heritage status of the Great Barrier Reef – indeed, if it wants to preserve the reef at all – we must act now to prevent more coral deaths.

Measuring The Damage

Bleaching occurs when corals expel algae from their tissues into surrounding waters, usually due to heat stress. It leaves the coral white, starved and more susceptible to disease. Some coral die immediately. Others may recover if conditions become more benign.

The Great Barrier Reef has experienced five mass bleaching events in the last decade – the most recent in March this year. It was the most severe and widespread mass bleaching event ever recorded there. The tragedy was part of the world’s fourth global coral bleaching event. That declaration was based on significant bleaching in both hemispheres of each ocean basin due to extensive ocean heat stress.

Not all bleached coral will die – it can bounce back. We wanted to find out how many corals affected by the March bleaching event were still alive three months later.

In March, George Roff at the CSIRO documented North Point Reef at Lizard Island using drone imagery. We replicated his imagery in June by also flying drones over the reef. We then snorkelled over the area to observe the situation first-hand.

The drones flew at an altitude of about 20 metres altitude and collected imagery at set times. We then joined the images into two large maps of the reef – one for March and one for June.

The first map showed corals were bleached or “fluorescing” – appearing brightly coloured as they released algae. The June map showed more than 97% of the same corals had died.

Four experts independently assessed the state of each coral in set areas on North Point Reef. This allows us to present our results at North Point with high certainty.

Looking Ahead

The Australian Institute of Marine Science will reportedly release its annual report on coral reef conditions later this year. This week, UNESCO expressed “utmost concern” at mass coral bleaching and called on Australia to make public the extent of coral death “as soon as possible”.

Our data suggest an immediate action plan is needed to assess the extent of coral mortality on the Great Barrier Reef. It should include using remote sensing technologies, such as aerial drones and underwater remotely operated vehicles, to efficiently survey large areas. Both methods can provide standardised data and images of reefs, from shallow to deeper areas, which provide baseline data for future research.

Importantly, these data must be made accessible to those who wish to use it. Many scientists, tourists and commercial operators also collect data on the reef, and making all data freely available will help improve and update our understanding of reef health. This will ultimately lead to better decision-making.

We currently have more data than ever before about the Great Barrier Reef – and we need better systems to support open science. And if we are serious about maintaining reef health, Australians must take out international climate commitments seriously, and move quickly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Jane Williamson, Professor in Marine Fisheries Ecology, Macquarie University; Karen Joyce, Associate Professor - Remote sensing and geospatial technology, James Cook University, and Vincent Raoult, Senior lecturer in marine ecology, Griffith University

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

Climate change threatens plants and animals around the world, but some regions are particularly exposed. Some are vulnerable simply due to the huge diversity of species they harbour. Others will experience more acute climate disruption than elsewhere. For some regions, such as Western Australia’s southwest, both are true.

WA’s southwest is a globally recognised “biodiversity hotspot”. Such regions have exceptionally high numbers of “endemic” species – those not found anywhere else – and have experienced significant habitat loss. And alarmingly, the region is fast becoming hotter and drier.

Our new research shows how climate stability in the past allowed ancient populations of small freshwater fish to persist today, despite their isolation. This stability is now at risk as climate change worsens, suggesting tough times ahead for these fish populations.

As the planet warms, ambitious conservation actions are urgently needed to save the iconic biodiversity of WA’s southwest – one of Australia’s natural treasures.

A Hotspot For Life

There are only two biodiversity hotspots in Australia: the coastal forests of eastern Australia, and southwest WA. The latter spans more than 356,000 square kilometres from Shark Bay to Esperance. It is home to more than 8,000 species of plants, over half of which are endemic. Its animal diversity is similarly impressive.

So how did southwest WA become such a melting pot of biodiversity? Scientists have proposed several reasons.

First, the surrounding arid land isolates it from the rest of Australia, which allowed a unique suite of species to assemble. Second, its landscape and species are ancient – many tracing back to Gondwanan origins. This suggests biodiversity has accumulated for hundreds of millions of years.

And finally, parts of this region have been protected against climate change for millions of years, including during glacial periods, due to a current carrying warm water down Western Australia’s coast. This climate stability is particularly relevant today.

Since the 1970s, rainfall in southwest WA has decreased by up to 15%, and is set to worsen in the near future. Annual temperatures have increased by more than 1°C since the start of the 20th century.

That raises an important question: if species in the region haven’t experienced much climate change in the past, can they cope with it now? Our research set out to answer this question by examining freshwater fish.

A Surprising Discovery

We used molecular ecology approaches, which combine genetic information with ecological and environmental data. We focused on two small freshwater fish species endemic to southwest WA – the western and little pygmy perches.

Our previous research showed these remarkable species have existed in the landscape for millions of years, despite not being able to move very far. They made ideal candidates for understanding how climate history might have shaped evolution.

We obtained genomic data from populations of these fish across southwest WA. From this, we determined their evolutionary histories, such as how long ago they last shared a common ancestor, and whether their populations had been connected in the past. Separately, using computer modelling, we investigated how past climates had affected where the species lived, and how this might change in future.

So what did we find? The populations of pygmy perches were very genetically distinct from each other. In fact they were so distinct, it is likely they comprise at least three, rather than two, different species.

We found two separate lineages of western pygmy perches. The analysis showed these lineages, despite looking physically similar, last shared an ancestor about nine million years ago. This suggests they should be classed as two distinct species, and the conservation status of both species should be reassessed.

Our genomic results also suggest these divergent populations of pygmy perches must have persisted in the landscape for millions of years. Our climate modelling supported this conclusion.

Our reconstructions of past climate found little evidence for large changes in the distribution of these species in the last three million years. This reflects the general stability in the climate over that time, which allowed these isolated populations to persist and form distinct lineages.

What About Future Climate Change?

Unfortunately, things started to look dire when we looked at predictions under future climate changes. Large declines in ranges for the fish species were predicted in the coming decades.

For one of the western pygmy perch species, this included a total loss of suitable habitat by about 2070 under a “business-as-usual” scenario – that is, a scenario where no further efforts to reduce global carbon emissions are made.

Sadly, the effects of climate change on other freshwater species in this region are already being felt. Recent drying of streams has caused a decline in ancient insect species. And less winter-spring rainfall in the region is projected to reduce spawning in freshwater fish populations.

Drying and warming is also reducing the availability and quality of natural refuge pools, which most freshwater fish rely on to survive the dry season.

So what can be done? First, it’s important to make rivers and streams as healthy as can be. That includes restoring and protecting banks, and considering the needs of aquatic species when extracting water.

We must also prevent more non-native fish species from entering waterways, and explore the conservation potential of artificial aquatic refuges such as ponds and dams. And more drastic interventions, such as moving populations to new locations, may also be required.

Of course, reducing our carbon emissions will be crucial for the survival of biodiversity, especially freshwater fish, across the globe.

Climate change poses an existential threat to southwest WA’s unique natural environment and the species within it. Swift, broad-ranging action is needed to avoid tragic losses.

Sean Buckley, Lecturer in Molecular Ecology and Environmental Management, Edith Cowan University; Luciano Beheregaray, Matthew Flinders Professor of Biodiversity Genomics, Flinders University; Mark Allen, Post Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Ecosystems, Harry Butler Institute, Murdoch University, Murdoch University, and Stephen Beatty, Research Leader (Catchments to Coast), Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Ecosystems, Harry Butler Institute, Murdoch University

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

Coral bleaching is becoming much more common as a result of increasingly severe and frequent marine heatwaves. Four global mass bleaching events have happened since 1998. Two of these were in the past decade.

Unless greenhouse gas emissions are cut to slow global warming, our new research shows that, by 2080, coral bleaching will start in spring, rather than late summer. Some events will last into autumn. The Great Barrier Reef’s maximum annual heat stress will double by 2050 if emissions do not slow.

Marine heatwaves stress corals, which then expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissue. These corals are left white and weakened. While not all bleached corals die immediately, prolonged heat stress harms their health and reproduction.

Our research used daily data on sea surface temperatures (instead of monthly data that models typically use) and supercomputing to produce high-resolution projections of marine heatwaves. We showed the risk of coral bleaching will be greatest along the equator. That’s also where the most biodiverse coral reefs are found.

Coral reefs cover only 1% of our oceans, but host at least 25% of all marine species. More than half a billion people worldwide depend on coral reefs for food.

So coral reefs are vital for the health of the ocean and people. They are also among the ecosystems most at risk from climate change.

Longer Bleaching Season Will Hit Spawning

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration monitors marine heatwaves globally. Seasonal coral bleaching alerts are based on this data. Predicting coral bleaching risk over entire decades has proved much more challenging.

Recent improvements in climate modelling now allow marine heatwaves and coral bleaching risks to be predicted with high accuracy. Using daily projections of heat stress from many global climate models, we show the severity and duration of coral bleaching will soon reach uncharted territory.

By mid-century coral bleaching is expected to start in spring for most of Earth’s reefs, rather than late summer as is typical today. In equatorial regions, corals will be at high risk of bleaching all year round by the end of the century.

In many regions, corals spawn only once a year. These spectacular mass spawning events happen in a single week following a full moon in spring.

By 2040, this spawning event could coincide with severe bleaching risk. This would greatly reduce their reproductive success, causing large-scale coral loss.

Equatorial Regions Most At Risk

We show the future risk of severe coral bleaching is uneven globally.

The greatest risk is along the equator. Equatorial regions are home to the most biodiverse coral reefs, including conservation hotspots such as the Coral Triangle. To make matters worse, marine life in these regions is particularly vulnerable to accelerated climate change.

Many equatorial species are already living at temperatures near their upper tolerance. They also generally have low abilities to move to track shifting climates. This leaves them at high risk of extinction.

Our research shows equatorial regions are set to benefit least from efforts to curb emissions. We expect significant emission cuts will reduce the annual duration of severe bleaching conditions in all areas except these regions.

The projected highest climate impacts coincide with highest social reliance on coral reefs. This will challenge human populations that rely heavily on their local reefs for their livelihoods and nutrition.

Improving Coral Reef Management

Our research identifies Earth’s reef regions that are at lowest risk of increased bleaching. This will help conservation managers and policymakers prioritise efforts to limit loss of coral reef biodiversity.

We predict much less risk of coral bleaching in regions such as the northern coasts of Venezuela and Colombia, Socotra Island (opposite the Gulf of Aden) and Alor Kecil in Indonesia. Seasonal upwellings occur here, bringing cooler water to the surface that’s likely to limit the severity of heatwaves.

Identifying these future havens for coral reefs will help maximise the success of coral conservation strategies such as assisted evolution, coral restoration or transplantation.

These strategies can help maintain healthy coral populations at local scales, particularly if used on reefs where future climate impacts will be lower. By pinpointing these havens, our research will strengthen coral conservation.

Our research includes a user-friendly web-based tool for mapping future coral bleaching. It will help pinpoint locations for effective management interventions.

Curbing greenhouse gas emissions is the main solution to reduce future climate impacts on corals. However, other strategies are also vital to maximise coral reefs’ adaptation to climate change.

Camille Mellin, Senior Lecturer and ARC Future Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide and Damien Fordham, Associate Professor of Global Change Ecology, University of Adelaide

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

The radio crackles into life on a small boat off an idyllic beach in Ningaloo Marine Park, Western Australia. Two recreational fishers are trying to catch prized spangled emperors in a sanctuary zone, where all fishing is supposed to be banned, to help protect this fish from overfishing.

A recreational fisher further down the coast is using his radio to alert others of the imminent arrival of marine park wardens in a patrol boat. The two fishers calmly stash their rods, power up the large outboard engine, and motor away from the sanctuary zone. By the time the wardens arrive, all appears calm and well. This scenario illustrates how challenging it can be protect marine wildlife from the sometimes damaging effects of human activities, such as fishing.

Almost every country in the world is trying to achieve an internationally agreed legal target to protect 30% of their land and sea area by 2030. Setting up marine protected areas, such as marine parks, is an important way of achieving this target. But they have to be effective in actually reducing the negative effects of human activities, as well as fair to local people in avoiding excessive restrictions. There are concerns that the race to create more marine protected areas or underwater nature reserves could be distracting governments from the challenges of ensuring that conservation measures are as effective as possible in fairly reducing harm from human activities that threaten marine wildlife, such as fishing and tourism.

To explore different ways of addressing such challenges, our research assessed the effectiveness of 50 marine protected areas in 24 countries, from Ecuador to Madagascar and Vietnam. We compared the strengths and weaknesses of different conservation measures for protecting marine wildlife by using a set of 36 “governance incentives” – these include providing financial compensation, requiring legal accountability and establishing local groups that encourage community participation in discussions, decisions and related research.

Working with 70 researchers from various countries, we interviewed around 20 people involved in each of the 50 marine protected areas, from fishermen to tourism operators and recreational sea users. We also analysed marine conservation measures to see how effective they were and observed day-to-day activities on the coast.

Our aim was to understand how people perceive the effectiveness of some of these marine conservation measures and explore their views about which activities, such as fishing, could be better managed.

The 50 MPAs scored a low average of 2/5 for effectiveness – a lot of protective conservation measures were in place on paper but they were not effective in reducing the harmful effects of certain human activities to protect marine wildlife. This reveals the need for these marine protected areas to make a more tangible difference, rather than just being what many term “paper parks”, that exist in legal texts but not in practical reality.

Our research confirms that there’s no one key to success – different combinations of conservation measures work best to improve effectiveness in different locations. One clear overall trend was that a more diverse mix of management approaches resulted in greater reduction of the effects of fishing, tourism and other human activities.

Tackling Illegal Fishing

In Western Australia, Ningaloo and Shark Bay marine parks demonstrate how this can be done relatively well to reduce negative effects and better conserve marine wildlife. Here, fisheries officers enforce legal restrictions on recreational fishing, which has led to the recovery of some previously overfished populations, such as pink snapper, and increases in recreational fishing catches. But it can be challenging to prevent illegal fishing in remote no-take sanctuaries, as the scenario above illustrates. Recreational fishers who are caught breaking the rules are fined, but these fixed penalties are often not enough to discourage further illegal fishing.

Marine wildlife watching, particularly for whale sharks and bottlenose dolphins, is managed through a restricted number of licences for tour boats to operate. Legal conditions to prevent disturbance to whale sharks and dolphins are attached to these licences, enforced by vessels competitively watching each others operations, in the hope that they can acquire additional wildlife watching licences. Satellite surveillance and patrols by wardens helps to monitor wildlife watching vessels.

Ningaloo and Shark Bay marine parks also promote fairness to local people. The traditional ways of life of aboriginal Australians are respected and their understanding of ecosystems generated over many generations is learnt from. They are employed as wardens and research officers for the parks. Each of these two parks has a committee that provides for participation in discussions and decisions by local people representing different interests, including aboriginal Australians.

Ecosystems are more resilient to the impact of human activities if they support a wider diversity of species. Marine protected areas represent complex social and ecological systems, each interacting in different ways with local people in coastal communities. Our research shows that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. There are examples of good practice, such as Ningaloo and Shark Bay marine parks, but even they aren’t perfect, as the challenge with illegal fishing illustrates. And what works in one situation may not work in another.

Our research also shows that to successfully protect 30% of their land and sea by 2030, governments and local people should use diverse management approaches in combination, rather than unrealistically seeking one best solution. The key to resilience is diversity, both of species in ecosystems and conservation measures in protected area management systems.

Peter JS Jones, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Governance, UCL

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

All over the world, frogs are being wiped out by the chytrid fungus. At least 500 species have declined, including as many as 90 species now presumed extinct.

This catastrophic and ongoing biodiversity loss surpasses the devastation wrought by other notorious invasive species such as cats, rats and even cane toads. Short of removing species from the wild and treating them in captivity, few strategies exist to deal with the chytrid threat.

Our new research, published today in the journal Nature, offers a promising option.

Outbreaks of chytrid (pronounced “KY-trid”) are more common in cold winter months – just like seasonal human flu. We found a way to combat these winter outbreaks using heat. Our purpose-built “frog saunas” allow affected amphibians to warm up and bake off their infections. They are so simple you can build a frog sauna using supplies from the hardware store.

Why Should We Care About Frogs?

If frogs’ good looks are not enough for you to care about their welfare, perhaps learning how they contribute to the environment or human health will pique your interest.

Frogs eat insects that carry and spread human diseases. Their skin is also a rich source of new medicines that could help us combat antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” or curb the startling increase in opioid addiction.

The frogs themselves are food for many predators, including humans.

Often starting life as a tadpole eating algae, before morphing into a carnivorous adult, frogs carry energy from aquatic ecosystems onto land – where it can be transferred throughout the food web. So losing a single frog species can have serious flow-on effects.

The Origin And Spread Of Chytrid

It’s likely the chytrid fungus originated in Asia, where the pathogen seems to coexist with native amphibians. But chytrid is deadly elsewhere, possibly because other frogs have no natural defences.

Chytrid harms frogs by disrupting the integrity of their skin, depleting electrolytes needed for heart function. Infected frogs can die of cardiac arrest.

Chytrid has spread worldwide through the trade of amphibians, becoming a seemingly permanent part of ecosystems. As eradicating chytrid from the wild is not possible, we need a way to help frogs battle infection.

Introducing Frog Saunas

Research has shown chytrid is worse in winter. My colleagues and I wondered whether, if frogs had access to warmth during winter, could they fight off infection?

The fungus can’t tolerate high temperatures, so if we gave frogs a place to stay warm – even for a few hours a day – perhaps they could survive and recover.

We tested this idea, both in the laboratory and in outdoor experiments.

First we established that endangered green and golden bell frogs will select temperatures that reduce or eliminate chytrid infections, when given the opportunity.

Then we conducted experiments in the lab, with 66 infected frogs. The group given the option of choosing the temperature they liked best rapidly cleared their infection. The group placed in a set, warm temperature also cleared their infection, but it took longer. The low-temperature control group remained infected.

Next, we wanted to see what would happen if frogs that cured infections with heat would still get sick. Or were they immune? The group of 23 heat-cured frogs were 22 times more likely to survive the second infection than the 23 frogs that were heat-treated but not previously infected. So frogs cured with heat acquire resistance to future infections.

Finally, we wanted to see if this could work in a natural setting. We ran outdoor experiments with 239 frogs. Half were infected with chytrid one week before the experiment began. Then they were placed in enclosures with artificial structures that heat up in the sun, called “frog saunas”. But the frogs could choose from shaded and unshaded areas, with or without saunas.

We found frogs flocked to the sunny saunas, heated up their little bodies, and quickly fought off infection. Think of frog saunas as little factories that pump out healthy, chytrid-resistant frogs.

The frog saunas could be used on a wider scale. We believe they would be best suited to supporting populations of Australian green and golden bell frogs, but they could be useful for other species too.

The saunas are made of inexpensive materials that can be found at your local hardware store, making them accessible to the general public and wildlife managers alike.

We are already building shelters at Sydney Olympic Park, working with Macquarie University and the Sydney Olympic Park Authority. The park is home to one of the largest remaining populations of green and golden bell frogs.

Want To Get Involved?

You can become a citizen scientist and help save frogs from extinction. Start by downloading the FrogID app to learn how frogs are faring. Record frog calls with the app for scientists to identify them. This helps provide valuable data for frog conservation.

Build a frog sauna for your backyard, to help keep them healthy through winter.

It’s essentially a brick-filled greenhouse, warmed by sunlight. All you need is some common clay ten-hole masonry bricks, black paint and cable ties – and a little greenhouse to put the sauna inside.

Changing The Fate Of Frogs

Since the discovery of chytrid more than 25 years ago, the pathogen has been a seemingly insurmountable challenge to endangered frog conservation. Now, we have developed a promising, inexpensive and widely applicable strategy to combat chytrid.

Amphibians are such a diverse group that no single approach will be suitable for all species. So this is no silver bullet. But a useful tool for even one threatened or endangered species is cause for optimism.

The concept could also be applied to other wildlife diseases, where differences between the physiology of the host and pathogen can be exploited.

Anthony Waddle, Schmidt Science Fellow in Conservation Biology, Macquarie University

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

As curator at Manchester Museum for 18 years, I’ve helped create a new exhibition, Wild, that showcases some incredible projects that are bringing plants and animals back from the brink of extinction, healing the land and restoring hope.

Often, the story of wildlife loss and climate change can seem overwhelming, so I’m excited about highlighting solutions that tackle some of the negative ways people influence nature. From June 5 2024 to June 1 2025, this exhibition brings these stories to life, through a rich selection of plants and animals from the near-extinct purple emperor butterfly that thrives at Knepp, an estate in West Sussex, England, to wolves making a dramatic return to Yellowstone National Park in the US.

The Wild team and I have chosen objects, films and photographs that highlight some of the most inspiring ways people are rewilding landscapes, from community action to protect green spaces in the city of Manchester to restoring the ancestral lands and practices of previously colonial land in south-west Australia by the Noongar people. By inspiring awe and wonder, the exhibition gives glimpses of how nature can thrive when given the opportunity.

The word “wild” means different things to different people and, in terms of rewilding, what works in one place may not work in another. But all the projects featured in Wild have a fresh approach to biodiversity loss and embrace a brighter future where people and nature thrive.

Isle Of Arran

A velvet swimming crab (pictured above) crawls through stunning pink-purple maerl – a type of hard seaweed – on the seabed in Lamlash Bay, where the marine ecosystem has flourished. A decade-long campaign by the Community of Arran Seabed Trust culminated in Scotland’s first No Take Zone where no fish or shellfish can be taken from the water, seabed or shore, in 2008. This is a response to the effects of overfishing and dredging that led to the collapse of the marine ecosystem around the bay.

The thriving maerl beds of Lamlash Bay are a sign of a healthy seabed. These habitats support abundant wildlife such as crabs and shellfish and act as nursery areas for commercial species, such as cod, scallops and pollock. Maerl grows very slowly, around 1mm per year, but over time they can create complex habitats that rival those of coral reefs. In unprotected areas, maerl is easily damaged by seabed dredging and trawling and because of their slow growth, it takes a long time to recover.

In just ten years, this marine ecosystem has started to recover with both seabed biodiversity and the size and abundance of commercial species increasing.

Knepp

The Knepp Estate is a trailblazing 3,500-acre rewilding project in West Sussex where the reintroduction of Tamworth pigs has transformed the landscape through turning over the soil and adding dung. By grazing the lush vegetation, just seven pigs have created conditions for increased biodiversity, such as the rare purple emperor butterfly. Knepp is now a breeding hotspot for nightingales and turtle doves.

For 17 years, landowner Charlie Burrell tried to farm this land but found it impossible to compete with new, industrialised farms on better soils. In 2002, inspired by European rewilding projects, he began a new more regenerative approach.

At Knepp pigs, cattle, deer and horses churn up the ground and trim back plants, stopping trees from taking over. Their dung restores the soil by adding nutrients. These grazers and browsers create dynamic new habitats for a wide range of plants and animals. By introducing grazers and then taking a hands-off approach, there has been an increase in biodiversity.

Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park in the US is 2.2 million acres (almost half the size of Wales). This park played a pivotal role in the birth of “fortress conservation”, the controversial idea that wildlife thrives best when isolated from people. This saw the forced removal of Indigenous people from the land in preference for creating and protecting an area of wilderness.

In 1926, the last wolf pack was systematically killed in the park. Conservationists realised that the removal of wolves had knock-on effects on the ecosystem. In the 1990s, the government decided to reintroduce wolves into Yellowstone. This affected local communities and their relationships with wildlife.

Now, wolves help restore the ecological balance of this area by reducing the number of elk grazing willow on the riverbanks. This provides more food for beavers, which create dams and enrich wetlands. This photo hints at the more complex ecosystems that are now developing in Yellowstone.

The presence of wolves divides opinion, but while they were once portrayed as the scourge of wildlife, they’re now viewed by many as a force for good.

Urban Manchester

Cities are not just full of people, they are also home to a diverse range of species: some we notice and like, others we notice and don’t like, and others we simply ignore.

Green cities are attractive, good for our health and wellbeing, and can become more liveable in a changing climate. Manchester aims to encourage nature to thrive.

These dandelions encroaching onto our streets and alleyways are a source of joy to some while others find them messy. Some people see dandelions as weeds and a home to rats.

Sometimes scruffy places that are good for nature are not ones people feel comfortable with. In making green spaces that are good for people to use, we sometimes lose the natural wildness and the wildlife that was there already.

Wild can offer hope. It is about relationships between people and the natural world so it matters what wild means and how it is done. This exhibition aims to encourage people to rethink what “wild” means to them, to find inspiration in messy city centre spaces and to celebrate the abundance of nature when it is given space to thrive.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
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David Gelsthorpe, Curator of Earth Sciences, University of Manchester

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

You would have learned about the “water cycle” in primary school – water’s journey, from evaporation to rainfall to flowing in a stream or sinking into the ground to become groundwater.

Despite how simple it sounds, there are actually some large unknowns in the cycle – especially concerning groundwater.

We don’t know, for example, how fast aquifers – porous rock layers saturated with water – recharge. Or how much water actually makes it underground. And how much rain do you need to refill these underground reservoirs?

These questions are crucial because we rely very heavily on groundwater. It’s far and away the world’s largest source of fresh water we can access. There’s more water in the polar ice, but we can’t use it.

Our research team has been exploring a new approach to groundwater: going down to where the water is, using caves, tunnels and mines. We have installed a new network of groundwater sensors in 14 sites across Australia’s southeast – some more than 100 metres below the surface.

This is already giving us valuable data. For instance, in old mines in the Victorian gold mining town of Walhalla, we found it took more rain than we expected to start the recharge.

Why Does Groundwater Recharge Matter?

Worldwide, we are using groundwater much faster than it can naturally replenish. Researchers have found rapid declines in the water table of over 0.5 metres a year across many regions globally.

This is a real concern for Australia, the world’s driest inhabited continent. While the tropical north gets plenty of rain, it’s harder to come by elsewhere.

Across the continent, groundwater accounts for 17% of our accessible water resources. But it accounts for more than 30% of our total water use.

Groundwater is an essential resource, estimated to contribute A$6.8 billion to GDP.

In the Murray Darling Basin, groundwater extraction increased between 2003 and 2016, reaching 1,335 billion litres a year on average.

Native plants and animals in arid regions often rely entirely on groundwater bubbling up through springs.

Perth relied so heavily on groundwater that it’s depleting its aquifer, forcing the government to build desalination plants. Even now, Western Australia relies on groundwater for two-thirds of its water needs.

This is why recharge rates matter. If we’re using groundwater at the same rate it recharges or less, that’s sustainable use. But if we’re pumping out far more than it can refill, that’s unsustainable.

Groundwater recharges from rainfall which seeps through the soil into deeper layers where evaporation can’t get to it. It can also refill from surface waters. But recharge is difficult to measure accurately.

How Can We Better Track Groundwater Recharging?

Researchers in Darwin recently undertook the largest analysis to date of long-term rainfall recharge across Australia. They used 98,000 estimates of recharge rates, using data from bores and machine learning algorithms.

The result was surprising. They estimated the average recharge rate for the Australian continent was just 44 millimetres per year. But it differs a great deal depending on where you are. In humid, wet climates such as across the Top End, the water table rose by 203mm a year. But in arid climates, it was just 6mm.

For comparison, the typical annual rainfall in Sydney and Brisbane is just over 1,000mm per year.

This study poses a challenge to our understanding of groundwater recharge. The estimates in this study are substantially lower than studies relying on contemporary water balance models, which report more than double the amount of recharge for Australia.

One issue is the Darwin research was not able to show where the groundwater came from or how old the water is. You might think groundwater recharges quickly, but a quick recharge means it takes years. A slow recharge can take thousands of years.

This gap is a concern. Our water authorities need the most accurate data possible on annual recharge rates – and the age of the water.

Our network of hydrological loggers are now gathering underground data in sites such as the gold mine in Stawell, in Victoria, and South Australia’s Naaracoorte Caves, famous for fossils, as well as mines and tunnels in New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania.

Natural caves and groundwater are often fairly shallow. We wanted to get deeper data, which is why we chose mines. Our deep sites are over 100 metres underground.

Our sensors can detect each groundwater recharge event by doing something very simple: counting drips from the ceiling, and comparing them to what’s happening on the surface, so we can see where and when groundwater recharges.

Last month, we presented initial results, which show large variation.

Walhalla lies in the foothills of the Great Dividing Range outside Melbourne. It’s relatively rainy, with over 1,200mm per year.

Our sensors showed us the water table here had recharged 15 separate times over the 18 months to March 2024.

Despite the high annual rainfall, more than 40mm of rainfall over two days was needed to overcome dry summer conditions and cause recharge to start.

By contrast, Stawell’s gold mine is in an arid climate ~200 kilometres west of Melbourne, with under 500mm of rain annually. Even 100 metres underground, we could see water from rainfall moving through small pathways in the rock. But unlike Walhalla, we could not see the effects of individual rainstorms. By the time the water got that deep, any pulses were smoothed out.

We hope our data will be useful to groundwater researchers and water authorities, and expand how much we know about a resource we think little about – but which matters a great deal to how we live. 

Andy Baker, Professor, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney; Margaret Shanafield, Senior researcher, Hydrology/hydrogeology, Flinders University; Marilu Melo Zurita, Associate Professor Human Geography, UNSW Sydney; Stacey Priestley, Research Scientist, Environment Business Unit, CSIRO, and Wendy Timms, Professor of Environmental Engineering, Deakin University

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

Coal will no longer be burned for power in Australia within 14 years. To replace it will require faster deployment of solar and wind, storage, new transmission lines and some firming gas capacity.

That’s a very brief summary of a large and influential document – the Integrated System Plan issued by the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) every two years.

The latest version of this plan was issued today. Think of it as a roadmap, showing what we need to build and where to be able to wean ourselves off burning fossil fuels for electricity.

It shows the lowest cost way to give us electricity in the future is renewable energy, connected with transmission and distribution, firmed with storage and using gas-powered generation as farmers might use a diesel generator – as a backup plan.

What about nuclear, given Peter Dutton’s pledge to build seven reactors? The plan doesn’t consider it, because nuclear power is currently not legal. But an accompanying AEMO fact sheet notes CSIRO’s GenCost report found nuclear generation to be a lot more expensive than other options:

In fact, it is one of the most expensive ways to generate electricity according to GenCost [and] the time it would take to design and build nuclear generation would be too slow to replace retiring coal fired generation.

What Is This Plan For?

Australia’s main grid connects eastern and southern states, where most of us live. Historically, it was built to connect cheap but polluting coal plants to large cities.

As coal plants retire, we need a different grid so we can draw renewable power from many different locations and use storage as backup.

That’s what this plan is intended to do. To create it, AEMO relies on detailed modelling and consultation across the energy sector. This brings it to what the operator calls an “optimal development path” – energy speak for the cheapest and most effective mix of electricity generation, storage and transmission, which meets our reliability and security needs while supporting emission cutting policies in the long-term interests of consumers.

One of the most important roles for the plan is to show where we need new electrical infrastructure – especially transmission lines.

The key findings of the final plan have not materially changed from the draft. But there are some changes worth noting.

Emissions Reductions To The Fore

In November last year, emissions reductions were formally embedded as an objective in our national electricity laws.

In March this year, the market commission issued guidelines on how to apply these changes to the objectives in various processes, including the Integrated System Plan.

There are important figures in this guidance, namely the value of emissions reduction, set at A$70 per tonne today to $420 per tonne by 2050. This is not a direct carbon price. It lets us assess the value of different grid pathways in terms of cutting emissions.

AEMO calculated an extra $3.3 billion in benefits realised in the optimal development path when including this value. Including this benefit is expected to help get some transmission projects get approval.

More Storage, Delayed Transmission

New transmission projects have also proved controversial and difficult to develop, while the New England renewable energy zone in NSW has hit substantial delays. AEMO’s draft plan envisaged this important solar and wind rich region would reach full capacity by 2028. This has blown out to 2033.

The good news? In the seven months since the draft came out, a huge amount of new storage has begun to arrive. Some 3,700 megawatts of storage capacity (10.8 gigawatt hours worth of energy) have progressed to the point it can be included in the plan.

There are signs the renewable roll-out has slowed down, due to grid congestion, approvals and the need for more transmission lines. Things are still ticking along – since the draft plan was put out for consultation in December last year, another 490 megawatts of large-scale generation has entered the grid. This does need to speed up: the plan envisages 6,000 megawatts of renewable capacity, including rooftop solar, arriving yearly.

What Does It Say About Nuclear Power?

Nothing at all. The Integrated System Plan only models technologies legal in Australia, such as black coal with carbon capture and storage. Nuclear power was banned by the Howard Coalition government in the late 1990s.

The AEMO fact sheet makes mention of nuclear to point out that it is a very expensive form of energy and would not arrive in time to replace retiring coal plants. We would need something else in the interim.

The Coalition has indicated it would support new gas-fired to ensure the electricity grid remained reliable until nuclear plants were online.

What About ‘Renewable Droughts’?

To smooth out the peaks and troughs of renewable generation, we will need different firming technologies. These include storage such as batteries and pumped hydro, as well as traditional hydro, gas and other fuelled generation. Firming help manage changes in supply and demand and ensure a reliable system. Demand response – where users are rewarded to use less during peak periods – can also help ensure reliability.

AEMO’s report argues “flexible gas” generation will have to provide back-up supply during periods of what Germans call “dunkelflaute” – long periods of dark and still days during mid-winter, when solar and wind generation go missing. Flexible gas is expected to play a role for extreme peak demand, particularly in winter.

But this capacity is expected to be very rarely used. Think of “flexible gas” as you would a diesel generator – you’ve got it as a backup if needed. In the near future, a generator like this may generate just 5% of its annual potential. The emissions intensity of a grid with so little gas generation will be tiny.

Does this mean we’ll never be able to entirely banish fossil fuels? Not necessarily. Greener alternatives, such as green hydrogen or methanol, might mean we can take the last step away from burning fossil fuels for power. 

Dylan McConnell, Senior Research Associate, Renewable Energy & Energy Systems Analyst, UNSW Sydney

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

The Coalition shook up Australia’s energy debate last week when it unveiled the seven sites where, if elected, it would build nuclear power plants. In making the announcement, the Coalition emphasised the importance of community consultation in its nuclear energy plan. But what does that actually mean?

Back in 2019, Ted O'Brien, now the Coalition’s shadow energy minister, said governments should only pursue nuclear power with a “commitment to community consent for approving nuclear facilities”. As then chair of the parliament’s energy committee, he released a report titled “Not without your approval”.

Last week the Nationals’ deputy leader Perin Davey backed this position, indicating the Coalition would not proceed with nuclear power plants in towns that were adamantly opposed.

But now the Coalition has changed its tune. They will explain the benefits of nuclear power to communities set to host reactors, rather than giving residents the power to veto the plans. That means the Coalition will simply be consulting communities about how to implement a done deal.

No Right To Veto

The seven sites for nuclear power plants mooted by the Coalition are: Tarong and Callide in Queensland; Liddell and Mount Piper in New South Wales; Port Augusta in South Australia; Loy Yang in Victoria; and Muja in Western Australia.

In a position at odds with the Coalition’s previous stance, Nationals leader David Littleproud last week said the proposed nuclear plants would not be contingent on the consent of local communities. Instead, the Coalition government would be “prepared to make the tough decisions in the national interest”.

The two-and-a-half-year consultation process would “take the Australian people on a journey” and ensure they understood the plan, Littleproud said.

Similarly, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said community consultation would not be about securing the consent of affected communities, but rather about explaining why nuclear power plants are a good idea:

we will consult about the benefits, frankly, for those communities, and how we can help revitalise some of those towns at the moment that are wilting.

All this raises the prospect of communities being forced to host nuclear reactors against their wishes.

Top 3 Issues With Community Consultation

The mixed messages from the Coalition highlight three problems with community consultation, as I outline below.

1. Will community views be acted on?

If community members are not granted the authority to influence the outcome of a consultation process, is it actually “consultation”? According to procedural justice scholars, the answer is no.

Proponents of controversial projects often point to community consultation efforts to claim they have a social licence to operate. But there are ethical concerns associated with purportedly granting people a “voice” in decisions, simply to satisfy the appearance of procedural fairness, with no intention of actually taking their views into account.

Community consultation should be a genuine attempt to gauge the views of those affected by a decision in order to shape an outcome. If this is not the intention, we should call it something else – and be clear with people about what is within their power to control.

2. Who is being consulted?

A “community” is not a united, homogeneous group. A resident of a town may also be part of other communities. Perhaps they are a member of an online Taylor Swift fan club, a Ghostbusters appreciation society, or a 5G opposition group. These other affiliations link them to other realities and viewpoints.

In our digital world, we cannot ignore the influence of online communities. Nor can we ignore the problems posed by misinformation and disinformation that create further polarisation.

In a town of people with different (and often polarised) points of view, no single voice represents “the community”. There are several ways to determine what is “the common good” or in the community’s interest.

International best practice shows us the solution lies in good process: ensuring genuine engagement of diverse voices at all stages, from policy design through to implementation.

3. In-principle support versus reality

The Coalition plans to take its nuclear proposal to the federal election and then, if elected, implement it with a national mandate. This ignores the fact that a voter may be broadly supportive of nuclear energy or wind power in principle, yet fiercely opposed when a project is proposed near where they live.

Opposition to local projects is sometimes derided as NIMBY-ism. But when weighing up development proposals that may benefit the environment, it’s legitimate to question whether the burden is being fairly shared across society.

Even if the Coalition wins the federal election and claims a nuclear energy mandate, support for reactors to be built at targeted locations is by no means assured – and may be fiercely resisted. We have seen such resistance in the struggle to secure a permanent site for nuclear waste storage in Australia.

Genuine consultation, directly involving those impacted, is crucial to resolving such impasses and building community support.

Building Trust In Government

The Coalition has promised jobs and cheaper electricity for communities hosting a nuclear power station. But research suggests these incentives may not be enough to get communities on board, because the perceived risk of nuclear power plants is also key to public support.
Research also suggests that for those in the community who lack specialist knowledge about nuclear energy, much of their support, or otherwise, will depend on their level of trust in technology and government.

If the Coalition wants to build support for nuclear power, it must do more than make promises about cheap energy and new jobs. It should educate the community about the science and technology involved and ensure risks to that community are properly alleviated.

It must also work to build trust – or mitigate distrust – in the government that asks a community to take this leap.

Diane Sivasubramaniam, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Psychological Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology and Samuel Wilson, Associate Professor of Leadership, Swinburne University of Technology

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

Australia contains some of the world’s most biologically diverse and carbon-dense native forests. Eucalypts in wet temperate forests are the tallest flowering plants in the world and home to an array of unique tree-dwelling marsupials, rare birds, insects, mosses, fungi and lichen, many of which have not even been catalogued by scientists. Yet our country remains in the top ten list globally for tree cover loss, with almost half of the original forested areas in eastern Australia cleared.

This loss has been devastating for Australia’s native plants and animals and contributes to global warming through vast amounts of carbon emissions. The global biodiversity and climate change crises are inextricably linked – we cannot solve one without the other.

Earth’s ecosystems, such as forests, coastal wetlands and tundra, contain enormous amounts of carbon. But deforestation and degradation by humans is likely to send global warming past 1.5°C, even if we achieve net-zero fossil fuel emissions. Protecting native forests is a critical way to prevent emissions, which must be achieved in parallel with a rapid transition to clean energy.

What is being overlooked in current international climate policy under the Paris Agreement is the crucial role of biodiversity in maintaining healthy ecosystems and their integrity, which keeps carbon stored in forests, not the atmosphere. Healthy ecosystems are more stable and resilient, with a lower risk of trees dying and lower rates of carbon emissions.

The way we currently count carbon stores risk creating incentives to plant new trees rather than protect existing forests. Yet old-growth forests store vastly more carbon than young saplings, which will take decades or even centuries to reach the same size.

On January 1 this year, both Victoria and Western Australia ended native forest logging in state forests. This is a good start. But the rest of Australia is still logging native forests. Extensive land clearing continues for agriculture and urban development, as well as native forest harvesting on private land.

Two States Down, More To Go

The end of native timber logging in two states is a chance for new approaches to our forests, which recognise the contribution of biodiversity to healthy forest ecosystems, as well as endangered species protection and clean water supplies.

Ending native forest logging isn’t entirely simple. In Victoria, consultation on the future of state forests is ongoing. The Victorian Environmental Assessment Council is due to release its final recommendations in July.

The Victorian government has also put in place a Forestry Transition Program to help forest contractors find alternative work in forest and land management. Some of these transition programs are proving controversial.

In Western Australia, around 2.5 million hectares of the state’s south-west forests will be protected under a new Forest Management Plan. Protection of these landscapes is critical, as they have been hit by another die-back event due to drought and record heat.

These forests hold significant cultural and ecological value. Known in Noongar as “djarilmari”, they are vital habitats for diverse plants and animals, including endemic species such as the ngwayir (western ringtail possum) and the giant jarrah trees.

What About Other States And Territories?

In New South Wales, the government is looking into proposals for a Great Koala National Park, which would bring together state forests from the Clarence Valley to south of Coffs Harbour. But with no decision yet made, logging continues along both the north and south coasts, which were also hard hit by the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20.

In Tasmania, native forest logging fell sharply between 2012 and 2019. This cut emissions by around 22 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, equivalent to almost a quarter of Australia’s transport emissions.

Recent policy changes protecting giant trees will help protect some patches of forests. But native forest logging is set to expand in other areas, including clear felling of old-growth rainforest and tall wet eucalypt forest.

Native forest logging is slated to end in 70,000 hectares of south-east Queensland state forests at the end of this year, under a longstanding Native Timber Action Plan. But logging and widespread land clearing continues elsewhere in the state, ensuring Australia’s place in the top 10 deforestation hotspots.

Can Ending Native Forest Logging Help The Climate?

We’ll need to go further and ban logging in all native forests in Australia to help meet our net-zero emissions target, while meeting timber demand from better-managed and increased plantations.

Stopping native forest logging avoids the emissions released when forests are cut and burned. It would also allow continued forest growth and regrowth of previously logged areas, which draws down carbon from the atmosphere and increases the amount held in the forest ecosystem.

The natural biodiversity of our native forests makes them more resilient to external disturbances such as climate change. These forests have larger and more stable carbon stocks than logged areas, newly planted forests and plantations.

If we compare forests protected for conservation with those harvested for commodity production in the Victorian Central Highlands, research shows conservation delivers the greatest climate benefits through continued forest growth and accumulating carbon stocks.

There are growing calls to create the Great Forests National Park to the north and east of Melbourne, which would protect a further 355,000 hectares and more than double protected forests in the Central Highlands.

Net Zero: Deep, Rapid, Sustained Cuts Needed

The world’s nations are aiming to reach “net zero” by mid-century. Meeting this target will require deep and rapid cuts in carbon dioxide emissions as well as pulling carbon out of the atmosphere into land sinks, especially forests.

The land sector is unique in that it can be both a source (logging, agriculture) and a sink (forest regrowth, for instance) for carbon. The natural way forests take up carbon can be increased through natural regrowth or plantations.

Unfortunately, the current approach, based on IPCC guidelines, to counting this type of natural carbon storage can lead to perverse outcomes.

The carbon sink from forest regrowth only counts towards the “removals” part of net zero when it results from changes we make, such as ending native forest logging. It doesn’t count if it’s regrowth after a natural event such as a bushfire. It’s important to count only human-induced changes in our climate targets.

Tree planting, on the other hand, can be counted towards net-zero targets, despite the fact that newly planted trees will take centuries to sequester as much carbon as found in an old-growth forest.

This type of accounting – known as flow-based accounting – can mean a premium is placed on planting and maintaining young forests with high carbon uptake rates, overlooking the substantial benefits of protecting larger trees in native forests.

That is, this approach favours carbon sequestration (the process of taking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it in wood) over carbon storage (the total carbon stocks already contained in a forest).

A comprehensive approach to forest carbon accounting would recognise both flows of carbon (as sequestration) and carbon stocks (as storage) contribute to the benefits that native forests offer for reducing emissions.

Carbon Accounting Needs More Clarity

This becomes a problem when forests and fossil fuels are included in a net accounting framework, such as the one used in Australia’s national greenhouse gas inventory.

In net accounts, emissions (from fossil fuel and land sectors) within a year are added to removals, which includes the sequestration of carbon into forests and other ecosystems.

Because this type of accounting only counts the flows of carbon – not existing stocks – it omits the climate benefits of protecting existing forests, whose stored carbon dwarfs the amount Australia emits from fossil fuels each year.

But if we separated out targets for the fossil fuel and land sectors, we could properly treat forest carbon stocks as an asset, giving us incentives to protect them.

Another problem with net accounting is it treats all carbon as equivalent, meaning a tonne of carbon sequestered in trees compensates for a tonne of carbon from burned fossil fuels. This has no scientific basis. Carbon dioxide emissions are effectively permanent, as the buried carbon we dig up and burn stays in the atmosphere for millennia, while carbon in trees is temporary in comparison.

As trees grow, their carbon storage compensates for earlier logging and clearing emissions, which is an important climate benefit. But we’re not comparing apples and apples – forest carbon doesn’t compensate for fossil fuel emissions.

Logging Bans Are Important – But No Substitute For Ending Oil And Gas

While ending the clearing and logging of native vegetation is vital for both climate and biodiversity, it’s no substitute for preventing emissions from fossil fuels.

To make this clearer, we must urgently set separate targets for emissions cuts for fossil fuels and increased carbon removal in the land sector. This will ensure phasing out fossil fuel use is not delayed by planting trees, and that the carbon stocks of biodiverse and carbon-dense native forests are protected.

Kate Dooley, Research Fellow, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Melbourne

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

This year has been a grim one for journalism, with layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, NBC News, Forbes, National Geographic, Business Insider and Sports Illustrated. Further cuts loom in newsrooms across the U.S.

Growing numbers of reporters and editors, tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop, are exiting the profession, citing burnout as the reason for their departure.

When scholars of journalism study the effects of the shrinking press corps, they usually focus on how it hurts civil society. Vast swaths of the country are at risk of becoming “news deserts,” with limited access to reliable local journalism. This state of affairs makes it harder for people to make educated decisions and is linked to reduced political engagement, research shows. What’s more, fewer reporters means less oversight of those wielding political and economic power.

But to me, those concerns – while important – ignore another issue, one that extends well beyond the news industry. As I argue with Sandra Vera-Zambrano in our new book, “The Journalist’s Predicament,” fewer people are seeing a life in news as a worthwhile career. This reflects a broader problem – namely, the ways that relentless economic pressures are pushing people away from socially important careers.

Meaning Over Money

As an occupation, journalism is attractive to many people because they can be paid to do work that’s interesting and socially beneficial.

In this regard, it is similar to otherwise very different jobs like nursing, teaching, social work and caregiving.

These are “vocations,” in the sense that sociologist Max Weber described them more than a century ago.

Based on strong personal commitments, vocations promise recognition and a sense of self-worth for doing work that’s connected to broader values: healing people, fighting injustice, imparting knowledge, serving the cause of democracy.

While these jobs have never paid especially well, people could get by and raise a family on them. That’s becoming less and less the case.

Across all of these professions, issues with recruitment and retention are so common that the term “crisis” is no longer an exaggeration.

Dreams Clash With Reality

Journalism, in many ways, represents ground zero for the crisis that confronts contemporary vocations.

For one, pay in the industry is stagnant.

With a median wage in 2023 of US$57,500, journalists’ salaries have not kept pace with inflation or jobs in public relations and corporate communication.

Job security, as ongoing layoffs suggest, is nearly nonexistent. Recent drives to unionize newsrooms have done little to stem losses, and they do nothing at all for the freelancers that constitute a growing share of all journalists – and, for the most part, belong to no union at all.

Inside or outside newsrooms, work typically involves longer hours and more demands.

And to what end? In many cases, it’s to perform tasks that aren’t that interesting or socially valuable.

The journalists we spoke to bemoaned the relentless demands to churn out new content for websites and social media feeds. They talked about using multimedia to report on topics that were assigned primarily for their potential to amuse and entertain, rather than to inform or provoke thought. They griped about spending more time sitting at their desks sifting through press releases instead of gathering original reports from the field. And they described fewer and fewer opportunities to pursue stories that are personally interesting and socially valuable.

In this context, it is hardly surprising that many people decide to leave journalism, or avoid a career in it entirely. Jobs in public relations pay substantially more, with a $66,750 median annual wage, and involve fixed hours and more stability.

To be sure, these alternative careers might not promise the same adventure and excitement of journalism. But that also means people in that field are less likely to find themselves frustrated by unmet expectations.

More surprising – and relevant for considering the crisis vocations face more broadly – is the fact that so many people, despite these conditions, nonetheless still find work in journalism appealing.

This appeal is not naively held. Surveys regularly show that aspiring journalists are well aware of the troubles confronting the industry. They’re nonetheless still willing to sacrifice better pay and job security for work that allows for self-expression and connects to broader values.

Their persistence, in spite of these conditions, highlights something important about journalism and vocations more broadly: These are careers that provide rewards that cannot be reduced to money.

Creeping Disillusionment

The enduring attraction of contemporary vocations clarifies the nature of the crisis. In contrast to older vocations, such as the priesthood, many people still dream of being journalists, nurses and teachers.

But people who seek out these vocations today routinely find themselves exhausted and demoralized.

Nurses and caretakers are encouraged to eliminate “inefficiencies” so that the provision of care does not impede their employers’ ability to make money. Teachers are tasked with imparting practical skills to students while becoming more “entrepreneurial” themselves as budgets get slashed. Journalists are asked to produce news that conforms to, rather than challenges, audience expectations.

Add in the low pay, and these conditions threaten to reduce the belief that such jobs are worthwhile.

Many of the journalists we spoke to while researching our book find ways to manage the disappointments that come from doing work that stands in tension with what initially drew them. Or they reorient their work to better adapt to the profession’s commercial needs.

The fact that so many persist in the profession – at least for a while – should not distract from the frustrations and dissatisfaction that this produces.

At some point, the grip of market forces could erode interest in vocations to such an extent that they disappear altogether. In fact, some vocations today are probably sustained more by their idealized reputations on the silver screen – in films like “Spotlight” and “Dead Poets Society” – than they are by the experiences of actual reporters and teachers in 2024.

For the moment – and for the foreseeable future – the more likely development is not disinterest, but a struggle to have a career in these fields. That’s not just a failure of a profession overtaken by commercial considerations. It’s a reflection of a society unable to satisfy its citizens’ basic desires for finding meaning through the work they do.

Matthew Powers, Associate Professor of Communication, University of Washington

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

With the current buzz around artificial intelligence (AI), it would be easy to assume that it is a recent innovation. In fact, AI has been around in one form or another for more than 70 years. To understand the current generation of AI tools and where they might lead, it is helpful to understand how we got here.

Each generation of AI tools can be seen as an improvement on those that went before, but none of the tools are headed toward consciousness.

The mathematician and computing pioneer Alan Turing published an article in 1950 with the opening sentence: “I propose to consider the question, ‘Can machines think?’”. He goes on to propose something called the imitation game, now commonly called the Turing test, in which a machine is considered intelligent if it cannot be distinguished from a human in a blind conversation.

Five years later, came the first published use of the phrase “artificial intelligence” in a proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence.

From those early beginnings, a branch of AI that became known as expert systems was developed from the 1960s onward. Those systems were designed to capture human expertise in specialised domains. They used explicit representations of knowledge and are, therefore, an example of what’s called symbolic AI.

There were many well-publicised early successes, including systems for identifying organic molecules, diagnosing blood infections, and prospecting for minerals. One of the most eye-catching examples was a system called R1 that, in 1982, was reportedly saving the Digital Equipment Corporation US$25m per annum by designing efficient configurations of its minicomputer systems.

The key benefit of expert systems was that a subject specialist without any coding expertise could, in principle, build and maintain the computer’s knowledge base. A software component known as the inference engine then applied that knowledge to solve new problems within the subject domain, with a trail of evidence providing a form of explanation.

These were all the rage in the 1980s, with organisations clamouring to build their own expert systems, and they remain a useful part of AI today.

Enter Machine Learning

The human brain contains around 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons, interconnected by a dendritic (branching) structure. So, while expert systems aimed to model human knowledge, a separate field known as connectionism was also emerging that aimed to model the human brain in a more literal way. In 1943, two researchers called Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts had produced a mathematical model for neurons, whereby each one would produce a binary output depending on its inputs.

One of the earliest computer implementations of connected neurons was developed by Bernard Widrow and Ted Hoff in 1960. Such developments were interesting, but they were of limited practical use until the development of a learning algorithm for a software model called the multi-layered perceptron (MLP) in 1986.

The MLP is an arrangement of typically three or four layers of simple simulated neurons, where each layer is fully interconnected with the next. The learning algorithm for the MLP was a breakthrough. It enabled the first practical tool that could learn from a set of examples (the training data) and then generalise so that it could classify previously unseen input data (the testing data).

It achieved this feat by attaching numerical weightings on the connections between neurons and adjusting them to get the best classification with the training data, before being deployed to classify previously unseen examples.

The MLP could handle a wide range of practical applications, provided the data was presented in a format that it could use. A classic example was the recognition of handwritten characters, but only if the images were pre-processed to pick out the key features.

Newer AI Models

Following the success of the MLP, numerous alternative forms of neural network began to emerge. An important one was the convolutional neural network (CNN) in 1998, which was similar to an MLP apart from its additional layers of neurons for identifying the key features of an image, thereby removing the need for pre-processing.

Both the MLP and the CNN were discriminative models, meaning that they could make a decision, typically classifying their inputs to produce an interpretation, diagnosis, prediction, or recommendation. Meanwhile, other neural network models were being developed that were generative, meaning that they could create something new, after being trained on large numbers of prior examples.

Generative neural networks could produce text, images, or music, as well as generate new sequences to assist in scientific discoveries.

Two models of generative neural network have stood out: generative-adversarial networks (GANs) and transformer networks. GANs achieve good results because they are partly “adversarial”, which can be thought of as a built-in critic that demands improved quality from the “generative” component.

Transformer networks have come to prominence through models such as GPT4 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4) and its text-based version, ChatGPT. These large-language models (LLMs) have been trained on enormous datasets, drawn from the Internet. Human feedback improves their performance further still through so-called reinforcement learning.

As well as producing an impressive generative capability, the vast training set has meant that such networks are no longer limited to specialised narrow domains like their predecessors, but they are now generalised to cover any topic.

Where Is AI Going?

The capabilities of LLMs have led to dire predictions of AI taking over the world. Such scaremongering is unjustified, in my view. Although current models are evidently more powerful than their predecessors, the trajectory remains firmly toward greater capacity, reliability and accuracy, rather than toward any form of consciousness.

As Professor Michael Wooldridge remarked in his evidence to the UK Parliament’s House of Lords in 2017, “the Hollywood dream of conscious machines is not imminent, and indeed I see no path taking us there”. Seven years later, his assessment still holds true.

There are many positive and exciting potential applications for AI, but a look at the history shows that machine learning is not the only tool. Symbolic AI still has a role, as it allows known facts, understanding, and human perspectives to be incorporated.

A driverless car, for example, can be provided with the rules of the road rather than learning them by example. A medical diagnosis system can be checked against medical knowledge to provide verification and explanation of the outputs from a machine learning system.

Societal knowledge can be applied to filter out offensive or biased outputs. The future is bright, and it will involve the use of a range of AI techniques, including some that have been around for many years.

Adrian Hopgood, Independent Consultant and Emeritus Professor of Intelligent Systems, University of Portsmouth

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

Your spacecraft is spiralling out of control, and you will hit planet Arakis unless you fire up the thermal after-boosters. Which of the two buttons below would help you fire up the boosters on time? Would you be more likely to survive if the cockpit designer had installed the button on the left or the right?

If you picked the left button, congratulations! Science suggests you might have just survived the crash landing. But what is it about these buttons that made you pick one button over the other?

The short answer is beauty, with the button on the left being more aesthetically appealing than the one on the right – making us spot it quicker. That may seem surprising. But beauty is more important to us than we tend to realise. As the poet John Keats put it: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know.”

How much we like something and how beautiful we find it, can have a compelling effect on our experience and behaviour. Research shows that when we see beautiful things – be it a person, a painting or a kettle – we attribute a whole host of positive affectations to them like truth, innocence and efficiency.

Beauty emerges from different properties of the loved thing. Sure, though there is a certain degree of subjectivity in what we like – I may love something that you don’t – but, when it comes to beauty, there are some well-established properties that matter.

These include certain properties of the object itself, such as proportion, symmetry and curvature, as well as the relationship between the object and the viewer, including the degree of familiarity.

For instance, we tend to like classic architecture such as the Parthenon, because of its alluring proportions (such as the golden ratio), and we tend to find paintings of familiar motifs more beautiful than those of unfamiliar ones.

A generally accepted principle accounting for what we like is the processing fluency theory: the easier it is to understand something, the more we like it.

Aesthetics Matter

But why care about beauty? Why not take a utilitarian approach and embrace the functional above all things? Put simply: aesthetics matter, and it shows in our behaviour and performance.

We surround ourselves with things we like, objects that are appealing to the eye. We visit art galleries and look at beautiful paintings. We surround ourselves with nice things at home.

We also tend to persevere more with things we like. A case in point is mathematics, where an elegant and beautiful equation is preferred over a clumsy one. We tend to think that beautiful things will work better and be easier to learn and use. And sometimes we are correct – such as when we reach for a simple pencil sharpener because we think it will work better than a more cumbersome design.

But aesthetics can also influence performance in tasks where efficiency – speed and accuracy – matters. Even when we’re not aware of it. In my own research, my colleague and I asked participants in our lab to find icons on a screen. After controlling for several variables – such as complexity, meaningfulness, familiarity and concreteness – we found that participants spotted appealing icons faster than their less appealing counterparts.

But this was only when the task was difficult. That is, when the icons were complex, abstract or unfamiliar, there was a clear advantage for the more aesthetically appealing targets. By contrast, when the icons were visually simple, concrete or familiar, aesthetic appeal no longer mattered – the task was easy enough already.

In the figure at the top, both spaceship booster icons are complex, but the one on the left has greater aesthetic appeal — and that is why the left button would be the better one to put into your spaceship.

Aesthetics Can Beat The Blues

Shops often carefully select music, objects and scents that can influence our buying behaviour. In our recent study, we showed how and why this works.

We put participants in a positive or negative mood by listening to either a happy or sad piece of music and reading a list of statements. We then asked them to complete a timed search task. Previous research shows that negative moods can negatively affect our performance.

People in a positive mood found the appealing icons more easily than the unappealing icons. This benefit, however, also emerged for participants in a negative mood, but a little later. We concluded that the appealing stimuli must be inherently rewarding, with aesthetic appeal helping to overcome the detrimental effects of negative mood on performance – that is, appeal can beat the blues.

It seems that being in a positive mood makes us more likely to engage with beautiful things. But even in a negative mood, appealing items are likely to capture attention and influence behaviour – as long as we remain exposed to them long enough.

There’s increasing evidence that small doses of psychedelics in a controlled environment such as a clinic can help treat depression. Such drugs typically produce intense experiences of beauty – in terms of colours and shapes – and help us feel more at one with our surroundings.

Small But Significant Effect

Aesthetic appeal can decrease a participant’s response time by roughly one tenth of a second. This may seem small but can be quite significant: savings of even a few milliseconds at a time all add up when dealing with a bad wifi connection or a slow 3G signal on a smartphone.

Visionary leaders and innovators have long had an intuitive grasp of the importance of aesthetic appeal and simplicity in industrial design — perhaps none more so than Apple’s founder Steve Jobs, whose commitments to aesthetics and simplicity were legendary.

Sadly, it appears as though many designers did not follow Jobs’ visionary intuition. Perhaps the accumulating data will finally convince them that design has an important impact on performance.

The next time you’re designing a disruptive mobile app, or even the control centre for your spacecraft, remember how important aesthetics and beauty are — it just might save your crash landing.

Irene Reppa, Assistant Professor, Psychology, Swansea University

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

In 1987, the fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier shot the supermodel Naomi Campbell in the desert wearing a gold Chanel jacket. It’s a stunning photograph and a historic one. This image featured on the December issue of British Vogue that year – it was only the third time the fashion magazine had a black woman on its cover.

The picture is so iconic it was acquired by The National Portrait Gallery for its permanent collection in 2016. It can currently be seen at the V&A in an exhibition celebrating the life and career of Naomi Campbell.

Born in the 1980s myself, my teenage years were during the 1990s, when Campbell rose to fame. It was uncommon then to see a woman of similar skin tone to me in mainstream media. This cover was groundbreaking, coming at a time when fashion editors believed that black models didn’t sell issues. It was also taken in the first year of Campbell’s career – a career which would go on to break so many more barriers.

As the fashion expert and writer Michaela Angela Davies puts it: “Black and non-white models are still generally regarded as a trend — seasonal and largely disposable in a mid-20th-century Dior-esque kind of way. Naomi Campbell disrupted that disregard. She was perennial, inevitable, and undeniable. Naomi was the activator.”

Naomi at the V&A is the first exhibition ever to focus on the person who wears the garments, rather than the designer who created them. It goes some way to correcting the historical oversight of the significant effect of models on fashion culture.

This exhibition is a testament to just how important the black British model has been to wider culture and representation, in the fashion world and beyond.

Produced with Campbell, the exhibition features pieces from her own wardrobe along with loans from designer archives and objects from the V&A’s collections representing key moments in her 40-year career. Spread across two floors, intricately woven along these pieces is the story of how she succeeded despite the immense challenges of being a young black woman in this era, which inspired her activism.

It begins with a section on the early years of her life. You can hear Campbell’s own voice talk about the “the freedom of expressing yourself through dance”. Campbell was scouted in 1985 at the age of 15 when she was pursuing her dream of becoming a dancer. The exhibition shows how this background set her up for her unexpected career as a model.

Campbell’s first catwalk was for French designer Yves Saint Laurent in 1987. In this section, a photograph of her entry pass for that show sits close to a pair of scuffed ballet shoes. As Davies said: “No one walks like Naomi Campbell. She walks like a warrior and navigates the territory of high fashion with supernatural flair.”

A video montage of such striking walks down catwalks greets visitors before you even enter the exhibition. In it, you see Campbell stomping the catwalks of Anna Sui, Chanel, Vivienne Westwood and Prada. Each frame appears a work of artistry and a testament to her commanding presence.

“God bless Yves,” she says in a caption that appears on the label prefacing the feather dress she wore her first couture. She attributes Laurent as the designer who helped change the course of her career.

Yves Saint Laurent reportedly threatened to withdraw his advertising from French Vogue if they continued to refuse to cast black models for their cover. Yet, as much as the exhibition is about the clothes, accessories, and the collaborations, it very much connects to contemporary conversations about diversity in the fashion industry. In Campbell’s words:

When I look at Iman and Beverly Johnson and Naomi Sims and Peggy Dillard, and all the others, I appreciate the fact that they opened the door for me. If they had not come before, I would never be as far along as I am now. And I hope that I’m opening the door for people who’re behind me.

This exhibition portrays Campbell not just as a supermodel, but as a cultural innovator, highlighting her role in disrupting established norms, breaking racial barriers and using her platform to empower new creatives, advocate for equality and drive social change.

As one of the first black supermodels to achieve global recognition, she defied convention and broke the mould of what was considered the accepted beauty standard of the time. Her career success has contributed to improving standards for the representation of other ethnically diverse models in fashion.

While this metamorphosis continues, we should take a moment to enjoy all that the glitz and glamour this exhibition has to offer. It celebrates the rise of a supermodel icon – and the transformative power of fashion.

Tania Phipps-Rufus, Senior Lecturer and Course Leader of the BA (Hons) in Fashion Culture & Business, University of East London

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

Like making best friends with the strangers in the next tent, peeing in a cup because you can’t face the queues for the portaloos and using wet wipes as a shower substitute, being a bit messy is all part of the summer festival experience. But, while you might not wash your hair for days – no matter what state it’s in – and you face is caked in the same glitter for the duration of the festival, there’s one rule that you must follow if you want your festival experience to be as fun as possible: wash your hands regularly.

You might think that should go without saying – but it doesn’t. In 2023, a UK survey of 1,500 18- to 24-year-old festival goers found that 22% of young people do not clean their hands the whole time they are at festival, even if they are there for days. A further 26% said they cleaned their hands only once a day – and 31% admitted to not cleaning their hands even after going to the toilet.

Most participants suggested their lack of hand hygiene was due to queues for facilities – or a lack of facilities. But, in many, much larger studies – conducted when when facilities are available – only 51% of people clean their hands after using the toilet. Even during the COVID pandemic, only 42% of university students in the UK reported “mostly” or “always” cleaning their hands when recommended.

So, although a lack of facilities may be part of the problem at festivals, there is clearly more going on.

Hand washing sounds like such a simple – and quick – thing to do, but research shows that bad habits, being in a rush and having other priorities are all reasons why so many still don’t clean their hands. According to a 2022 study conducted in Canada, some 18- to 25- year-olds reported a perception that cleaning hands in dirty facilities would leave hands more contaminated than skipping hand hygiene altogether.

Other participants said they “forget” to wash their hands. University students sometimes had “unrealistic optimism”, believing that infections happened to other people but were unlikely to happen to them.

No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

Read more from Quarter Life:

• Headed to Glasto? How to stay healthy in the festival heat

• Four ways to cultivate a unique taste in music in the age of streaming algorithms

• Social media will tell you birth control causes mental health issues, weight gain and infertility – here are the facts

Whether a shortage or lack of facilities is the reason for grubby hands or whether normal hygiene rules don’t seem to fit in with the happy-go-lucky approach of festival life, festival goers should be still be scrupulous about washing their mucky mitts – even if they happily neglect every other part of their body. Why? Because dirty hands can quickly put an end to the fun.

Hand hygiene, washing hands with soap and water or using alcohol hand gel helps prevent infectious diseases, including those associated with diarrhoea, respiratory infections and the flu. The pandemic reminded us of the link between hand hygiene and infections – and also that we might not be washing our hands regularly enough, thoroughly enough or for long enough.

Dealing with a lack of facilities or dirty facilities is reasonably easy if you follow these simple tips:

Pack plenty of alcohol hand gel. And carry it with you during the festival. People got used to keeping hand sanitiser with them during the pandemic and gel is now readily available. Although it is not effective on some bugs, including norovirus, which causes diarrhoea – even more inconvenient at a festival than having to wash your hands regularly – it is better than soap and water in removing most bacteria.

Always wash hands after using the toilet. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people are using those toilets – most of them without washing their hands – so keep yourself happy and healthy by thoroughly disinfecting your hands afterwards.

Always clean your hands before eating. Festival food often involves meals that you eat with your hands, such as burgers, burritos, or pizza. To make sure you don’t pick up a stomach bug, always disinfect your hands beforehand.

Wash your hands with bottled water. Most festival goers carry drinking water in bottles. While it is less effective than using soap, the friction caused by rubbing hands under water not only removes physical and visible dirt but can also loosen bacteria from hands to rinse away. Most festivals have water fill centres to top up bottles. Don’t forget that the water bottles themselves can harbour bacteria. A rinse and rub of the bottle when filling could address that issue too.

Festival goers carrying their own supply of hand sanitiser can clean hands without missing a second of their favourite acts – after, all who wants to queue for the facilities when they could be watching Dua Lipa? For festival organisers, it might be helpful to distribute hand wash reminder stickers at key points such as food outlets, portaloos and mobile taps.

And food outlets should keep a bottle of hand gel at the counter for their patrons to use – it’s the least they can do for customers given the prices they charge at festivals.

But what about those festival goers who think “it won’t happen to me”? Well, infection will – and does – happen to younger people, although they are more likely to recover more quickly than older people.

Remember your festival mantra: clean your hands, avoid getting infections, and have fun – not the runs.

Judith Dyson, Professor in Implementation Science, Deputy Director of the Centre for Social Care, Health and Related Research (C-SCHaRR), Birmingham City University and Fiona Cowdell, Professor of Nursing and Health, Research School of Nursing and Midwifery, Birmingham City University

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

Almost half of all Australian workers are currently watching for or actively seeking a new job, according to a recent Gallup report.

High stress levels, murky work-life boundaries and the fact that pay packets don’t go as far as they used to can all become compelling reasons to look elsewhere. Many may be tempted by the promise of a higher salary.

Of course the grass isn’t always greener, and there may be ways to make your current job more fulfilling. This could include inviting your boss to have a discussion about increasing your pay.

But both landing a new job and chasing a raise internally can put you in the sometimes tricky position of negotiating how much you’re paid.

Fortunately, like many other kinds of negotiation, there are three key principles that will offer you a better chance of success.

Know What You Want And Why

First, it’s important to know exactly what you want and why you want it.

In the case of looking for a new job, your aspirations should be based on your future, not driven by what is wrong with the job you now have. In what way do you expect the jobs you are looking into to offer you more than your current position?

Researching the relevant levels of pay for similar roles in your industry can offer you a sense of what’s reasonable and suggest where to place the goalposts.

Similarly, when seeking a pay rise, you shouldn’t just go in with vague hopes of being paid more.

It’s important to have a firm idea of how much more you’d like to be paid, and prepare a case for why – such as a recent improvement in performance or evidence of new responsibilities.

Step Into The Other Person’s Shoes

Important as your goals may be, any negotiation is two-sided. It is not only about what you want to achieve but what the other party wants, too.

This is the second principle of effective negotiation: other-directedness. Always negotiate from the perspective of the other party.

Imagine you are the other negotiator preparing to negotiate with you. Get to understand what they want, why they want it, what pressures might they be under and what constraints they might have to operate within.

Many organisations have a pretty firm salary and remuneration structure and it is unrealistic to think they are going to bust that structure wide open just to accommodate you. So be reasonable.

Just as importantly, you need to think ahead about what they are going to say in response to your request. What offer are they likely to put on the table – and what is then going to be your response? Plan for a range of different scenarios.

Focusing only on what you are initially going to ask for could see you lose control of the rest of the conversation.

Understanding the other party’s perspective puts you in a better position to present what you have to offer in a way that resonates with their goals. You may feel your extra effort should earn you a pay rise, but focus your request on the outcomes that have helped your employer achieve their goals.

Thinking about the other party also keeps your expectations more realistic. It’s important to set high goals, but if they are outside the other party’s ballpark, you might find yourself backing down or walking away empty-handed.

Have A Solid Backup Plan

This leads us to the third principle of negotiation: knowing what you are going to do if you don’t get what you want.

A good alternative gives you confidence to restate your offer or claim even though the negotiator on the other side of the table has raised their eyebrows at it. Working out this alternative before you start negotiating is vital.

Depending on your circumstances, there may be a range of good alternatives when negotiating your salary for a new job. If you applied for multiple roles, you may be fielding other job offers. You’ll also often have the opportunity to just stay where you are.

Negotiating an internal pay rise might seem to have fewer tangible alternatives if it falls through. Disappointingly, you stay where you are and keep the salary you have.

But there are more ways to move yourself forward than just financially. For example, pursuing further accreditation, especially if subsidised or enabled by your employer, could help you stay motivated and improve your standing in future negotiations.

Remember, though, any negotiation is two-sided and the other party has alternatives, too.

In a job interview, if you have a rare set of skills and they have had a key employee suddenly leave, you could be well positioned to get a good outcome. Often, though, there will be someone else who can fill the vacancy and we might need the job more than they need us to fill it.

In that case, explore all the possibilities around salary – working arrangements, leave provisions and so on that will make the job more attractive to you. Before agreeing, always check that the prospect on offer is better than your alternative.

Ray Fells, Professor of Negotiation, The University of Western Australia

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

On June 12, Sydney musician and software engineer Harrison Khannah launched Triple J Watchdog, a website dedicated to aggregating and analysing the music played on Australia’s national youth broadcaster Triple J.

The site currently displays data from March 31 onward while Harrison continues work on backdating it to the beginning of this year. The site displays a range of Triple J metrics, including:

• top artist of the week
• top song of the week
• a breakdown of artists/bands played by country of origin
• a breakdown of artists’ pronouns (using data from Make Music Equal)
• the top 15 tracks and top 15 artists played
• the average popularity of artists played
• the average Spotify follower count of artists played (currently 3,242,692)
• the top ten genres played (cross-referenced and defined against Spotify categories)
• and the most played genre by hour for every hour across the day (based on data from Roy Morgan).

At a glance, the data aren’t surprising. Triple J plays more Australian artists/bands than from anywhere else, as well as more he/him artists (although the disparity isn’t particularly egregious). The station’s most played genre is “Australian indie”.

Close scrutiny, however, reveals a different story.

During the week of June 10–16, British pop star Charli XCX was Triple J’s most played artist. This was mainly due to her recent release, BRAT, being given the coveted feature album slot. Other 2024 feature albums have included Beyonce and Billie Eilish. Eilish also features as the second-most played artist since March.

Why is a taxpayer-funded public broadcaster that has historically been dedicated to breaking emerging local talent providing significant airtime to an artist whose biggest hit is widely recognised as a KFC jingle?

The breakdown of most played genres by hour further reveals pop is consistently played during drive time, when the station has its largest average daily share of listeners.

Since Triple J has no commercial imperative, it can theoretically program whatever it wants during these peak periods. Why, then, does it consistently play commercially oriented tracks when most people are tuning in?

Critiquing Triple J: A National Pastime

Australia’s music industries have spent decades decrying the national youth radio network for being too commercial. Several academics have also questioned the station’s significance and relevance, including Ben Eltham in his notable 2009 essay The Curious Significance of Triple J.

Despite being published 15 years ago, many of the arguments presented in Eltham’s piece remain relevant today: Triple J is more concerned with its own brand than with enhancing Australian culture and community.

The Triple J network retains substantial influence over Australia’s music market and the capacity for local artists to gain an audience. This is true despite declining ratings among its target demographic of 18–24-year-olds.

Its national reach means it also has an outsized impact on touring networks and festival lineups. This somewhat explains why many emerging and even established artists fear reprisal, should they speak out against it.

Triple J Watchdog isn’t the first time the station’s programming data have been publicly listed. J Play, a service run by The Brag Media, served this niche for many years until its cancellation in 2019. However, J Play was still very much a part of the music industry’s establishment, rather than a completely independent scrutineer.

Triple J Watchdog fills an important resource gap by providing transparent insights into the station’s programming data.

What Was Triple J Made For?

There’s a strong argument that Triple J’s programming of commercially lucrative artists comes down to a desire to drive people to the station.

In Eltham’s 2009 piece this was framed as a part of its model, wherein the station functions as a stepping stone in a chain of discoverability that begins with commercial bops and ends with community radio.

While this may have been true in 2009, the sector has shifted substantially. In the era of digital streaming and algorithmically-driven recommendation systems, discoverability has changed. Yet, Triple J’s influence on festival lineups and the national touring network remains significant. This influence becomes doubly important as opportunities for local artists continue to shrink due to festival cancellations.

As a public service untethered from commercial interests, Triple J has the potential to expand the horizons of Australian music. It may be easy to frame this perspective as snobby or elitist – especially when concerns are focused purely on issues of genre – but the counterargument serves the literal elites: the millionaires (and increasingly billionaires) who reign atop the music industries pyramid.

Public resources are meant to enhance our democracy and, in the case of popular music, our sense of belonging, community and cultural identity. With recent research suggesting the average Australian artist makes about A$23,200 from their art, we must continue to pay attention to which voices are given a platform and which are not.

Sam Whiting, Lecturer - Creative Industries, University of South Australia

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

A new Productivity Commission report has urged Australian governments to commit to providing universal access to safe and reliable drinking water, warning that public health depends on it.

The report, National Water Reform 2024, is the result of an inquiry requested by the federal government. It found Australian governments must reform many of the ways water is managed to ensure the current and future wellbeing of our communities, environment and economy.

Australia has an existing strategy for national water reform, known as the National Water Initiative (NWI). It was agreed with the states and territories in 2004.

The Productivity Commission found the initiative has served Australia well throughout the past 20 years, but the challenges of water management are growing. Demand for water is increasing and changing. Climate change is making rainfall less reliable as a water source.

An updated National Water Initiative will help governments navigate these challenges.

The report urges a greater focus on water service provision that is “effective, equitable and efficient”. That requires good management. The report highlights the concept of a basic level of service, requiring all governments to commit to providing universal access to a safe and reliable supply of drinking water.

Why Doesn’t Everyone Have A Safe Water Supply?

Most Australians already enjoy very safe and reliable drinking water services. However, some communities don’t. Many small and remote communities, many of which have high Indigenous populations, have poor drinking water quality.

A December 2023 review looked at water quality trends in remote Australian communities. It highlighted contaminants in the water as a concern.

Very high levels of contaminants in source water are leading to levels that exceed thresholds set by the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines. Excessive hardness, turbidity, fluoride, iron and manganese levels are found in communities with limited treatment facilities.

Other communities have poorly maintained bores or groundwater. These are often vulnerable to runoff pollution from livestock. This exposes communities to risks of infection by bacteria and other pathogens, causing gastrointestinal diseases.

Inadequate water quality and quantity are harming the health of remote communities, particularly among Indigenous populations. Poor-tasting or visually unappealing drinking water may cause them to drink sugary beverages instead.

Water Safety Is Still An Issue For Bigger Communities

In contrast, water quality in Australia’s larger towns and cities is generally very high. But excellent levels of safety are not universal.

The safety of a water supply is not defined only by historical water quality. Safety also encompasses the likelihood and consequences of future incidents.

Some scenarios may be viewed as “an accident waiting to happen”. Even where water quality has historically been excellent, accidents do happen. The consequences can be significant if adequate measures are not in place to manage them. Important preventive measures include strict management of drinking water catchments, application of multiple independent water treatment processes, comprehensive monitoring of these processes, and effective incident response procedures.

In major cities of highly developed countries, water quality incidents tend to occur when something goes seriously wrong. There have been significant waterborne disease outbreaks in:

• New Zealand, caused by a bacterial infection, campylobacteriosis

• the United States, caused by the parasite Cryptosporidium

• Canada, caused by E. coli and Campylobacter jejuni bacteria

• the United Kingdom, caused by Cryptosporidium

• Norway, caused by Campylobacter bacteria.

What Are The Lessons For Australia?

Often, these incidents involve an element of human error. The risks are greater when skills and training have been neglected. Earlier this year, the Water Services Association of Australia highlighted inadequacies in skills and training for water supply operators.

Many of Australia’s drinking water supplies are also vulnerable to extreme weather conditions. Heatwaves, droughts, bushfires, cyclones and floods can all threaten drinking water supplies.

Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and severity of many types of extreme weather events. This means the risk of water quality incidents in our towns and cities is set to grow.

How Do We Pay For A Safe Supply?

Another important aspect of providing universal access is affordability. If improved services mean customers can no longer afford to pay their water bills, they will not be any better off.

This need for affordability is often what really limits our ability to improve water quality and safety. A technical solution to practically any water quality problem is available, but someone has to pay for it. The question of how we pay for water quality improvements needs to be considered further.

Our capital cities generally apply the concept of “postage stamp pricing”. All customers pay the same rates for their drinking water, even though some customers cost much more to service than others. But this cross-subsidisation between customers is limited in states where local councils, rather than larger state-wide entities, supply water for regional towns and remote communities.

All Stages Of The Supply Chain Matter

The reforms needed to ensure universal access to safe and reliable drinking water also include institutional improvements. The Productivity Commission found there’s a need to ensure the separation of policy setting, service delivery and regulation, each with clearly defined roles.

Water service providers should have incentives to be efficient and innovative, and to deliver services in cost-effective ways that are in their customers’ interests.

For long-term success, Australian governments must establish and maintain processes that ensure water infrastructure developments and refurbishments are ecologically sustainable, economically viable and culturally responsive. If these wider impacts are overlooked, improvements in drinking water quality and safety will be short-lived and come at a high price.

Stuart Khan, Professor and Head of School of Civil Engineering, University of Sydney

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

The genetic risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease is more strongly influenced by the mother’s side than the father’s side, a recent study has discovered.

Alzheimer’s disease steals memories, independence and the capacity to connect with loved ones. In 2020, over 55 million people worldwide were living with dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, accounting for 60-70% of all dementias.

It’s expected the number of people affected by dementia will nearly double every 20 years. Finding ways to better diagnose, treat and even prevent dementia is more important than ever. This latest study could provide a useful target for researchers hoping to develop new therapies.

The study, published in JAMA Neurology, showed that people whose mother had a history of memory loss had a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease at any age when compared to people with only a paternal history of memory loss (or no family history of memory loss whatsoever). However, if a person’s father had early-onset memory loss (occurring before the age of 65), they also had a greater risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

The study analysed data from 4,413 people aged 65 to 85 who had no issues with cognitive function or memory problems. The study’s large sample size is a key strength, making for a more accurate interpretation of the findings compared to previous research. But it’s important to note it’s not a complete representation of the population, as most participants were white – so results may differ in other ethnicities.

The participants were part of the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer study, which is a phase 3 clinical trial investigating a drug researchers hope will slow the progression of memory problems. The participants’ cognitive function was measured using questions from the widely used mini-mental state examination.

Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging was also used to scan their brains for markers of Alzheimer’s disease and determine their risk of developing it.

The researchers were mainly looking for the presence of amyloid plaques, which are one of two hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. These toxic amyloid plaques form when protein pieces, called beta-amyloid, clump together.

The hypothesis is that these clumped amyloid plaques are the prime suspects in damaging and killing brain cells (neurons), resulting in Alzheimer’s disease. The second hallmark of Alzheimer’s is the protein tau, which wasn’t assessed in this study.

The accumulation of beta-amyloid is thought to be a prominent precursor of Alzheimer’s disease, as people can have raised amyloid levels years before memory problems start.

The results of the PET scans showed that participants whose mother had a history of memory impairment (regardless of the age her memory problems started) had higher beta-amyloid levels. The amyloid levels were significantly higher on average in those with maternal history than paternal history of memory impairment.

Participants whose fathers had early-onset memory loss (occurring before 65) also had higher beta-amyloid levels. In comparison, participants who only had a paternal history of late-onset memory impairment (happening after 65 years of age), and those who had no family history of memory loss, had normal beta-amyloid levels.

The reason for this link is not completely understood.

One suggestion from the researchers is mitochondria dysfunction. Mitochondria are energy-providing structures inside our cells. These are only inherited from the mother’s side. Mitochondria possess their own DNA, which may include mutations that cause them to malfunction. Previous research has already demonstrated mitochondria dysfunction is associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

The brain is an energy-hungry organ, taking up about 20% of the body’s energy. So it’s unsurprising that dysfunction in mitochondria could lead to cognitive impairment – and potentially Alzheimer’s disease.

Developing Treatments

This study builds on previous, smaller studies which have investigated the role genetics play in Alzheimer’s disease. Since these studies only had small sample sizes, they lacked the statistical power to draw strong conclusions. This study’s much larger sample size allowed for stronger conclusions and reaffirmations on the importance of maternal genetics to be made.

The key message from the study is that a person’s risk for Alzheimer’s disease could depend on whether they inherit it from their mother or father, as well as their parent’s age when memory loss began. As such, considering gender-specific parental history could be fundamental in identifying those at greatest risk of Alzheimer’s.

In light of these findings, next steps could be to determine whether the DNA from the mother – specifically the X chromosome itself – influences the disease’s development. If it does play a role, then researchers may have a better target for treatment.

And given mitochondria are inherited from the mother’s side, researchers may also want to further investigate the mitochondria dysfunction theory to better understand if this explains why people are at greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease if their mother had memory problems.

This latest study confirms the critical role that genetics play in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. But it isn’t the only risk factor. Many modifiable risk factors – such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and poor diet – are also known to be massive contributors to developing the disease.

Rahul Sidhu, PhD Candidate, Neuroscience, University of Sheffield

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

New analysis has revealed many Australian aged care residents are not receiving the levels of care they need and are entitled to.

The UTS Ageing Research Collaborative, which we are involved in, recently released its 2023–24 mid-year report on Australia’s aged care sector.

A particular focus of this edition was on the level of direct care being delivered in aged care homes by nurses and personal care workers to residents. In sharing this analysis, we acknowledge there is a well-documented shortage of workers across the economy, with the unemployment rate at a near-historical low. And even given these workforce pressures, many aged care providers are delivering very high levels of care.

But a significant number are not. Nearly two-thirds of aged care homes are failing to meet mandated levels of direct care. And yet taxpayers have paid millions of dollars to providers to deliver that care. Some providers are making large surpluses as a result.

New Standards For Direct Care

In response to the findings of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, the federal government committed to setting minimum standards for the level of direct care time that residents were to receive. In 2022, all providers were given a year to raise their level of staffing to reach these standards and were funded to do so.

These standards require a sector-wide average of 200 minutes of direct care per person per day (from registered and enrolled nurses and personal care workers). And 40 minutes of this care has to be delivered by a registered nurse. The minimum level each resident should receive varies above or below that 200 minutes depending on their assessed needs.

These standards became mandatory on October 1 2023. For the first three months after the targets were mandated, only half of all providers met or exceeded either of their care targets (the total direct care minutes or the registered nurse target). Only 36% met both.

This was a small increase from the previous quarter, but some providers still fell well short.

Funding The Costs Of Care

Residential aged care is funded for three main activities:

• direct care such as nursing and personal care, including bathing, dressing, toileting and personal grooming (almost wholly funded by taxpayers)

• everyday living services such as food, laundry and cleaning (paid mainly by residents and capped at 85% of the single age pension)

• accommodation (paid by the government for those of limited means and self-funded by those with higher incomes and wealth).

On the advice of the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority, the government has increased the direct care funding for each resident living in an aged care home. The assumption is the home will spend that money to employ enough staff to meet its care level targets.

The report shows the difference between each aged care home’s average funding for direct care and its expenditure on that activity. Comparing the mid-year results for the past three years, in 2021 and 2022 homes produced, on average, a small surplus where revenue was slightly greater than wages and other expenses. This situation, where funding is just above costs, is the intended result of the new pricing reforms.

But things have changed for the most recent period. The government has significantly increased funding to meet the costs of staffing to achieve the mandatory care levels. It has also increased funding in light of the pay rises to direct care staff, primarily nurses and personal care workers, which was decided by the Fair Work Commission.

This taxpayer funding has been provided to each home regardless of whether they are employing the required number of staff.

Because of the failure of some providers to meet their mandated targets to December 2023, the sector, on average, generated a significant direct care surplus of more than A$13 per resident per day. Some providers have been using the money to cross-subsidise losses they incur for their everyday living services and accommodation.

Which Homes Are Not Meeting Their Targets?

We found homes that were not delivering their mandatory care minutes were, on average, achieving significant financial benefits from their direct care activities. Homes that had staffing care levels well above their required number were making a loss from their direct care.

Further, the homes that were not delivering their mandatory care minutes were more often in metropolitan and larger regional centres. They were also more likely to be operated by for-profit providers.

In essence, while we acknowledge the tight labour market and the effort many homes are making to meet or exceed their mandatory requirements, a large number of residents are not receiving the care they need. This also means taxpayers are funding direct care that is not being delivered.

With the minimum sector average level of direct care due to rise to 215 minutes per resident per day on October 1 this year (and registered nurse care to rise to 44 minutes), this situation may get even worse.

Michael Woods, Professor of Health Economics, University of Technology Sydney and Nicole Sutton, Associate Professor of Accounting, University of Technology Sydney

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

There are no parallels for the first debate of the 2024 US presidential election cycle.

From the moment Joe Biden walked across the stage, stiff-backed and straight-armed, disaster unfolded for the sitting president.

The bar Biden had to clear as he squared off against former president Donald Trump was always unfairly high. The election had already been framed as one largely about age, rather than, as Biden himself has argued, an existential fight for American democracy.

The debate was no different. Trump, supportive right-wing media and even much of the mainstream coverage focused overwhelmingly on Biden’s ability to just get through the 90 minutes coherently and strongly.

A generous interpretation – and one Biden supporters will no doubt push – is that he did get through it. Some have been saying that he did so with a cold.

But that messaging is unlikely to be successful.

From the moment the president coughed and gasped his way through his first answer, he likely confirmed the worst fears of even his staunchest supporters that he is simply too old to run again.

It is very difficult to see how Biden recovers from here.

Lack Of Fact-Checking

The current president struggled to find his feet from the beginning.

One of the first questions from the CNN moderators focused on reproductive rights, a subject that should have been a clear winner for Biden.

Both his campaign and his administration have made this issue a big focus of the 2024 election since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade two years ago. That decision was a clear mobiliser for voters in the 2022 midterm elections, in which Democrats performed much better than many analysts had expected.

Today, one in three American women live under total abortion bans. Democrats have been working hard to lay the blame for that squarely with Trump, who had repeatedly bragged about his role in upending reproductive rights in America.

After Trump told egregious lies about late-term and even “after birth” abortions during the debate, however, Biden stumbled in his response, failing to land on a clear message.

From there, Trump knew he had him.

Biden’s performance meant the actual policy substance of the debate, alongside the real stakes of this election, will be completely overshadowed. But the blame for that does not lie entirely at Biden’s feet.

The format of the debate saw the two CNN moderators reel off thematic questions one after the other without fact-checking the responses, or in some (but not all) cases, pushing the candidates to respond directly to the questions.

Shockingly, it was not until half an hour into the debate – once Biden had already lost – that the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and Trump’s threats to American democracy were raised.

The choice not to fact-check the candidates – and not to prioritise democracy as a central issue for the election – had the effect of placing the January 6 insurrection and Trump’s authoritarian tendencies on equal footing with the two men’s golf handicaps (which came up later in the debate).

That was a disaster for Biden’s attempts to frame this election on his terms. More importantly, it’s a potential disaster for American democracy.

Trump’s lies about the insurrection – such as his suggestion it was a false flag operation or that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was somehow to blame – were allowed to stand because neither the moderators nor Biden were able to effectively push back.

Trump was also allowed to say he will only accept the results of the election in November if it suits him, without being challenged directly by the moderators.

What Does The Debate Mean?

A significant portion of the debate focused on the world beyond American shores, making clear how much this election matters globally.

As in domestic issues, the two candidates stand far apart in their policy positions on issues from climate action to Ukraine. Questions about Biden’s ceasefire plan for Gaza, for example, brought forth one of the more astounding moments in an already astounding debate – Trump suggested that Biden had “become like a Palestinian”, but a “bad” one.

At one point, attempting to recover and get ahead of Trump, Biden pushed back on what he sees as Trump’s overwhelming negativity about his own country.

The United States is, Biden said, the “most admired country in the history of the world”. Like the rest of the debate, the assertion wasn’t fact checked, either.

And after this showing, it’s very hard to argue that it is true.

Biden’s reputation, too, has likely taken a disastrous hit. His poor performance already has Democrats scrambling.

Former Obama administration official Julian Castro, for example, posted on X (formerly Twitter):

Biden had a very low bar going into the debate and failed to clear even that bar. He seemed unprepared, lost, and not strong enough to parry effectively with Trump, who lies constantly.

Other Democrats have already begun discussing whether Biden needs to drop out of the race. An open convention would be an enormous, and surprising, risk for the Democratic Party to take.

But the pressure on Biden’s candidacy will now be immense. And whether he can turn it around is much less clear now than it was before the debate.

There are no real parallels for what unfolded in Atlanta today. And there are likely none for what comes next.

Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University

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

Right now things feel awful.

Tuesday’s Westpac Melbourne Institute survey shows three times as many Australians say their finances have worsened than say they’ve got better, and twice as many think the economy is getting worse as think it is getting better.

The national accounts show real income per Australian (adjusted for inflation) has been sliding for a year.

We are buying less per person online and in shops than at any time in the past two and a half years.

And Commonwealth Bank transaction data shows even our spending on essentials is failing to keep pace, except for older (mostly unmortgaged) Australians who are actually spending more on essentials than they were, as well as more on luxuries.

But – and I am sure you’ll find this hard to believe – things are nowhere near as bad right now, in the middle of 2024, as they were expected to be.

Nowhere Near As Bad As Predicted

A year ago, at the start of the financial year that’s about to end, the panel of expert forecasters assembled by The Conversation expected inflation and interest rates to be much higher than they are today.

Inflation was going to be 3.9%, not the present 3.6% and headed down, and the Reserve Bank’s cash rate was going to climb two times in the second half of 2023 from 4.1% to 4.5%. Instead it climbed once, to 4.35%, and hasn’t climbed since.

That’s something worth remembering when people tell you inflation is stubbornly high. It isn’t as stubbornly high as it was expected to be.

And a recession looks much less likely.

Back in mid-2023, when asked about the probability of a recession in the next two years, the expert panel’s average answer was 42%.

Asked when that recession was most likely to start, the panel’s average answer was December 2023.

So worried was the government over Christmas that it asked the treasury to come up with extra cost of living relief. What the treasury produced was a reworking of the Stage 3 cuts due to start in July.

The rejig doubled the tax cut set to go to Australians on average earnings and halved the tax cut set to go to Australians on more than A$200,000.

By the time The Conversation’s panel next assembled to examine the probability of a recession, in February, it had cut the likelihood to 20%, which is about the lowest average probability a recession ever gets in these sorts of surveys.

What’s Gone Right

What’s gone right is that inflation has proved easier to subdue than expected, and not only inflation in the price of goods, many of which are made overseas. Inflation in the price of services has been falling the entire financial year.

That good news has allowed the Reserve Bank to hold off on increasing interest rates all year. And it’s partly because of us.

Businesses attending the bank’s liaison meetings have told it they are “intensifying their focus on containing costs as they find it harder to increase prices”.

That’s because we are less likely to put up with higher prices. We have become “budget conscious” making it more difficult for firms to pass on cost increases.

So instead, firms are cutting costs. Examples include

reviewing staffing structures, converting contractors or casuals to permanent staff, changing working or opening hours, and considering offshoring.

And they are becoming less likely to offer pay rises, planning for slower wage growth in the year ahead.

All of this is bearing down on inflation.

Australia’s relatively-new monthly consumer price index is likely to show an increase when it is released on Wednesday. The annual rate of inflation might climb from 3.6% in April to 3.8% or even 4% in May.

Those are the headline AMP and Westpac forecasts. But they hide what the AMP and Westpac expect to happen beneath the surface.

The AMP expects prices to fall in the month of May, by 0.2%. Westpac expects no change, meaning a monthly inflation rate of zero.

The annual inflation rate is expected to climb because prices fell a year earlier in May 2023, not because they climbed in May 2024.

Lower Inflation, And A Tax Cut

If the inflation rate does keep sinking when the official quarterly figures are released next month, it’ll be doubly good news for stretched households. It’ll mean slower price rises, and probably an end to talk of further interest rate rises.

Along with the Stage 3 tax cuts legislated by then treasurer Scott Morrison way back in 2018 and due to hit pay packets in an amended form next week, they are set to make us feel better about the future; perhaps better than we’ve felt in years.

The long-delayed tax cuts, which turn out to be timely in a way Morrison couldn’t have antipated, are worth about $2,200 per year for the average household according to calculations being circulated by Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

That’s $84 per fortnight, after tax. For a couple with two children, it’s almost $4,000, which is $150 per fortnight.

As bleak as it was, this month’s consumer survey recorded a slight uptick in confidence, of 1.7%.

On Monday The Conversation will publish the experts’ forecasts for the financial year that’s about to begin. It’s a fair bet they’ll be brighter than those for the financial year about to end.

Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

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

Recent news about PFAS “forever chemicals” in Australian drinking water supplies has been very confronting. Many people are asking how they can remove these contaminants from their home drinking water.

In short, it is difficult and expensive to do this effectively in your home.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency provides useful and clear advice about per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and how they can be removed from drinking water.

One of the major challenges in removing PFAS chemicals from drinking water is the enormous number (more than 10,000) of individual chemicals in this group. US authorities warn these can cause cancer over a long period of time. No single filtration or treatment technology is 100% effective at removing them.

So, what are the options? And can you filter too much out of your drinking water?

Four Treatment Systems

US authorities have reviewed dozens of controlled studies on how to remove PFAS and other contaminants from drinking water. The costs involved in many of the treatment options that remove PFAS can be expensive. Many of the cheapest filters will not be effective.

There are four broad systems for treating drinking water to remove such contaminants in the home.

1. Activated carbon

The first two treatment systems use an adsorption process (rather than absorption) to attract and trap PFAS and other contaminants from water. Absorption is when one substance is absorbed into another, but adsorption is when particles stick onto the surface of another substance. Adsorption using “activated carbon” is a widely used industrial process for drinking water treatment to remove a range of substances.

Adsorption binds PFAS or other contaminants through ionic bonds using either negatively charged or positively charged particles. It can be used to filter water as “granular activated carbon” or as “carbon block filters”. These are two broad types of water filters that use activated carbon.

2. Ion exchange resins

This second adsorption treatment uses different formulations of resin (or polymers) to chemically attract and remove targeted contaminants in water. The ion exchange filters use very small “microbeads” that have a large surface area to attract and remove contaminants.

3. Reverse-osmosis

This process uses electrical energy to build pressure to force water through semi-permeable filtration membranes usually made of layers of polyester material. The membrane has minute holes that only allow water molecules to pass through. This system creates a waste liquid often called “brine”. It contains the accumulated chemical and other matter that could not pass through the membrane.

Reverse-osmosis is a popular technology used on a very large scale to purify water. For example, desalination plants use this system to remove salt from sea water for drinking water supplies.

Such systems are also widely available at smaller scales for home water treatment. They are widely used across regional Australia where water supplies are often very saline or contain other impurities. They can be installed into home plumbing or smaller bench-top systems.

4. Distillation

A fourth treatment system is “distillation” of water. This process uses heat to boil water to produce steam. It then allows the steam to cool and condense, and then collects the resulting purified water.

It is not commonly used, although is one of the oldest water purification systems. It does not always reliably produce pure water as many chemicals have a lower boiling point than water. As a result, they can also be evaporated, condense and contaminate the processed water.

The process of boiling water will not remove PFAS chemicals on its own.

There Is Such A Thing As Too Pure

A word of warning: drinking demineralised water produced by reverse-osmosis or distillation can have a number of adverse consequences.

People need minerals, such as calcium and magnesium, provided by drinking water. While many essential minerals come from food and a balanced diet, a lack of these in water can upset a person’s electrolyte balance and can also trigger a range of health issues. If you do drink demineralised water, it would be wise to seek medical advice.

Also, demineralised water can be aggressive to plumbing, increasing the rate of corrosion of household pipes and appliances. This can dissolve metals from the plumbing into the drinking water, as demonstrated on a very large scale when a new water supply caused corrosion and increased lead content in Flint, Michigan.

The Bottom Line

Searching for information on the best system for removal of PFAS chemicals from drinking water is difficult. Guidance from Australian government agencies and the water industry seems absent or inadequate. And finding impartial advice is tough.

My own recommendation, based on published studies, would probably be a reverse-osmosis, dual-stage filter installed “under the sink”.

A detailed 2020 study investigated drinking water and PFAS in more than 60 US homes. It showed near-complete removal by reverse-osmosis, dual filtration systems for all PFAS chemicals. Carbon filters were less efficient, with a maximum of 70% effectiveness in removing these pollutants.

Householders will also need to ensure PFAS filtration systems are regularly maintained. Along with installation, this can be very expensive. The most simple bench-top carbon filter system will cost A$100–$200. All filters clog up and require cleaning or renewal. Replacement filters costs about $30 to $80.

Under-sink reverse-osmosis systems are more expensive, ranging from $400 to over $1,000. And you’ll need to hire a plumber for installation. Again, the system requires cleaning and maintenance.

Australian governments should require regular testing of all town water supplies across the country. Many water supplies probably already meet the US’s tough new PFAS standards.

Finally, seek information on PFAS in your drinking water from your water provider. Home filtration where you are might just be a waste of money!

Ian A. Wright, Associate Professor in Environmental Science, Western Sydney University

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

The emergence of Long COVID as a mysterious new illness has refocused attention on the incapacitating nature of persistent fatigue.

Around the world, this unexpected outcome of the pandemic is now a significant health issue causing considerable personal suffering, absences from work and high projected societal costs.

An added burden for Long COVID patients arises from medical scepticism and social stigma, which leads to self-doubt and shame.

So far, the focus has been on the lack of available treatments, implying there is no cure. But persistent fatigue also often accompanies chronic pain. Emerging understandings of the neurophysiology of pain and sensation now provide more optimism for people with Long COVID.

Similarities Between Long COVID And Chronic Fatigue

The virus that causes COVID has infected 750 million people, many of whom died prior to mass vaccination. Most people fully recover from mild infections, but about 10% develop persistent and exhausting fatigue, including brain fog, as well as anxiety or breathlessness and a cluster of other symptoms.

Long COVID’s wide range of symptoms is similar to those in chronic fatigue syndrome, or myalgic encephalitis. Known as CFS/ME, this illness gained prominence in the 1970s as a relapsing condition after glandular fever, though we now know it can be triggered by other infections.

Recent insights from the burgeoning field of neuroscience now guide clinical management of chronic pain and may offer hope for people living with persistent fatigue.

The Neuroscience Of Pain And Sensation

Neuroscience is the study of the central and peripheral nervous system, a complex whole-body network that monitors and regulates all our internal functions, well below our conscious thought and control.

The fight-flight response in stressful situations is a useful example. Our attention becomes more focused, our heart beats faster and blood pressure increases to pump more blood to our muscles. We don’t need to think; it just happens.

The sensation of pain is now understood as a warning signal created by the nervous system in response to an actual or potential threat to our safety. The intensity of the pain signal depends not only on the physical injury but on our previous experiences and expectations.

Persistent pain often arises from a hyper-vigilant nervous system which perpetuates the warning signal. The underlying neurophysiology in persistent pain is known as “central sensitisation”. This term describes an overly sensitive warning system causing exaggerated pain signals even after damaged tissue has healed.

Central sensitisation depends on the phenomenon of neuroplasticity. Neurological pathways we use frequently become more established, efficient and dominant. In persisting pain and fatigue, the associated neural pathways become highly developed, even if this is counterproductive to normal functioning.

While neuroplasticity contributes to the development of unhelpful neurological pathways, the converse applies, too. Unhelpful pathways can be down regulated, improving symptoms.

Applying Neuroscience To CFS/ME And Long COVID

These insights underpin the concept of pain neuroscience education. Pain clinics worldwide use it to teach patients about the nature of pain and its contributing factors, many of which are not under conscious control.

These explanations provide an essential framework for understanding how specific activities – including group education, physical retraining and identifying hidden beliefs – can facilitate recovery.

Research has shown how appropriately trained general practitioners can provide explanations that aid recovery for a wide variety of persistent symptoms, including fatigue and pain.

At normal levels, pain and fatigue are best viewed as adaptive responses. Just like pain, fatigue is a warning signal, implying the body needs to rest. The degree of fatigue is influenced by many factors, also at a subconscious level.

As in persistent pain, inflammation and dysfunction of the nervous system underpin the cluster of widespread problems in CFS/ME and in Long COVID. It follows that current approaches to chronic pain might also be applied to persistent fatigue syndromes.

Encouraging Early Results

Research shows promising early results. One study addressed subconsciously held beliefs about the nature of the illness, which reduced the fatigue of Long COVID, with sustained effects at six months.

A Scandinavian research group has also questioned current narratives describing persistent fatigue syndrome as an “incomprehensible and incurable disease without any available treatment”. Instead, they called for a more constructive narrative based on emerging insights about the nervous system and its role in creating, and at times inadvertently perpetuating, the debilitating sensation of fatigue.

These insights may allay current fears about Long COVID as a mysterious illness. While there is no magic bullet, supportive care supplemented with “fatigue neuroscience education” may provide patients with a better understanding of the mechanisms behind their symptoms and useful advice for recovery.

These concepts have yet to be integrated into medical training and clinical care for persisting fatigue syndromes. But ongoing neuroscience research and reports of encouraging clinical results now create some optimism for understanding and treating Long COVID.

Hamish Wilson, Associate Professor in General Practice, University of Otago and John Douglas Dunbar, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Surgical Science, University of Otago

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

This week Victorian premier Jacinta Allan announced the state will trial a drug checking service beginning this summer festival season, describing it as a “simple and commonsense way to save lives”.

Allan has since confirmed the service will become permanent in Victoria following an 18-month trial.

Last week, the Australian Capital Territory government announced an extension to its successful drug-checking pilot, CanTEST, for the next three years. And earlier this year the Queensland government funded fixed site and festival drug-checking services for two years.

It’s good to see drug checking gaining more traction in Australia. This reflects evidence from Australia and internationally showing these services reduce harm for people who use illicit drugs.

What Is Drug Checking?

Drug checking (sometimes called pill testing in Australia) is based on the principles of harm reduction. The primary aim is to reduce the individual and community harms associated with the use of psychoactive drugs, without judgement about the drug use itself.

There are different testing techniques using different types of equipment, but all drug checking services in Australia check drugs by chemically analysing a small sample of the drug.

Part of a typical drug-checking service is a discussion directly with the person to give them feedback on the contents of the sample. The trained drug-checking staff, who are usually health professionals or peer educators, will discuss the risks of consuming the drugs identified and any other concerns or questions the person has.

Drug checking in Australia is conducted from either a fixed-site or a mobile service. A fixed-site service is permanently located in a health organisation. Mobile services, sometimes called festival services, are set up in places where we know people are more likely to be taking drugs.

Why Is Drug Checking Important?

Although no psychoactive drug, including alcohol, is completely safe, some drugs are made more dangerous because they are illegal, without controls over who can make them, how they are made and what they can contain.

This means people who use illicit drugs can’t be sure of what they are taking and are unable to moderate the dose to reduce risks. So there’s a higher risk of adverse reactions and overdose than if these drugs were manufactured as pharmaceuticals under controlled conditions.

Data from Australia has found up to 43% of drugs tested in drug-checking services were not what people believed they had purchased.

Most people who use illicit drugs only use them a handful of times a year and are not addicted to them.

Whether you believe people should be taking these drugs or not, the reality is that they do. Some 47% of adults in Australia have tried an illicit drug some time in their lifetime. Thousands of years of history has taught us this is unlikely to change.

Acknowledging this, drug-checking services now operate in more than 20 countries including well-established services in New Zealand, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands.

Does Drug Checking Reduce Harms?

Some opponents of drug checking are worried it will increase drug use. But the evidence is clear that it does not.

Several studies have shown drug checking doesn’t encourage those who do not already use drugs to start doing so. A study of a long-running service in The Netherlands found less than 1% of people who had their drugs tested had never used them before, so these services almost exclusively cater for people who already use drugs.

What’s more, research has shown people often reduce their drug use after receiving the results of their drug checking and discussing the results with staff. Multiple studies have shown a sizeable proportion of people discard or intend to discard their drugs or use less if they contain unexpected substances.

Data from ACT and Queensland services found 18% and 7% of people respectively decided they would not use the drug following testing.

Drug checking can also play a role in preventing drug-related hospitalisations and deaths. Research from The Loop drug checking service in the UK found a 95% reduction in drug-related transfers to hospital when drug checking was introduced at a festival, compared to the previous year where the festival operated without drug checking.

Additionally, these services provide important harm reduction information to people who may not otherwise get that information. In an evaluation of CanTEST, 70% of people who used the service had never previously spoken to a healthcare worker for information or advice about drug use.

Drug checking also impacts the quality of drugs on the market. Drug manufacturers and dealers are less likely to distribute highly dangerous substances when clients are able to check their drugs.

What Do Australians Think About Drug Checking?

There is significant support in the Australian community for harm reduction measures, including drug checking. Surveys of the Australian community have consistently shown drug checking is supported by the majority of Australians.

In a recent government survey of households across Australia, nearly 65% of people supported drug checking, a significant increase on the previous year. Younger people, women and those with higher education levels were more likely to support drug checking.

So this is a great move by Victoria to keep people safe.

Nicole Lee, Adjunct Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne based), Curtin University

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

Julian Assange told Anthony Albanese he had “saved his life” in his first phone conversation after his chartered plane’s wheels touched down at Canberra’s RAAF base soon after 7:30pm on Wednesday.

The prime minister, who has never met Assange, told a news conference at Parliament House immediately afterwards that Assange had described his Australian arrival as “a surreal and happy moment”.

Albanese said the conversation was “very warm” and that Assange was “very generous in his praise of the Australian government”. Assange described Australia’s ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd, and the high commissioner to the United Kingdom, Stephen Smith, who worked on his release, as the “diplomatic A-Team”.

At a later press conference, Assange’s senior lawyer Jennifer Robinson recounted that Assange told Albanese “he had saved his life – and I don’t think that’s an exaggeration,”.

A triumphant Assange emerged from the plane, fist in the air, to an excited crowd and an emotional reunion with his wife Stella and father John Shipton.

Earlier in the day, during a brief stopover in Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, a United States territory in the Pacific, US Federal Court Judge Ramona V Manglona accepted Assange’s guilty plea. Smith, who had accompanied him from the UK, and Rudd were both with him on the last leg of his journey to Canberra.

Hailing Assange’s freedom, Albanese said “we have got this done” and that the outcome was “the culmination of careful, patient and determined advocacy”.

Albanese acknowledged there was a range of views about Assange’s actions, but “there was no purpose to be served by this ongoing incarceration.

"Regardless of what you think of his activities, Mr Assange’s case had dragged on for far too long.”

Asked why he had chosen to stake so much and work so hard for the release of someone he admitted divided the population, Albanese said, “I believe in standing up for Australian citizens.

"As prime minister of Australia, you have an opportunity to make a difference,

"I’m not here to occupy the space.

"What we were doing was exactly the right thing to achieve an outcome - I’m an outcomes-based politician.”

He said “there were moments when this required a range of decisions to be made, by the Department of Justice in the United States, which of course, is not subject to political influence.”

Albanese said he always understood that due to the nature of the American system, “it wasn’t as simple as me sitting down with President [Joe] Biden or any other elected representative and achieving this outcome.

"Diplomacy is something that must be patient, something that must be built on trust, something that works through stages. We have done that.”

Assange did not appear at the news conference attended by his team. His wife, Stella, made an emotional appeal for people “to give us space, give us privacy, before he can speak again at a time of his choosing”.

“Julian needs time to recover – to get used to freedom.”

The Assange team’s press conference highlighted the issue of freedom of the press at stake. Robinson said: “It’s important that journalists all around the world understand the dangerous precedent that this prosecution has meant.”

Stella Assange also talked about how vulnerable the press had become since Assange was indicted under the US Espionage Act.

“That precedent now can – and will – be used in the future against the rest of the press. So it is in the interest of all of the press to seek for this current state of affairs to change through reform of the Espionage Act,” she said.

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

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

After years of appeals and litigation, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has entered into a plea deal with the US government, according to court documents.

He was facing one count of computer misuse and multiple counts of espionage stemming from his work with WikiLeaks, publishing sensitive US government documents provided by Chelsea Manning. The US government had repeatedly claimed that Assange’s actions risked its national security.

Documents filed in the US Federal Court in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, show Assange will plead guilty to one count under the US Espionage Act. The rest of the charges would be dropped and the request for his extradition to the US would be withdrawn. The US is yet to publicly confirm the deal.

The deal is subject to a hearing and sentencing in Saipan on Wednesday morning, where outlets are reporting Assange will appear in person. He’s been released from London’s Belmarsh prison, with WikiLeaks sharing vision of him en route to London’s Stanstead Airport.

What’s In The Deal?

Assange has been granted bail by the UK High Court.

Upon his guilty plea, Assange will be sentenced to 62 months in prison: time he’s already served in Belmarsh. It puts an end to all the ongoing legal action, including the proceedings in the UK High Court and the extradition order from the UK Home Secretary.

The plea deal seems largely consistent with rumours circulating earlier this year. It was widely assumed Assange would plead guilty to one charge, which was expected to be a misdemeanour charge of mishandling documents rather than under the US Espionage Act. The initial rumours also indicated that he would be able to complete the process remotely, whereas he will appear in person before the court.

This is significant as it’s a national security offence for which he’s served more than five years behind bars. This will place limitations on his future travel, including to the US, which is unlikely to grant him a visa.

It also sets a practical precedent, if not necessarily a legal one, that a publisher can be convicted under the Espionage Act in the US. While the devil will be in the details of the deal, this is what many journalists were afraid of.

It means somebody who did nothing more than receive and publish information has been convicted under major US national security laws. If the deal had been about the Computer Misuse Act, this scenario wouldn’t have arisen. The concern may be that now it’s been done once, it could happen again.

Why Is There A Deal After All This Time?

We may never know the US’ full reasoning, but there are several possibilities as to why it decided to go to a plea deal and not continue with litigation.

The Australian government has been pushing hard for a couple of years now for this case to end. The case for stopping prosecution has had bipartisan support here.

Although not confirming or denying the existence of a plea deal just yet, a spokesperson for the government reiterated Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s position that there was “nothing to be gained from his [Assange’s] continued incarceration”.

The fact the government has been consistent on this for about two years has changed the political environment for this prosecution.

There’s a growing consensus in the US, even among some Republicans, that it’s not in the public interest to continue.

The UK general election will be held next week, and given the anticipated change of government there, the extradition order may have been reconsidered anyway. All of this would likely have informed the US’ cost-benefit analysis to ultimately bring the Assange saga to an end.

What Happens Now?

Following the hearing in Saipan, Assange will be free to return to Australia. The court was chosen because of Assange’s opposition to travelling to the continental US, as well as its proximity to Australia.

Assange will likely find it difficult to travel in the future, given his serious criminal conviction. This may also apply in the UK, where he has also been convicted of absconding from bail, for which he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment.

Looking further ahead, it’s entirely possible he will be pardoned by the US president, whomever it ends up being after the US election in November. The US allows much more discretion than most in the use of pardons.

For now, Assange will face court in Saipan and come home to Australia, albeit with a serious criminal record.

Holly Cullen, Adjunct Professor in Law, The University of Western Australia

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

Julian Assange is out of prison, after agreeing to plead guilty to violating the US Espionage Act. He is expected to be freed after appearing in a US courtroom on the Northern Mariana Islands this week.

It is worth pausing for a moment to consider all that Assange has been through, and to pop a bottle of champagne to celebrate his release.

He spent 1,901 days in a small cell in Britain’s notorious Belmarsh Prison and, according to WikiLeaks, was “isolated 23 hours a day”.

I know – from first-hand experience – what imprisonment feels like. Make no mistake. Assange might not have been beaten up or had his fingernails ripped out, but extended confinement with an uncertain future is its own particular kind of excruciating torture.

The Crushing Burden Of Incarceration

Belmarsh came after Assange had already spent almost seven years seeking asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

He went there to evade extradition to Sweden as part of a rape investigation he said was trumped up, and included the possibility of being sent on to the United States to face allegations of espionage.

When Ecuador eventually rescinded his asylum claim in 2019, he was dragged out of the embassy and arrested by UK police for absconding from bail.

The US wanted to extradite him for alleged conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and then 17 counts of espionage. Those charges, his supporters said, included the possibility of life behind bars.

My own ordeal in Egypt, where I was imprisoned on terrorism charges in 2014–15, was nothing compared to Assange’s, but it was more than enough to understand the crushing mental and physical burden that incarceration imposes on inmates.

And I also understand the weird blend of elation, confusion and disorientation that sudden release brings. Assange’s journey home will be much longer than his flight back to Australia.

A Serious Chilling Effect On Public-Interest Journalism

But Assange’s release does not end the questions this whole saga raised in the first place.

It began when his company, WikiLeaks, published a series of documents exposing evidence of war crimes and abuses by the US government in Iraq and Afghanistan.

WikiLeaks was doing what the First Amendment to the US Constitution was designed to achieve.

It guarantees freedom of speech and press freedom, and in the process it grants people the right to speak out against abuses of government authority.

That is a vitally important check on the awesome power that governments wield, and WikiLeaks should be celebrated for what it exposed.

Like many others, I believe Julian Assange should never have been charged with espionage.

The Obama administration was among the most aggressive in US history in going after journalists’ sources who leaked embarrassing government information.

Yet in 2013, Obama’s justice department decided against prosecuting Assange. Justice officials realised they couldn’t do it without setting a precedent that would force them to also go after established news organisations like the New York Times and Washington Post.

This case has undeniably had a serious chilling effect on public-interest journalism, and sends a terrifying message to any sources sitting on evidence of abuses by the government and its agencies.

While it is impossible to quantify the number of stories not told, it is hard to imagine it hasn’t frightened off potential whistleblowers and reporters.

It also leaves open the question of precedent. It is still not clear whether future governments might be able to use Assange’s guilty plea as a way of using the Espionage Act to go after uncomfortable journalism.

As we have seen in the past, leaders with an authoritarian streak tend to use every lever available to control the flow of information, and that must surely worry anyone who believes in the corrective power of a free press.

Questions About Journalism

Assange has been hailed by his supporters as a “Walkley Award-winning journalist”. His gong is certainly prestigious and worth celebrating, but it is also important to recognise the award was for his “Outstanding Contribution to Journalism”.

I got the same award in 2014. I am very proud of that. I got it not for my journalism, but for my stand on press freedom while I was imprisoned. Assange rightly got his for the role WikiLeaks played in supplying journalists with a steady stream of incredibly valuable documents.

The distinction is important because of the particular role journalism plays in our democracy, elevating it beyond freedom of speech. Journalism comes with the responsibility to process and present information in line with a set of ethical and professional standards.

I don’t believe WikiLeaks met that standard; in releasing raw, unredacted and unprocessed information online, it posed enormous risks for people in the field, including sources.

This is not to diminish the importance or value of what WikiLeaks exposed. Australia’s union for journalists, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, has rightly described this case as “one of the darkest periods in the history of media freedom”.

And it will undoubtedly cast a long shadow across public-interest journalism. But for now, we should all celebrate the release of a man who has suffered enormously for exposing the truth of abuses of power.

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 arrest and trial of US reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying charges would have prompted a range of emotions in any outsider who has been a reporter or researcher in Russia. At first, there’s the sense that you yourself may have escaped after running a similar risk of working in such a potentially dangerous environment. Then comes a sense of foreboding for Gerskovich’s future.

Gershkovich is the son of Russian Jewish emigres to the US. He had been living and working in Russia for six years when he was arrested on March 29 2023 in Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth largest city which lies in the Urals about 1,500kms east of Moscow. He’d been reporting on the Russian mercenary Wagner Group for his employer of two years, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

The 33-year-old reporter was detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on charges of espionage, something both Gershkovich and the WSJ have strenuously denied. The trial will be held in secret in Yekaterinburg. But it will still serve the Russian authorities’ cause.

First, to strengthen, for domestic political consumption, official narratives that all westerners are potential enemies. Second, to remind Russian and international journalists of the huge risks of just doing your job.

Putting the trial into historical context over the past century suggests that it represents a dangerous development. You have to go back to the 1980s, and the last, confrontational, phase of the cold war, to find a case of a Moscow correspondent being locked up on spying charges.

From the revolutionary year of 1917 all through the 20th century, the treatment of foreign correspondents in Russia mirrors the history of Russia’s relations with the west.

The Times’ implacable opposition to Bolshevism led to its correspondents being refused visas after the Soviets secured power. The Times covered the infamous show trials of the 1930s from neighbouring Latvia.

It foreshadowed today’s situation, when many journalists formerly based in Russia have fled to Riga.

Stalin’s “approach to western journalists” as the historian Shelia Fitzpatrick has written, “was that, while a few could be usefully manipulated, their real function was to discredit the Soviet Union, which made them essentially spies”.

In the 1940s, the wartime alliance against Nazi Germany briefly improved access for correspondents from Britain and the United States. Then the curtain fell once more. The cold war dominated the continent.

Convinced as they were that all western correspondents were agents of bourgeois governments, Soviet authorities subjected journalists to strict censorship rules. Entire dispatches and even direct quotes from “Pravda” could be blacked out.

Alongside strict information control, western journalists frequently met with harassment and intimidation. The dwindling foreign press corps operated in an atmosphere fraught with tension, apprehensive about potential Soviet entrapment. Their fears were often justified. In 1948, veteran reporter Robert Magidoff was accused of espionage and expelled from the Soviet Union.

After Stalin’s death, censorship of foreign correspondents was abolished and their working conditions improved a great deal. Still, intimidation, harassment and expulsions of journalists remained and intensified in the late 1960s, when many western correspondents mobilised to cover the Soviet rights defenders, making Andrei Sakharov, Larisa Bogoraz, or Nathan Shcharansky recognisable all over the world.

Foreign correspondents could become targets of Soviet entrapment regardless of what they actually reported on. In 1986, Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow bureau chief of US News & World Report, was arrested on the street after meeting with a Russian acquaintance and receiving a package of, what he thought, were newspaper clippings.

Daniloff was rushed into Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo detention center, where it transpired that the package contained materials marked “secret”. Daniloff spent two weeks under arrest and spent two more weeks in the custody of US ambassador in Moscow. He returned home following Soviet-US agreement, exchanged for a Soviet spy arrested in New York.

Daniloff’s case was as a shock and surprise. He was an experienced reporter, who spoke fluent Russian and was just wrapping up his second five-year-long assignment in the Soviet Union. He was arrested one year after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, bringing a palpable atmosphere of change.

Contemporary observers largely concurred that Daniloff’s arrest was a ploy to secure his exchange for the detained Soviet spy.

Still A Risky Business

For Russian journalists, the late Soviet, and early post-Soviet, periods offered unprecedented freedom – but also fatal risk.

Our current research project looks at the violence – sometimes deadly – inflicted on journalists during Russia’s turbulent transition from communism to unbridled capitalism, and afterwards.

The fate of Anna Politkovskaya – an award-winning journalist and tenacious critic of Vladimir Putin and his conduct of the wars in Chechnya, who was shot dead in 2006 – exemplified both the excellent journalism produced in Russia, and its potential price.

As his trial begins, Gershkovich potentially faces a long prison sentence. It may be that he is part of what the Russian security experts Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan have called “a bank of hostages” – high-profile prisoners held for future exchange. If so, it could eventually lead to his release.

Such deals have previously happened, even during the current age of confrontation between Washington and Moscow. Yet, this is a world without the systems that existed during the cold war. Russia has shown itself to be a hostile environment for Russian journalists.

Gershkovich’s case shows that a foreign passport – even from the most powerful nation on earth – is no longer protection against some of those excesses.

James Rodgers, Reader in International Journalism, City, University of London and Dina Fainberg, Senior Lecturer in Modern History, City, University of London

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