Northern Irish hip hop trio Kneecap have been making waves, not just as musicians, but as language activists who rap in both English and their native Irish. In Belfast’s Gaeltacht Quarter, Irish is a living language. It is also a political statement – a form of resistance against British cultural dominance.

Kneecap’s music is having a big impact, particularly on young Irish people. While language study in Northern Ireland is declining overall, the number of students taking Irish at the GCSE level has increased in recent years.

This isn’t an isolated trend. Indigenous communities the world over are working to save and strengthen their own languages. Languages don’t die on their own. They are driven to endangerment by colonialism and assimilation – actively minoritised.

In the modern nation of Australia, all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are now under threat. Australia suffers from a bad case of “monolingual mindset” which can blind us to the cultural and social benefits of multilingualism.

About 120 First Nations languages are spoken here today. A dozen traditional and several new languages are still learned by Aboriginal children.

Many other “sleeping” First Nations languages are being revitalised through inspiring work around the country.

Resistance through language and music

Kneecap’s impact shows music can be a powerful force for language revival. Songs are the crown jewels of cultural heritage, and a common way to connect with a treasured heritage language.

They belong to the family and community domains, which are crucial for passing on language. Songs can make language more visible, memorable, and even help it go viral.

From punta-rock in Belize to pop-folk in Chulym (Siberia), communities are using old and new songs to revitalise their languages.

In Australia, song has always been central to language keeping and storytelling. This is felt powerfully among the Yorta Yorta people, including co-author Josef Tye.

Take the song Ngarra Burra Ferra, a Yorta Yorta translation of the African-American spiritual Turn Back Pharoah’s Army. It was introduced in 1887, at the Maloga mission in New South Wales, by the African-American travelling Fisk Jubilee Singers. The song’s theme of escaping enslavement resonated with the Yorta Yorta’s own experiences of colonisation.

Translated by Yorta Yorta Elder Theresa Clements, and transposed by Tye’s great-great Grampa Thomas Shadrach James, Ngarra Burra Ferra became a powerful act of defiance and language preservation. It would go on to feature in the 2012 film The Sapphires.

In the Victorian context, language revitalisation is a key component of resistance to colonial oppression. It also plays a crucial role in implementing our Peoples’ ambitions around Truth Telling and Treaty.

Many Victorians are unaware they’re speaking terms from Indigenous languages every day. The linguistic landscapes of Victoria and Naarm are rich with Indigenous names and words, and should serve as a reminder of the First Peoples of this continent.

Activating languages through song

Many contemporary Australian artists are centring First Nations languages in their music. Earlier acts such Yothu Yindi, Warumpi Band and Saltwater Band paved the way for newer artists including Baker Boy, King Stingray and Electric Fields.

The public’s enthusiastic response suggests a bright future for musicians who look beyond English in their work. Here are five artists leading the way:

Emily Wurramara

A Warnindhilyagwa woman, Wurramara sings blues and roots in Anindilyakwa – the language of Groote Eylandt – and English. Her 2024 album Nara won the ARIA Award for Best Adult Contemporary Album, making Wurramara the first Indigenous woman to win the award. She was also named Artist of the Year at the National Indigenous Music Awards.

Ripple Effect

This all-female rock band from Maningrida (north-central Arnhem Land) sings about country, bush food, local animals and mythological beings in five languages: Ndjébbana, Burarra, Na-kara, Kune and English. Ripple Effect broke new ground in bringing female voices into Maningrida’s already prolific music scene. Their song Ngúddja (“language”) explicitly celebrates Maningrida’s linguistic diversity.

Neil Morris (also known as DRMNGNOW)

A Yorta Yorta, Dja Dja Wurrung and Wiradjuri yiyirr (“man”), Morris weaves together hip-hop, experimental electronic elements and sound design to explore Indigenous rights and culture in his work as DRMNGNOW. A passionate language advocate, he entwines Yorta Yorta language revitalisation with muluna (“spirit”), Yenbena (“ancestors”) and Woka (“Country”). His latest release Pray is out now.

Aaron Wyatt

Noongar man Wyatt is a violist, composer, conductor and academic, as well as the first Indigenous Australian to conduct a major Australian orchestra. He has conducted works that have been trailblazers of language revitalisation, such as Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse’s opera Wundig Wer Wilura in Noongar and Deborah Cheetham Fraillon’s children’s opera Parrwang Lifts the Sky, sung partly in Wadawurrung.

Jessie Lloyd

A musician, historian and song-keeper, Lloyd founded the Mission Songs Project to collect songs from the Aboriginal mission era. She recently launched the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Songbook to support schools in bringing Indigenous music into the classroom.

For First Nations languages to thrive in the music scene and beyond, they need support through grassroots initiatives in communities, schools and public life. One such example is an award-winning song project run by Bulman School in the Northern Territory.

This project is revitalising the local Dalabon and Rembarrnga languages, showing music can be a powerful and fun way to keep languages strong.

Where communities are supported to strengthen, use and teach their languages, the benefits for cultural and emotional wellbeing are clear.

Jill Vaughan, Senior Lecturer, Monash University and Josef Noel Tye, Director Indigenous Innovation and Experience Programs, Monash University

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

It’s no secret Australians are big fans of a do-it-yourself (DIY) project. How many other countries have a weekend sausage sizzle at a hardware store embedded in their national mythology?

That DIY attitude may be flowing into the way we save for retirement. Since the early 1990s, it has been compulsory for employers to pay part of their employees’ income into a superannuation account.

Typically, that money is then invested and managed on their behalf for retirement by their chosen super fund. But it doesn’t have to be. Australians can also elect to put their money in a “self-managed super fund” (SMSF) and choose how it’s invested themselves, for their own benefit.

This option comes with far more risk and personal responsibility for compliance. Yet increasingly, people are choosing it: over the year to June, the number of SMSF accounts grew by 6.2% to 653,062, with about 5% of Australian adults now an SMSF member.

SMSFs account for about a quarter – A$1 trillion – of Australia’s $4.3 trillion superannuation sector.

Last week, a review by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) raised serious concerns many financial advisers may be encouraging people to set up an SMSF even though it isn’t in their best interests.

The DIY approach to super

Most SMSFs have one (25%) or two members (68%), but they’re allowed to have up to six.

For some people, the benefits of an SMSF may outweigh those offered through a regular super fund. It can allow them to select from a wider range of investments – choosing exactly where they want to put their money, and how they want to diversify.

It may also allow some people to optimise the amount of tax they have to pay – by selecting more tax effective assets and timing the sale of investments.

Some company directors may be able to benefit from favourable tax arrangements by putting commercial properties into an SMSF – though this is a complex arrangement with strict rules.

Not for everyone

However, there are also many potential pitfalls. First and foremost, though an SMSF gives members control over how their savings are invested, poorly selected investments can result in losses.

All members of an SMSF are equally responsible for ensuring it meets its compliance obligations. This can be complex and expensive. Ongoing costs – such as audit fees and preparing financial statements – can be high.

On top of this, leaving an industry or retail fund could mean losing its included insurance coverage. It can also mean losing access to some compensation schemes and consumer protections.

Advice not up to scratch

In this context, corporate watchdog ASIC set out to understand why some clients were advised to establish an SMSF even though it was not suitable or beneficial for them.

It looked at 100 advice files that had recently been provided to real retail clients by financial advisers. It’s important to note this wasn’t a random sample – they were selected based on red flags that the advice may not have been suitable.

ASIC’s report found in 62 of the 100 files, the financial adviser failed to demonstrate compliance with the “best interests duty” and related obligations. Meeting this duty is a legal requirement. Advisers must provide appropriate advice, that is in the best interests of the client after taking all relevant circumstances into account, prioritising the client’s interests over their own.

Before recommending a financial product to a client, advisers must also conduct a reasonable investigation into the options.

Alarmingly, the review found 27 files – more than a quarter – raised “significant concerns about client detriment”. That is, these clients should not have been advised to set up an SMSF, but had been anyway.

‘Control’ and conflicts of interest

One of the biggest concerns raised in the report related to the way the idea of “control” was being used inappropriately to justify recommending clients set up an SMSF.

Using an SMSF does offer more control over how retirement savings are invested. But ASIC said many advisers weren’t exploring “what control meant” to a particular client.

This includes asking questions such as: does this client have the skills and experience to operate an SMSF? Is this option cost effective, and does it meet the client’s goals?

The report also found many advisers weren’t sufficiently investigating existing products or alternatives for their clients, and in some cases, where there was a conflict of interest, didn’t act in the best interest of clients.

Why this matters

ASIC’s report points out there were still examples of good quality advice about establishing an SMSF. They do not suggest the sample is representative of all SMSF advice.

But a targeted focus on SMSF red flags seems warranted, with significant interest from Australians on lower incomes: in the June quarter this year, 47% of new members entering into an SMSF had taxable incomes under $100,000.

Relatively low incomes don’t necessarily mean an SMSF was established inappropriately.

However, they do raise questions about whether other options (often lower cost, lower risk) are being properly explored and offered to clients seeking advice.

Di Johnson, Senior Lecturer, Finance and Financial Planning, Griffith University

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

For people living in metro areas, a broken hot water system or washing machine is a nuisance. But it can usually be sorted by a phone call for a same-day repair or a quick trip to the hardware store.

In remote communities, the same repair is slowed by distance and lack of services, often taking weeks or months to fix. When families can’t easily wash themselves or their clothes, the risk of infections, including skin infections, rises.

Compared with non-Indigenous Australians, Aboriginal people are 2.3 times more likely to be hospitalised and 1.7 times more likely to die from illnesses linked to poor environmental conditions.

Illnesses such as acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease – often driven by untreated skin sores and sore throats – remain common in remote communities. These diseases were once widespread among all Australian children, but have largely disappeared elsewhere thanks to improvements in housing and services.

There’s been plenty of public discussion about remote housing but the voices of people living with these conditions is usually missing.

To inform this discussion, we yarned with more than 200 people over four years about housing, infrastructure and the services they rely on to stay healthy across nine communities in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Our results are published in Health & Place.

Long waits for repairs

People told us they had no choice but to live in homes too small for their families. This pushed plumbing, hot water and laundries past breaking point.

Once broken, they were unable to be repaired until the next service trip, often months later. Many told us they relied on relatives or neighbours while their own taps, showers or washers sat waiting for repair.

People told us they knew the environment was making them sick when basic services failed, but they were limited in what they could do about it.

Local Aboriginal environmental health teams – praised by community and able to handle small jobs – were constrained by narrow remits, funding limits and bureaucracy.

Those living in public housing also faced a convoluted process in order to achieve repairs.

One local woman taught herself to fix a broken industrial washing machine behind the art centre so Elders and mums could wash their clothes and linen. When we asked why, she said:

It was for the old ladies. I wanted to help make sure they felt clean.

She has run this unofficial community laundromat for a decade.

What’s causing this?

People framed inadequate housing maintenance and household “environmental health” in remote Aboriginal communities as the cumulative result of successive state and federal policies that have failed to deliver.

Decades of policy fragmentation have normalised substandard environmental health in the home. None of this was new to the people living it. Their stories have been consistently ignored.

These housing and inadequate environmental conditions sit within a longer history of colonisation: dispossession, mission and pastoral control, and later public housing regimes that centralised asset ownership and decision-making away from Aboriginal communities.

When families can’t access secure land and home ownership, they become dependent on government housing systems, with limited ability to assert their rights. Economic exclusion compounds this: distance, wet-season logistics and chronic under-investment drive high costs and long delays.

Homes have often been built without genuine community consultation, leaving dwellings that don’t fit local family structures, climate or daily life.

Closing the Gap commits all governments to improve housing. To get there, however, consultation is needed with remote Aboriginal communities themselves, as well as policymakers and experts, including those in preventive health. This should happen before any build or upgrade.

Too often consultation is skipped or rushed to save time and costs, resulting in houses that fail their residents and requiring frequent repair.

What’s the solution?

Addressing these inequities requires clear, measurable standards and accountable delivery:

• decision-making rights for residents and local communities

• locally based maintenance with guaranteed response times and transparent reporting

• sustained funding for new builds, maintenance and remediation

• community-led housing design that tackles structural crowding and the realities of remoteness and climate change.

Most importantly, there should be increased reliance on local service providers operating in these regions. These teams already have community trust and should be the first call, not the last.

As well as housing, health care should also be co-designed with communities to include a strong focus on prevention, primary health care, community engagement and capacity-building for local health services. This also requires greater funding and support.

Ultimately, listening to communities is the most important way forward. The culture and uniqueness of remote Aboriginal communities thrive despite challenges, but people shouldn’t have to contend with conditions that wouldn’t be accepted elsewhere in Australia.

As a local Elder emphasised during our conversations:

You need to be healthy, kids need to be healthy. We don’t want them to get sick, they’re the future, the future of our communities.

Stephanie Enkel, Postdoctoral Researcher, The Kids Research Institute Australia; Asha Bowen, Team Lead, Healthy Skin and ARF Prevention, The Kids Research Institute Australia; Hannah M.M. Thomas, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Skin Health, The Kids Research Institute Australia, and Rachel Burgess, Social Scientist and Aboriginal Senior Research Fellow, The Kids Research Institute Australia

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

Bacteria are rapidly emerging as a new class of “living medicines” used to kill cancer cells.

We’re still a long way from a “cure” for cancer.

But one day we could have programmable, self-navigating bacteria that find tumours, release treatment only where needed, then vanish without a trace.

Here’s where the science is up to.

Current treatments aren’t perfect

Many tumours are hard to treat. Sometimes, treatments cannot penetrate them. Other times, tumours can “fight back” by suppressing certain parts of the immune system, reducing the impact of treatments. Or tumours can develop resistance to treatments.

Using bacteria could overcome these obstacles.

More than a century ago, surgeons noticed some people with cancer who developed bacterial infections unexpectedly went into remission. That is, their cancer signs or symptoms decreased or disappeared.

Now we’re learning what could explain this. Broadly speaking, bacteria can activate the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells.

In fact, this approach is already used in the clinic. Bacteria are now the treatment of choice worldwide for certain cases of bladder cancer. When doctors deliver a weakened version of Mycobacterium bovis directly into the bladder through a catheter, the body’s immune response destroys the cancer.

Why bacteria?

Certain bacteria have an unusual talent. They can naturally find and grow inside solid tumours – ones that grow in organs and tissues – but leave healthy tissue relatively untouched.

Solid tumours are perfect homes for these bacteria as they contain lots of nutrients from dead cells, are low in oxygen (an environment these bacteria prefer), and typically have reduced immune function, so cannot defend themselves against the bacteria.

All this suggests possible careers for these bacteria as delivery couriers to carry targeted, anti-tumour therapies.

Over the past 30 years or so, more than 500 research papers, 70 clinical trials and 24 startup companies have focused on bacterial cancer therapy, with growth accelerating sharply in the past five years.

Most bacterial cancer therapies in clinical trials today target solid tumours, including pancreatic, lung, and head and neck cancers, which are the kinds that often resist conventional treatments.

Bacteria could deliver cancer vaccines

Cancer vaccines work by presenting a cancer’s unique molecular “fingerprints”, known as tumour antigens, to the immune system so it can hunt down and eliminate tumour cells displaying those antigens.

Bacteria can serve as couriers for these anti-cancer vaccines. Using genetic engineering, the genetic instructions (or DNA) in bacteria that might make us unwell can be removed and replaced with DNA for immune-stimulating tumour antigens.

Listeria monocytogenes is the main character in more than 30 cancer vaccine clinical trials. Unfortunately, most of these trials did not show that these treatments work better than current ones.

The challenge is teaching the immune system to recognise cancer’s telltale antigens strongly enough to remember them, without pushing the body into dangerous overdrive.

Bacteria could boost existing cancer therapies

Nearly half of current clinical trials using bacteria in cancer therapies pair bacteria with immunotherapies or chemotherapy as part of personalised treatment plans to enhance the body’s attack on cancer.

Various approaches have finished phase 2 clinical trials. These include using immunotherapy combined with modified Listeria to activate the immune system for recurrent cervical cancer.

Another trial used modified Salmonella in people with advanced pancreatic cancer alongside chemotherapy to increase survival.

Bacteria could be ‘bugs as drugs’

Arming bacteria with a drug means they could destroy the tumour from the inside, creating “bugs as drugs”.

For this, we need precise genetic control over how bacteria behave. Researchers can already reprogram bacteria to sense, compute and respond to molecular signals around the tumour.

Researchers can also engineer bacteria to self-destruct after delivering a drug, secrete immune-boosting molecules, or activate other therapies on command.

Researchers are building “multi-function” strains that combine several treatment strategies at once.

Probiotic species used in humans for many years are also candidates, including Escherichia coli Nissle, Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. These can be engineered to produce cancer-killing molecules or alter the environment around the tumour.

How close are we, really?

While early human trials have shown this approach is generally safe, finding the right dose remains a delicate balance.

Bacteria are also living entities that can evolve in unpredictable ways, and their use in humans demands strict safety controls. Even strains modified for safety can cause infection or trigger excessive inflammation.

So scientists are developing “biocontainment” strategies – engineered safeguards that prevent bacterial spread beyond tumours or triggers them to self-destruct after treatment.

If we can overcome these issues, such “living medicines” would still need to successfully complete clinical trials and receive regulatory approval before being commonly used in the clinic.

If so, this could mark a profound shift in how we treat cancer, from static drugs to adaptive biological systems.

Josephine Wright, Senior Research Fellow,, South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute and Susan Woods, Associate Professor, GESA Bushell Research Fellow, University of Adelaide and Principal Research Fellow, Precision Cancer Medicine, South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute

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

Former tennis star Monica Seles recently revealed she is living with the rare disease myasthenia gravis, which affects 12 in 100,000 people globally.

Seles explained her first symptoms appeared suddenly around three years ago. She began experiencing double vision and weakness in her arms and legs. This made everyday activities, such as drying her hair, a challenge.

So what is this condition?

Myasthenia gravis is a chronic autoimmune disorder, where your own immune system disrupts the communication between nerves and skeletal muscle.

In healthy people, nerve cells send a chemical messenger called acetylcholine. This tells muscles to contract by binding to its receptor.

In myasthenia gravis, antibodies block or destroy these receptors, so the signal is weakened or lost.

The result is muscle weakness that worsens with activity and improves with rest. This is called “fatigueability”.

What are the symptoms?

Muscle weakness can affect everyday functions such as walking, speaking, breathing and swallowing.

Symptoms, which can appear suddenly, may also affect the eyes, causing drooping eyelids and double vision.

In some cases, weakness of the muscles makes it difficult to breathe or can result in choking on food or water. This is called a “myasthenic crisis” and requires hospitalisation and sometimes life support.

In our research interviews, a young woman in her 30s living with myasthenia gravis described what it feels like to experience a crisis:

My speech slows, and I sound like I’m drunk, even though I’m fighting to breathe. Sometimes I can’t talk at all. Having my mum there to advocate for me has been life-saving, because I can’t explain what’s happening. Staying calm helps me cope.

Another man in his 70s explained just how suddenly the disease can appear:

It came on at my 70th birthday party. I developed ocular MG [a form of myasthenia gravis affecting the eyes] in the middle of my speech, and my grown children thought I was having a stroke. They rushed me to hospital – and that’s how it all began.

What causes it and who does it affect?

It’s unclear what causes the disease but it’s not thought to be hereditary.

There is some evidence it is more likely to occur with other autoimmune conditions such as autoimmune thyroid disease, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis but the evidence remains incomplete.

Myasthenia gravis can appear at any age. Early onset is more common in women (often before 40), while men are more likely to develop myasthenia gravis later in life.

How is it diagnosed?

Despite its serious impact, myasthenia gravis remains under-recognised and is difficult to diagnose. The diagnosis is “clinical”, which requires a doctor with experience in myasthenia gravis to make a judgement, based on the information available.

A handful of tests are available to support the diagnosis: blood tests for antibodies, nerve conduction studies and needle electromyography, which record the electrical activity of nerves and muscles. But these are far from perfect in establishing the diagnosis.

How is it treated?

There is currently no cure for myasthenia gravis, but a range of treatments can help manage symptoms. These include:

• oral medicines called anticholinesterase inhibitors, which temporarily improve communication between nerves and muscles

• immunosuppressant medications, which are generally taken by mouth. These dampen the immune system and reduce its attack

• plasma exchange and intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg), which is a blood product. These are resource-intensive therapies that remove or block the harmful antibodies. These treatments require hospital admission for at least half a day to administer via an intravenous drip

• in some patients, surgery is performed to remove the thymus gland, which is located in the chest between the lungs. This plays a key role in the abnormal immune response in people with myasthenia gravis.

While most treatments are subsidised through the health system, access remains a challenge for some people. Plasma exchange and IVIg are not available in all hospitals, for example, meaning patients in regional areas may face long travel distances or delays in receiving urgent care.

What is the long-term outlook?

While myasthenic crises are life-threatening, the evidence so far suggests the disease won’t have a significant impact on life expectancy for most people. Treatments aim to reduce disease activity rather than offering a complete cure.

People with myasthenia gravis can have very different journeys with their disease. Some may need frequent hospital admissions, and around 10% have a form of disease which is difficult to treat.

Others may experience minimal symptoms requiring little to no treatment.

Many find their symptoms are unpredictable. As a woman in her 60s, who has had myasthenia gravis for ten years, told us:

I think you just get used to managing – to finding your own rhythm in all the uncertainty.

Gozde Aydin, Research Fellow, Centre for Health Economics, Monash University and Yong Lin Wang, Neurologist and Phd Candidate, Monash University

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

There have been at least three watershed moments in how humans access information.

One came with the invention of the printing press in 1440, which revolutionised the spread of knowledge. Another came in 1998, when the launch of Google changed how we search for and retrieve information.

The third happened in late 2022, with the introduction of generative artificial intelligence (AI). This technology can not only answer our questions, it can help us generate new content and propose solutions to real-life problems. Generative AI teaches itself even when we are not using it.

Unlike past technological shifts, which unfolded over decades or even centuries, this one is happening in just a few years.

While parents may be hearing about AI in their work or in the news, they may not realise it is also being introduced into their child’s classrooms.

As part of our new book published this week, we outline the questions parents should be asking their schools about AI.

What’s the difference between AI and generative AI?

You’ve likely encountered AI in everyday life – when your web browser remembers your preferences, your GPS suggests a faster route, or your bank flags unusual spending. These systems analyse data and make predictions based on patterns.

Generative AI goes a step further. It doesn’t just analyse, it creates. Ask it to plan a summer barbecue, and it can generate a menu, write a shopping list, design invitations, compile a playlist, or even compose an original party song. It adapts to your needs in real time, whether you’re catering to vegans or entertaining toddlers.

Our research

In our book, The Future of Schooling in a GenAI World, we investigate what generative AI means for schools.

We sought the views of more than 350 experts via surveys, interviews and international forums. We spoke to developers inventing AI, academics and business leaders who understand the implications of it, and school leaders who are adopting it. We asked participants to tell us the implications of AI for schooling.

We found generative AI is already being used in primary and secondary schools in Australia and around the world to personalise learning. It helps teachers develop study guides on key content, tutors young people at their own pace, creates lesson plans, and varies assessments depending on the student.

As generative AI tools “remember” prior interactions, they can come back to where the student left off the day before and prompt for repetition or jump ahead – similar to a private tutor.

But with these opportunities come risks. This includes an over-reliance on technology, rather than independent thinking (called “cognitive offloading”). It is also easy for students to cheat.

The technology can also be biased and inaccurate, and can threaten our privacy. In the process, there are fears it could dehumanise education.

What should parents be asking?

In our book, we pose key questions parents should be asking themselves, their children, and their schools to ensure generative AI is being used safely to enhance learning and teaching.

1. What is the school’s plan for adopting AI learning tools and resources? Schools should at least have a framework in place, but in our research, we found some do not have any formal planning.

2. How are we already using AI in the classroom? Is it just being used by teachers or are students also using in their daily work?

3. How are we planning to use AI in the foreseeable future?

4. What is an example of how using AI could benefit my child’s learning? Could it be used to focus on a particular part of the curriculum (for example, science and technology), or to focus on an area where a child needs extra work (such as multiplication)?

5. How is the school safeguarding student identity and other private data?

6. How is the school instructing students about the pros and cons of AI and its appropriate use and potential misuse? This means students are learning how to be thoughtful, responsible users of AI.

7. How can AI learning tools help my child who has an identified special need?

8. What AI tools do you recommend we have at home to support learning? Will my child need a new laptop or special software, or will we need this at home?

You could also suggest the school hosts a workshop for parents and carers to learn how to use AI tools and to address any AI concerns.

Where is all this heading?

We don’t yet know, and the pace of the change is so fast even the experts we talked to are having difficulty staying up with the latest iterations of the tools.

But we do know schools and teachers will remain essential to our society. What will change is the kind of schools we need and the role of teachers in leading them.

For parents and our educators, the challenge is to keep the HI — our human intelligence — in front of the AI.

John Fischetti, Professor, Leadership and School Transformation, School of Education, University of Newcastle, University of Newcastle; Kylie Shaw, Dean of Graduate Research (Education), University of Newcastle; Phuong Quyen Vo, Researcher, University of Newcastle, University of Newcastle, and Scott Imig, Associate professor, Educational Leadership and Management, University of Newcastle

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

In 1931, geologist Robert Shippee and US Navy Lieutenant George R. Johnson led one of the first aerial photography expeditions in South America. They captured stunning photographs of landscapes across the Andes, including some peculiar “pockmarks” in the Pisco Valley of southern Peru.

These “pockmarks” make up the mysterious archaeological site of Monte Sierpe. Stretching 1.5 kilometres and consisting of approximately 5,200 precisely aligned holes, Monte Sierpe translates as “serpent mountain” in Spanish, but the site is also known as the Band of Holes.

The purpose of Monte Sierpe has baffled researchers and members of the public alike, but new archaeological research carried out by an international team has uncovered evidence for a new interpretation.

As we explain in a new study, published today in Antiquity, Monte Sierpe, which dates to at least 700 years ago, may have functioned as an Indigenous system of accounting and exchange centuries before the European invasion.

Drone mapping and sediment analyses

We used a drone to map Monte Sierpe. Analyses of aerial imagery revealed that the site has a “segmented” organisation, composed of around 60 sections (or blocks) of holes, some of which are separated by empty spaces.

We also found numerical patterns in layout. For example, one section has nine consecutive rows with eight holes each. Another section has at least 12 rows that alternate between counts of seven and eight holes. These patterns hint at an underlying intention in the organisation of Monte Sierpe.

Our team analysed sediment samples collected from several holes across Monte Sierpe. We identified ancient pollens of maize (corn), one of the most important staple crops in the Andes, and of Typha (bulrush) and willow, which have been traditionally used to make baskets and mats.

These unexpected findings indicate that people deposited plants in the holes, perhaps using woven baskets or bundles for transport.

Parallels with a record-keeping device

To our surprise, we discovered that the organization of Monte Sierpe is similar to the structure of at least one Inca knotted-string device used for detailed record-keeping (khipu) that was recovered near Pisco.

Monte Sierpe’s 60 distinct sections of holes parallel the approximately 80 groups of cords documented in this local khipu.

This crucial discovery suggests Monte Sierpe may have played a significant role in Indigenous accounting practices.

A new model

Our results provide little support for alternative theories connecting Monte Sierpe to defence, water collection, or fog capture.

There is no evidence of fortification or weapons at Monte Sierpe.

The Band of Holes does look somewhat like the pits used for grape cultivation in Lanzarote, Canary Islands, but rainwater is effectively non-existent at these elevations (440–700 metres) in the Pisco Valley.

The site is located in an area of ephemeral fog oases (patches of dense fog that persist for up to a week), so it could have captured moisture. However, the resulting water would not be enough to grow crops, especially maize. Groundwater is not available on Monte Sierpe’s slope.

Instead, we hypothesise that Monte Sierpe initially served as a barter marketplace before being turned into a large-scale accounting device under the Inca Empire (1400–1532 AD) for collecting tribute from local communities.

The Andes is one of the few world regions where large-scale societies, such as the Inca Empire, developed, but there is no strong evidence of pre-Hispanic currencies or writing systems. How did Andean societies exchange resources and administer large numbers of people without currency or writing?

Monte Sierpe may offer answers.

Barter marketplace

Barter marketplaces are built around a shared understanding among participants about how the value of one type of good compares to the value of another.

We envision the holes at Monte Sierpe as potential units of exchange. Depositing goods in the holes could have been a way of publicly displaying information about the quantity of goods available as well as the quantity of goods required for a fair exchange.

For example, a certain number of holes containing maize would have been equivalent to a certain number of holes containing another type of good, such as cotton or coca.

Accounting device

Across the Andes, the Inca reorganised communities into new groups that were expected to take “turns” paying a labour tax or its equivalent in tribute.

In our model, each section at Monte Sierpe could have been linked to a particular social group for the payment of tax. Numerical patterns in layout and variation in the number of holes across sections may reflect differences in tribute levels, or the number of taxpayers from specific villages and towns.

In a sense, Monte Sierpe may have functioned as a large “spreadsheet” for the Inca Empire.

While our model remains tentative, our research brings us closer to unravelling the purpose behind one of the most enigmatic archaeological sites in the Andes.

Jacob L. Bongers, Tom Austen Brown Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Sydney and Charles Stanish, Exec. Director, Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture and the Environment; Professor of Anthropology, University of South Florida

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The resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness over dishonest editing of a speech in 2021 by US President Donald Trump raise several disturbing questions.

These concern the effectiveness and integrity of the BBC’s internal editorial procedures for investigating complaints, and the pressure being brought to bear on the BBC by conservative political and media forces in the United Kingdom.

The Trump controversy originated from the editing of a BBC Panorama documentary called “Trump: A Second Chance?” It went to air a week before the 2024 US presidential election, and contained replays of sections of the speech Trump had made to his supporters just before the insurrection in Washington on 6 January 2021.

In the speech, Trump said at one point: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer our brave senators and congressmen and women.” Fifty minutes later, in the same speech, he said: “I’ll be with you. And we fight. Fight like hell.”

According to the BBC’s own account, these two quotes were spliced together to read: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol […] and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

The effect was to give the impression Trump was egging on his supporters to violence.

At that time, a journalist called Michael Prescott was working as an independent external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee. According to The Guardian, Prescott’s appointment to this role had been pushed by a BBC board member, Robbie Gibb, who had been communications chief for the former Conservative prime minister Theresa May and had also helped set up the right-wing broadcaster GB News.

Prescott left the BBC in June 2025, but during his time there he wrote a letter to the BBC board drawing their attention to what he saw as problems of “serious and systemic” editorial bias within the broadcaster. The dishonest editing of the Trump speech was one example he gave to support his case.

He wrote that when these lapses had been brought to the attention of editorial managers, they “refused to accept there had been a breach of standards”.

That letter came into the possession of London’s Daily Telegraph, a conservative newspaper. On November 3 it published a story based on it, under the headline: “Exclusive: BBC doctored Trump speech, internal report reveals”. The sub-heading read: “Corporation edited footage in Panorama programme to make it seem president was encouraging Capitol riot, according to whistleblower dossier”.

It is not known who the whistleblower was.

The Trump White House was on to this immediately, a press secretary describing the BBC as “100% fake news” and a “propaganda machine”. Trump himself posted on his Truth Social platform that “very dishonest people” had “tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election”, adding: “On top of everything else, they are from a Foreign Country, one that many consider our Number One Ally. What a terrible thing for democracy!”

News Corporation’s British streaming service TalkTV predicted Trump will sue the BBC. As yet there have been no developments of that kind.

The Prescott revelations come only three weeks after the BBC reported that the British broadcasting regulator Ofcom had found another BBC documentary, this time about the war in Gaza, had committed a “serious breach” of broadcasting rules by failing to tell its audience that the documentary’s narrator was the son of the Hamas minister for agriculture.

Ofcom concluded that the program, called “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone” was materially misleading by failing to disclose that family link.

These are egregious errors, and the journalists who made them should be called to account. But the resignation of the director-general and the CEO of news is so disproportionate a response that it raises questions about what pressures were brought to bear on them and by whom.

The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail ran hard for a week on the Trump story, and this generated pressure from the House of Commons culture committee to extract explanations from the BBC.

Politically, the timing was certainly inconvenient. The BBC is about to begin negotiations with the government over its future funding, and perhaps a calculation was made that these might proceed more fruitfully with a new director-general and head of news after a procession of controversies over the past couple of years.

On top of that was the Trump factor. Were there diplomatic pressures on the British government from the White House to see that some trophy scalps were taken?

Davie and Turness have each said that mistakes had been made, that the buck stopped with them, and that they were resigning on principle. Perhaps so, but the sources of pressure – the White House, the House of Commons, the conservative media – are such as to invite a closer scrutiny of the reasons for their departure.

They also seemed unable to respond effectively to the week-long onslaught from The Telegraph and Mail, either by defending their journalists or admitting mistakes had been made and that they had taken remedial steps.

It is also a reminder to public broadcasters like Australia’s ABC, that in the current political climate they are high-priority targets for right-wing media and politicians. The ABC has had its crisis with the Antoinette Lattouf case, which cost it more than $2.5 million for its management’s failure to stand up for its journalists against external pressure.

Fortunately it coincided with the planned departures of the chair and managing director, giving it the opportunity of a fresh start. The BBC is about to get a similar opportunity. Clearly it needs to more effectively enforce its editorial standards but it also needs to stand up for its people when they are unfairly targeted.

Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

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