Santa Claus is based on the real historical figure of St Nicholas, a Byzantine bishop born in present-day Turkey. Because of the extraordinary legends and miracles attributed to him he became one of the most popular saints in Europe.

Dutch migrants probably spread his fame to the US and there the patron saint of children was transformed through books, magazines and films into the familiar Santa Claus, or Father Christmas, figure we know today.

There is the story about St Nicholas that everyone knows – the one about him giving gifts to the poor in the dead of night – the Santa Claus origin story. But there’s another story that is probably less familiar to most of us.

It’s a story about how Nicholas fought against a miscarriage of justice. The story begins when a local businessman goes to see the provincial governor. For reasons that are lost to history, he wants three innocent men, Nepotian, Ursyna and Apollyn, killed. The governor, a notoriously dishonest man called Eustathios, is only too happy to help.

The earliest writing on the life of Nicholas is to be found in the Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca, and believed to be written in the first half of the 9th century by Michael the Archimandrite. It suggests that once the bribe had been paid, the men were condemned to death.

Word of what was happening reached Nicholas and he raced to the square. Just as the executioner raised his sword to dispatch the first prisoner, Nicholas threw himself between the executioner and the condemned man. Grabbing the executioner’s arm, he ripped the sword away, untied the innocent men and set them free.

He then admonished the governor. When faced with the righteous fury of Nicholas, Eustathios fell to his knees and repented, promising to change his ways, sources suggest.

This is a very different image of St Nicholas than most people are used to in the 21st century. This is not the kind and humble 4th Century bishop, the proto-Santa Claus. Instead, this is the action hero, the St Nicholas who is not afraid to face down an executioner’s sword.

As bishop of Myra – a coastal town in what is now Turkey – St Nicholas was a leading Christian figure in an empire that was growing more and more concerned about the increasing power of Christianity.

The Roman emperor Diocletian decided it was time to send out a message. He ordered the torture of any Christian who refused to worship the Roman gods. It unleashed a reign of terror. Nicholas was one of those imprisoned and tortured. The persecution by Diocletian lasted between eight and ten years.

When Bishop Nicholas was finally freed, he was a changed man. Putting his life on the line for people he had never met could have been simply because he knew what it felt like to be innocent and have your freedom taken away.

And so while the story of St Nicholas secretly handing out bags of gold to a poor family should be remembered and eventually become the inspiration for the jolly, rosy-cheeked figure of Santa Claus, there are other aspects to this character.

Nicholas was a wealthy man and so when he gave away his gold it was an act of kindness but nothing that he could not afford. That he chose to do so anonymously showed his humility. These were the acts of a compassionate bishop, of a man who would soon become celebrated, then famous and eventually a saint.

And as the centuries passed, the legend of St Nicholas would grow and grow – as would the powers attributed to him. From controlling the weather to appearing to Roman emperors in dreams, there seemed to be little that St Nicholas could not do.

He became the patron saint of children, pawnbrokers, unmarried women, sailors, repentant criminals, students, business people and countless European cities. And of course eventually he would become reimagined as Santa Claus.

But there is something about the story of the rescue of the three innocent men and Nicholas’s fight for justice that stand out against all the embellishments, the Christmas films and the myths. It’s a tale that shows how and why the legend of Nicholas spread across the world.

Brian Thornton, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of Winchester

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

Hello Kitty doesn’t look her age. And despite recently turning 50, she is showing no signs of slowing down.

In 2025, the Japanese character – worth around US$4 billion (£3.1 billion) a year to the company that owns her – is due to star in a live-action movie. A new amusement park and resort are also planned.

Her 50th year has been celebrated at events in Japan, Singapore, the US and the UK, where she received a birthday message from King Charles at a state banquet in Buckingham Palace.

Quite the party then, for a character with two black-dotted eyes, no mouth and a yellow button nose. Designed in 1974 by Yuko Shimizu (who is not believed to have made much money from her creation), Hello Kitty first appeared on a clear, vinyl coin purse – and has since grown into a merchandise empire consisting of over 50,000 different items sold across 130 countries.

Hello Kitty’s longevity is partly down to her inherent simplicity. In terms of design, she is composed of a few basic shapes, six short marks for whiskers, and a red bow. She is easy to recognise and cheap to reproduce.

The character also epitomises “Kawaii”, the Japanese term for cute. According to Professor Joshua Dale, a pioneer in the field of “cuteness studies”, perceiving objects as cute triggers psychological instincts for care and protection.

With Hello Kitty, children relate to the small, rounded character as being safe. Like others (see Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse and many, many more), she provides a sense of innocence and comfort, which attracts fans from an early age – and continue into adulthood among those longing for nostalgia.

Part of this comes down to people’s abiding enthusiasm for anthropomorphism – the notion of endowing animals and other non-humans with human-like characteristics. Some would argue that this is also a key element of the infantilisation of society more generally.

Hello Kitty also has an easily relatable storyline that resonates with consumers. According to her biography, Hello Kitty – full name Kitty White – is a cheerful little girl (so officially not actually a cat) who lives in the suburbs of London with her family. She is described as being “five apples tall” and “three apples” in weight. She apparently loves to bake cookies, and her other hobbies include travelling, listening to music and making new friends.

Corporate kitty

But away from the baking and friend-making, Hello Kitty has a very serious business side to her character. Sanrio, the Japanese firm that owns her, has employed some astute strategies to build and sustain such a successful brand.

Collaborating with other firms has been a big part of this. In 1996, Sanrio launched began its first collaboration with an electronics retail chain in Hong Kong. But things really developed three years later when the company joined up with McDonald’s to offer a Hello Kitty meal deal.

The promotion started a craze in Hong Kong with similar success in Taiwan, Japan and Singapore – where the launch in 2000 led to massive queues and even fights. Customers reportedly threw away the hamburgers as they were only interested in the special edition wedding design toy set featuring Hello Kitty and her boyfriend Dear Daniel.

This year, a 50th anniversary collection of McDonald’s toys in Singapore quickly sold out and were soon being resold online.

Elsewhere, the commercial success of Hello Kitty has been linked to licensed collaborations with big brands including Nike, Adidas, Crocs and the Italian fashion label Blumarine.

Hello Kitty products have progressed from stationery and stickers to microwave ovens, toasters and vacuum cleaners. She has appeared on Fender Stratocaster electric guitars and Swarovski jewellery.

There are also two officially licensed theme parks in Japan, Sanrio Puroland (in Tokyo) and Harmonyland (in Ōita), with another due to open on China’s Hainan island in 2025.

And to add to the animated series and films, comics, books and video games, next year Hello Kitty will follow in Barbie’s footsteps and appear in a (partly) live-action movie produced by Warner Bros. The co-director of the film, Jennifer Coyle, says the release will “spread the message of love, friendship and inclusivity that Hello Kitty stands for”.

Yet despite all of these projects, Sanrio is diversifying away from the character. Hello Kitty now accounts for 60% of the company’s business in North America (it was 99% in 2013) and just 30% worldwide. Other characters are moving on to Kitty’s patch.

According to the Sanrio 2024 character popularity ranking, Hello Kitty occupies fifth place, with Cinnamoroll (a dog with pink cheeks) sitting at the top.

Other younger creations such as Gudetama (an apathetic egg yolk) and Aggretsuko (an angry red panda) mark a notable shift from Sanrio’s emphasis on cute characters towards ones which reflect social concerns. Aggretsuko, for example, faces gender discrimination, social anxiety and a poor work-life balance. Gudetama reflects the struggles and aspirations of young people in Japan.

But as new characters come and go, Hello Kitty’s familiar expression will no doubt remain unchanged, as it has for 50 years. An inscrutable gaze looking back on five decades of incredible commercial success.

Sameer Hosany, Professor of Marketing, Royal Holloway University of London

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

Many of us assume that everything a musician sings emerges from some autobiographical impulse. Pop music lyrics in particular are often read literally by fans as transparent disclosures about the singer’s life.

For some reason, this seems to apply solely to lyrics. Writers from other media, such as film and TV, are generally presumed to create their characters and stories from their imaginations, rather than personal experience, even when writing in the first person.

As historian Michel Foucault says: “Everyone knows that, in a novel offered as a narrator’s account, neither the first-person pronoun nor the present indicative refers exactly to the writer or to the moment in which he writes but, rather, to an alter ego whose distance from the author varies.”

Indeed, people don’t tend to leap to the conclusion that Patrick Bateman of American Psycho is a window into the soul of Bret Easton Ellis. Nor that Breaking Bad’s Walter White is merely a caricature of his creator Vince Gilligan.

So why do so many of us immediately assume every Taylor Swift lyric is a thinly veiled critique of an ex-boyfriend? Or that every new Kanye track is a window into his mental state?

In his book This is Your Brain On Music, psychologist Daniel Levitin notes that when we listen to music we are letting the songwriter into our living rooms and bedrooms when no-one else is around – even letting them into our ears, directly, through earbuds and headphones.

It is unusual, he says, to let oneself become so vulnerable with a total stranger. It’s understandable, then, that we want to our songwriters to be similarly vulnerable, and so believe their songs to be an exchange of confidence between us and them.

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In 2016, such autobiographical assumptions were applied to Sorry by Beyoncé. Part of her award-winning album Lemonade, the lines “He only want me when I’m not there / He better call Becky with the good hair” saw the internet erupt with theories. Fans attempted to uncover who the singer could have been referring to. Few people seemed to consider that Beyoncé may simply have created a fictional character in a fictional scenario.

In 2013 the song Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell was widely criticised for seeming to trivialise sexual violence, objectify women and reinforce rape myths. There wasn’t much room for debate about meanings in this song, but the fallout from the controversy suggests it’s the act of singing lyrics, rather than writing them, which makes people assume connection.

Hence it’s singer and co-writer, Robin Thicke – who also had a central role in the music video – has seen his career stall, while co-writer/producer Pharrell Williams has had multiple hit singles and recently celebrated the release of a Lego movie all about his life.

It’s true that the controversy around Thicke wasn’t helped by the fallout from his divorce and accusations of infidelity, as well as his live performance of the song with former Disney star Miley Cyrus at the 2013 Video Music Awards. But it does seem, as literary critics Raman Selden and Peter Widdowson put it, that listeners assume that “speech incarnates, so to speak, the speaker’s soul”, and that, as the “speaker” on Blurred Lines, Thicke is considered the one who supported its inadvisable and uncomfortable content.

Artist intervention

When an artist is inevitably asked “what’s the meaning behind this song?” and they give a literal answer, it immediately closes down the different ways a listener can interpret it.

Charli XCX, for example, when recently asked about the meaning of her song Apple, said: “I [wanted] to write a song about my kinda sticky relationship with my mom and dad.”

Once the writer’s intention, however vague, is revealed, the temptation is to elicit further meaning line by line. In the case of Apple, that has led to analyses such as: “‘I wanna grow the apple, keep all the seeds’ indicates a desire to nurture and preserve the positive aspects of [Charli’s Indian-Scottish] heritage.”

Contemporary artists don’t even have to wait to be asked. In December, singer Sam Fender announced the release of new song People Watching via an Instagram post, saying it was “about somebody that was like a surrogate mother to me and passed away last November”.

To those who didn’t read the post, the opening lyrics “I people-watch on the way back home / Envious of the glimmer of hope / Gives me a break from feeling alone” could hold any number of different meanings. But Fender has limited the possibility for other interpretations.

Think for yourself

Masters of the lyrical craft use imagery, syntax, allegorical language, rhyme, perspective and numerous rhetorical devices to create emotive, persuasive or life-affirming work. Work which can, of course, be as fictitious as any other literary work.

When it comes to figuring out what a song is “about”, then, perhaps it’s better to look at what it means to us personally. Levitin says listeners form more of a bond with a song when we need to fill in some of the meaning for ourselves.

Some songwriters invite such collaboration. John Lennon said he thought that whatever people make of his songs was valid. Neil Finn of Crowded House, meanwhile, claims he’s always happy when people get things “wrong” about his songs.

Some lyricists don’t even have a meaning in mind when they write. For the Weezer track Summer Elaine and Drunk Dori (2016), lead vocalist Rivers Cuomo drew lyrics from a spreadsheet containing a couple of thousand random lines. The resulting song suggests a coherent, real-life event but each line was actually from a completely different place and reassembled in an order that suggests a story that never happened.

In such cases, as the literary theorist Roland Barthes said in his essay The Death of the Author (1967), the author is only the person who writes the text. It is the reader – or, in our case, listener – who decides its meaning.

Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester

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

It is as humbling as it is motivating to think about how much we still have to learn about the universe. My collaborators and I have just tackled one of astrophysics’ enduring mysteries: how massive elliptical galaxies can form.

Now, for the first time, we have solid observational evidence that provides an answer. Our results have recently been published in Nature.

Galaxies in the present-day universe fall into two broad categories. There are spiral galaxies, like our Milky Way, which are rich in gas and continuously form stars in a rotating disc. There are also elliptical galaxies, which are large and spherical rather than flat, similar to a rugby ball. The latter don’t produce new stars but are dominated by stars formed more than 10 billion years ago.

The formation of elliptical galaxies has long been difficult to explain with cosmological models describing the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to now. One of the challenges is that star formation during the era when elliptical galaxies formed (10 billion to 12 billion years ago) was thought to occur within large rotating discs, similar to our own Milky Way.

So how did the galaxies transform their shape from flat discs to three-dimensional elliptical galaxies?

Observations with Alma

By analysing data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (Alma), we identified the birth sites of giant elliptical galaxies. We discovered that local elliptical galaxies can form through intense and short-lived star formation episodes early in the universe, as opposed to starting out as a rotating disc and becoming more elliptical over time.

Our study examined the distribution of dust in more than 100 distant galaxies, which we know were forming lots of stars back when the universe was between 2.2 billion and 5.9 billion years old. Dust indicates the presence of gas — the material from which new stars are formed — and enables us to study the regions within a galaxy that are actively forming new stars.

Using a novel observational technique, we found that the dust in these distant galaxies is extremely compact and isn’t what we expected from flat disc-shaped galaxies. Furthermore, we were able to infer the three-dimensional geometry of the dust-emitting regions. This analysis indicates that most of the early star-forming galaxies were actually spherical rather than disc-shaped. In fact, they closely resemble the shape of elliptical galaxies near us today.

We then used cosmological computer simulations to interpret the observational results and understand the physical mechanisms that may have caused dust and gas to sink into the centres of these distant, star-forming galaxies.

Our analysis reveals that the simultaneous action of cold gas streams from surrounding galaxies along with galaxy interactions and mergers can drive gas and dust into compact, star-forming cores within these galaxies. The simulations also show us that this process was common in the early universe, providing a key explanation for the rapid formation of elliptical galaxies.

Our findings add a crucial piece to this puzzle, advancing our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution.

A novel observational technique

This discovery was made possible by a novel technique for analysing ALMA observations. Alma data are different than the images we are used to see from optical telescopes. In fact, Alma operates by combining signals from multiple antennas that work together as a single, giant telescope.

This technique is known as interferometry, and while it allows to obtain sharp images of distant galaxies, the data analysis is more complex than for traditional optical images. Our new technique enables more precise measurements of dust distribution compared to previous methods, offering a significant advancement in this field.

For this research we used archival, open-access Alma data accumulated over several years. This highlights the power of open-source data, where scientists share their findings, and worldwide collaborations in driving scientific breakthroughs.

Future observations with JWST and Euclid space telescopes will further map the distribution of stars in the distant ancestors of today’s elliptical galaxies. And the Extremely Large Telescope, with its 39-metre wide mirror, will provide unprecedented detail of the star-forming cores in distant galaxies.

Additionally, sharper observations of gas dynamics with ALma and the Very Large Telescope will reveal how gas moves towards galaxy centres, fuelling star formation and shaping the galaxies we see today.

Annagrazia Puglisi, Anniversary Fellow of Astrophysics, University of Southampton

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

Compared with Africa’s other big animals, hippos have been relatively neglected in scientific research. Partly, this is because they’re hard to study and dangerous to encounter.

Hippos tend to live in wetland areas often partly submerged in rivers, lakes and swamps – habitats that overlap with areas where people live, farm and fish. Though hippos are plant-eaters and don’t see humans as food, they’re highly territorial and aggressive in water. Along with their huge teeth and sheer size, this makes them one of the deadliest large mammals in the world: around 500 people are killed by hippos each year.

Other factors make their populations hard for people to track and manage. For instance, hippos are particularly hard to sedate and move, as they tend to run into water as soon as they are darted and risk drowning. Even if they’re still alive, no one wants to fish a drowsy one-tonne animal out of murky water that may be home to other hippos or crocodiles.

But these challenges must be overcome, as hippos are such ecologically important animals. Their feeding habits shape vegetation patterns along water courses, and their dung contributes to aquatic food webs, supporting many fish and invertebrate species. In many regions, they are also a significant attraction for eco-tourism.

However, common hippos (one of two species in the hippo family, along with pygmy hippos) face numerous threats, primarily from human activities.

Over the past century, hippos have lost much of their original habitat. They’ve been illegally poached for their meat and ivory, or killed as retribution when coming into conflict with humans. This has caused their numbers to reduce and their populations to fragment. A century ago, it is estimated that several hundred thousand hippos lived in Africa, but just 130,000 or so are alive today.

At present, common hippos are officially classified as vulnerable, indicating they are threatened with extinction in the wild. This highlights why we urgently need accurate data on where and in what numbers hippos can be found, in order to inform effective conservation efforts.

Why we need data to conserve hippos

Geographic range maps, distribution records and population estimates are essential tools for tracking and protecting hippos. There are some hippo maps already available, such as this one produced in 2017 for the world’s official inventory of conservation status, the IUCN Red List:

However, these maps are often based on outdated data and sometimes entirely omit important regions. For instance, the above map shows hippos along the coast of northern Namibia, yet a local expert I spoke to says they haven’t been seen there since the 1970s.

The creation of a standardised, comprehensive hippo database would be an important milestone in hippo conservation efforts, and would help mitigate conflicts between humans and hippos. Surveys of hippo populations also need to be standardised across the continent to ensure consistency in data collection and analysis. This would allow for better comparisons between regions, helping us to see how different threats are affecting hippos in different places.

One model that has worked well is the African Elephant Database, which has become an important resource for managing populations and informing conservation efforts across the continent. Since no such database currently exists for common hippos, there is a significant gap in our understanding of the species’ needs and challenges.

An updated database

Colleagues and I have begun to address these data gaps, with a comprehensive review of common hippo distribution records and population estimates across southern Africa from 2003 to 2023.

Our work, published in the journal Biological Conservation, reveals population estimates are lacking in many areas. Additionally, we found that methods used to survey hippo populations across different countries and regions are inconsistent, which further complicates efforts to monitor populations accurately.

One of the key findings of our study is the critical importance of official transfrontier conservation areas. These areas provide crucial habitat as they often encompass systems of rivers, lakes and deltas that cross international borders and are large enough for hippos to move around and maintain genetically-healthy populations. The largest such area, the Kavango Zambezi, covers parts of five different countries.

For now, our map and database covers only the southern third of Africa. Eventually, we would like it to be extended across the continent, as most countries south of the Sahara have at least some small populations of hippos – or did in the recent past.

What we need to do now

At a local level, it is important to balance agricultural practices and land use with the conservation of wetlands. Rather than draining wetlands, special barriers might be a better option to keep some distance between humans and hippos. Education programmes can help raise awareness of the cultural and ecological value of hippos – as well as their dangers.

Hippos can also be reintroduced into areas where they were historically present, as happened recently in Malawi. However, this approach is challenging, since hippos are so hard to immobilise and transport.

On a broader scale, we need a coordinated international effort to promote transfrontier conservation areas and develop an Africa-wide database and standardised survey methods. This would help secure the future of this iconic species.

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Hannah Lacy, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds

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

At just 16 years of age, Gout Gout captured the world’s attention with his record-breaking performance at the Australian National All-Schools Championships.

He ran an extraordinary 20.04 seconds for the 200m, breaking a 56-year-old Australian record.

Equally impressive was his 10.04 seconds for the 100m – unfortunately it was wind-assisted and ineligible for records, but reinforced his incredible potential.

For a moment, let’s reflect on the significance of his performance:

• breaks Australia’s oldest athletics record set by Peter Norman in 1968.
• sets Australian records at Open, under-20 and under-18 levels
• is ranked second all-time (under-18) and sixth (under-20) globally in the 200m
• currently the fastest in the world for the 200m at under-18 and under-20 levels
• has qualified for the 2025 World Championships for the 200m.

So, what comes next for this exciting Queenslander?

Looking ahead to the LA and Brisbane Olympics

With an eye on the 2028 Los Angeles and 2032 Brisbane Olympics, it is important to remember that Gout is still classified a junior athlete.

Remarkably, he is uniquely positioned to compete concurrently at both the junior and senior World Championships.

These competitions alternate every two years, providing invaluable experience in learning to manage international travel, new environments and intense world-class competition.

Training approach: what does it take?

Elite sprinters typically peak at around 25-27, so Gout’s progression should lead perfectly into the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.

His training revolves around sprint-specific drills, gym sessions for strength and power, and recovery.

Under coach Dianne Sheppard, his training will evolve with his age and maturity.

To an outsider, it may not seem so obvious, but what will change is the complexity and specificity of the training sessions.

As he grows stronger naturally, his gym work will help refine that strength to explode out of the blocks and hold his sprinting technique.

Sprint-specific exercises will become increasingly tailored to enhance his acceleration and top-end speed.

Recovery will also become more important as his body adjusts to greater physical demands.

This is where the role of his coach is crucial.

Not only does Sheppard provide the technical guidance in the gym and on the track, she will also need to navigate the multitude of internal and external factors necessary for Gout to perform on the world stage and harness his ability.

Performing under pressure

Rising to fame at 16 can bring enormous pressure.

How an athlete perceives this pressure – as a threat or a challenge – can be the difference between success and failure.

Athletes with high self-efficacy, a strong sense of control, and an approach-oriented mindset are more likely to experience a challenge state, where they view pressure as an opportunity to perform their best.

In the case of Gout, a key consideration is whether he has the cognitive maturity to cope with the pressures of his rapid rise to stardom and truly understand what it takes to be the best in the world.

Even Usain Bolt, widely regarded as the greatest sprinter of all time, acknowledged this understanding didn’t come naturally:

You can’t get to the top with talent alone. You need work, you need sacrifice, you have to be dedicated. It took me time, but I learned […] when I was young, I didn’t understand the concept of “being great”.

Like many athletes, Gout will continue to develop his mental resilience and “athletic mindset”.

Techniques such as mindfulness, anchoring, and the “quiet eye” method are tools that sports psychologists use to help athletes enter a state of flow during competitions.

Managing the expectations placed on him will be essential for his long-term success.

Pressure ‘makes diamonds’

With the second fastest 200 metre under-18 time in history, Gout has drawn comparisons to the eight-time Olympic champion Bolt.

For some, the pressures of such comparisons would be overwhelming, however when asked about his performance, Gout responded confidently:

You know what they say – pressure makes diamonds and I guess I’m better than a diamond right now.

This statement should not be perceived as cockiness, but confidence and a display of his athletic mindset.

To infinity and beyond

Gout’s performance at the recent Australian all-schools event was out of this world.

With his technical, tactical, physical, and psychological skills on display for the world to see, he possesses all the tools to not only be Australia’s next sprint sensation but the world’s next sprint king.

And with the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games just seven years away, he has the ideal timeframe to reach his full athletic potential.

In the meantime, as a nation we must be patient and allow him to develop as a person and an athlete.

As part of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Legacy, the University of Southern Queensland has developed the Student-Athlete Empowerment Project “2 WIN” to enhance student-athlete health, wellbeing and performance.

Chris Gaviglio, Lecturer Strength and Conditioning, University of Southern Queensland and Stephen P. Bird, Professor of Sport & Exercise Science, University of Southern Queensland

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

Could humans expand out beyond their homeworld and establish settlements on the planet Mars? The idea of settling the red planet has been around for decades. However, it has been seen by sceptics as a delusion at best and mere bluster at worst.

Mars might seem superficially similar to Earth in a number of ways. But its atmosphere is thin and humans would need to live within pressurised habitats on the surface.

Yet in an era where space tourism has become possible, the red planet has emerged as a dreamland for rich eccentrics and techno utopians. As is often the case with science communication, there’s a gulf between how close we are to this ultimate goal and where the general public understands it to be.

However, I believe there is a rationale for settling Mars and that this objective is not as far off as some would believe. There are actually a few good reasons to be optimistic about humanity’s future on the red planet.

First, Mars is reachable. During an optimal alignment between Earth and Mars as the two planets orbit the Sun, its possible to travel there in a spacecraft in six to eight months. Some very interesting new engine designs suggest that it could be done in two months. But based on technology that’s ready to go, it would take astronauts six months to travel to Mars and six months back to Earth.

Astronauts have already stayed for this long on the International Space Station (ISS) and on the Soviet orbiting lab Mir. We can get there safely and we have already shown that we can reliably land robots on the surface. There’s no technical reason why we couldn’t do the same with humans.

Second, Mars is abundant in the raw materials required for humans to “live off the land”, in other words, achieve a level of self sufficiency. The red planet has plentiful carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen which can be separated and isolated, using processes developed on Earth. Mars is interesting and useful in a multitude of ways that the moon isn’t. And we have technology on Earth to enable us to stay and settle Mars by making use of its materials.

A third reason for Mars optimism is the radical new technology that we can put to use on a crewed mission to the planet. For example, Moxie (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) is an project developed by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) that sucks in Martian atmosphere and separates it into oxygen. Byproducts of the process – carbon monoxide, nitrogen and argon – can be vented.

When scaled up, similar machines would be able to separate oxygen from hydrogen to produce breathable air, rocket fuel and water. This makes it easier to travel to the planet and live on the surface because it’s not necessary to bring these commodities from Earth – they can be made once on Mars. Generating fuel on the surface would also make any future habitat less reliant on electric or solar-powered vehicles.

But how would we build the habitats for our Mars settlers? Space architect Melodie Yasher has developed ingenious plans for using robots to 3D print the habitats, landing pads and everything needed for human life on Mars. Using robots means that these could all be manufactured on Mars before humans landed. 3D printed homes have already been demonstrated on Earth.

Volunteers have also spent time living in simulated Mars habitats here on Earth. These are known as Mars analogues. The emergency medicine doctor Beth Healey spent a year overwintering in Antarctica (which offers many parallels with living on another planet) for the European Space Agency (Esa) and communicates her experience regularly.

She is not alone, as each year sees new projects in caves, deserts and other extreme environments, where long term studies can explore the physical and psychological demands on humans living in such isolated environments.

Finally, the Mars Direct plan devised by Dr Robert Zubrin has existed for more than 30 years, and has been modified to account for modern technology as the private sector has grown. The original plan was based on using a Saturn V rocket (used for the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s) to launch people. However, this can now be accomplished using the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a SpaceX Dragon capsule to carry crew members.

Several uncrewed launches from Earth could ferry necessary equipment to Mars. These could include a vehicle for crew members to return on. This means that everything could be ready for the first crew once they arrived.

For astronauts making the journey to Mars, radiation is the biggest problem. But using certain materials in the walls of the spacecraft or building a protective shelter inside the vehicle could shield astronauts from high energy particles. Similar ideas could apply to 3D printed habitats on the Martian surface. Alternatively, settlers could live underground or in Martian caves.

On Mars, there’s a 24-minute communication delay with Earth. This means that Martians will need to be self-sustaining and less reliant on their homeworld from the beginning. While this could pose challenges, they are not insurmountable.

Elon Musk’s Starship vehicle, which launches on the most powerful rocket ever built, could be a game changer. Starship is currently undergoing testing at SpaceX’s facility in southern Texas. It is hard to overstate what a reliable Starship, that has been cleared to carry humans, could do for exploration of the moon and Mars.

Lower costs, higher payloads and larger crews all make for a far more efficient programme of lunar and Martian exploration. Yet even without it, everything we need to travel to Mars is currently available or in exciting late stages of development. There will not be a shortage of well-suited astronauts eager to go.

Sam McKee, Associate Tutor and PhD Candidate in Philosophy of Science, Manchester Metropolitan University

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

Charles Dickens is often mistakenly credited with inventing modern Christmas. But his writing did give us a unique insight into the ways both ordinary and elite Victorians celebrated the festive season.

Writing in his magazine, Household Words, in December 1850, Dickens described the gifts and decorations on a typical Christmas tree in a middle-class household.

There were rosy cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves … there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, all kinds of boxes … there were teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation cards, bouquet-holders … imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before me, delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, ‘There was everything, and more.’

“Everything, and more” may sound like a modern retail slogan, but many of these things can be made at home with things you already own. So if you’re looking to cut down on your consumption this year, you may benefit from recreating some Victorian DIY projects.

1. Cornucopias

In December 1848, a newspaper printed an illustration of Victoria and Albert’s Christmas tree. The image prompted a great deal of public interest, which has frequently been credited with popularising the Christmas tree in Britain.

Victoria and Albert’s tree includes a number of what Dickens refers to as “sweetmeat boxes”. These could be as simple as a box of sweets from a confectioner’s or a more elaborate lacquered miniature chest. Many families, though, would have had a simpler variation, like the cornucopia.

These could easily be made at home. The cornucopia was created by rolling a sheet of card or thick paper into a cone, glueing it and then knotting a ribbon across the opening. It can then be filled with small sweets and hung from the tree.

The cornucopia (Latin for “horn of plenty”) embodied the two sides of Victorian Christmas: thrift and indulgence. Easy and cheap to make, it embodied the values of economy and efficiency, but its contents promised the material luxuries of the festive season.

If you’re looking to cut down on waste, try recycling a newspaper or toilet roll as the base for your cornucopia.

2. Christmas wrapping

Want to capture the style of an early Victorian Christmas and save money? Get rid of the shop-bought wrapping paper. The tradition of wrapping presents only became widespread in the mid-to-late 19th century.

The rise of gift wrapping was closely related to the move from homemade to shop-bought gifts. Although shops would wrap purchases in white or brown paper, re-wrapping presents with your own paper was thought to make them more personal. As the historian Judith Flanders notes in Christmas: A Biography (2017):

Wrapping a gift … was a way of decontaminating it, both of marking that it had been removed from the world of the shop, and of associating care and the personal with otherwise mass produced items.

Try wrapping your gifts using recycled pieces of fabric and thread from the home for that personal touch.

3. Conversation cards

The “conversation cards” mentioned by Dickens were a popular Victorian Christmas amusement. The cards consisted of two illustrated decks: questions being asked by cartoon men, and answers provided by cartoon women. A man’s question card might ask: “Can you find a place in your heart for me?” A woman’s answer card might respond: “You do make me laugh.”

Male players could choose a particular card from their hand, to which female players would choose an appropriate answer. Alternatively, cards might be drawn blindly from the tops of the two decks for comic effect. These rules were not dissimilar to the modern game Cards Against Humanity. The “conversation” was primarily between the characters on the cards, but inevitably prompted conversation between players.

Victorian packs of the cards occasionally surface on auction sites (often for high prices), but homemade variations can be easily produced. Modern versions could expand the questions and answers to move beyond the romantic topics of the Victorians – or at least allow the female characters to ask some of the questions.

4. Celebrate Twelfth Night with a performance

Although modern retail culture would have us believe that Christmas is well under way by the end of November, Victorians were in no doubt that the 12 days of Christmas started, rather than ended, on December 25.

As a result, in some parts of the country (particularly London), Twelfth Night was just as celebrated as Christmas Day itself. Dickens saw his annual Twelfth Night party as an opportunity to perform his amateur magic show. He described the rehearsals in a letter of December 31 1842:

I have purchased … the entire stock in trade of a conjurer, the practice and display whereof is entrusted to me … if you could see me conjuring the company’s watches into impossible tea caddies, and causing pieces of money to fly, and burning pocket handkerchiefs without hurting ‘em – and practising in my own room, without anybody to admire – you would never forget it as long as you live.

The last thing many of us want to do in January is spend more money, and indeed Victorian celebrations of Twelfth Night tended to be restricted to those who could afford to take a full 12 days of Christmas off. But marking the occasion needn’t be expensive.

Charades was a popular Victorian Christmas and Twelfth Night entertainment, as was reading aloud. Performing all of A Christmas Carol might be a stretch, but there are shorter Christmas pieces in Dickens’ Sketches by Boz (1836). Reintroducing Twelfth Night would make a fitting end to a neo-Victorian Christmas.

Christopher Pittard, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Portsmouth

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Beetles are the most diverse group of animals on Earth, accounting for nearly a quarter of all known animal species. Australia is thought to be home to a whooping 30,000 beetle species, and they are crucial to keeping our ecosystems healthy.

Beetles can be distinguished from other insects by their hard, shell-like wing covers called “elytra”. Unlike other insects, beetles hide their soft, thin wings beneath these protective covers when they are not in use.

Summer is a great time to go beetle-watching in Australia. While beetles can be found all year round, many species are more visible and numerous when the weather heats up.

Beetles come in a brilliant range of colours, patterns and textures – even metallic – which makes them especially fun to spot. Here are five beautiful beetles to look out for this summer.

1. Flower chafers

Although bees get all the glory, beetles are the unsung pollinators of many native plants.

Flower chafers (from the subfamily Cetoniinae) are named after their habit of visiting flowers to feed on nectar and pollen. This makes them important pollinators.

Flower chafer larvae live in rotting wood or leaf litter. There are 146 species in Australia, found in all states and territories..

One of the most common is the fiddler beetle (Eupoecila australasiae), found along Australia’s east coast. It features striking black, green and occasionally yellow markings in a fiddle-shaped pattern.

Female fiddler beetles lay eggs in soil or rotting logs. The larvae burrow through the soil to feed, emerging as adults in the spring.

The fiddler beetle feeds on native flowers such as Angophora, Melaleuca and Leptospermum (tea trees) and may occasionally eat rotting fruit.

Beetle-pollinated flowers are often white or cream, with nectar placed where beetles can readily reach it. The below video shows a native tree on which multiple species are feeding at once.

2. Stag beetles

The larvae of stag beetles (from the family Lucanidae) feed on decaying wood – breaking down tough, fibrous material and returning essential nutrients to the soil.

Adult stag beetles have been described as “beautiful baubles” for their shimmery exoskeletons in shades of gold, green, purple and blue.

Stag beetles are most abundant in Tasmania, New South Wales and Victoria, but are also found in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

3. Christmas beetles

In southern and eastern Australia, the festive season is traditionally marked by the arrival of large numbers of iridescent Christmas beetles (Anoplognathus).

Of the 36 species of Christmas beetle, all but one are found exclusively in Australia, making them a truly iconic part of the country’s natural heritage.

Although Christmas beetles were once reliable heralds of summer, their numbers now appear to be declining. A lack of long-term population monitoring makes it challenging to confirm this trend, however.

4. Jewel beetles

Jewel beetles (from the family Buprestidae) feature brilliantly coloured, metallic bodies – features thought to deter predators.

Australia is lucky to have 1,200 species of these beautiful living jewels, found all across the continent.

Adult jewel beetles feed on nectar and pollen, while their larvae usually bore through the wood of trees or the roots of plants.

5. Diamond weevils

The diamond weevil (Chrysolopus spectabilis) is the crown jewel of Australia’s weevil family. It comes in a startling array of colours, from blue to yellow and green.

Diamond weevils are found commonly along the east coast of Australia, eating plant material such as Acacia leaves.

The species is one of Australia’s first insects named by European scientists. It was first collected in 1770 by naturalist Joseph Banks, who landed at Botany Bay with Captain Cook.

Saving our beetles

Despite their ecological importance and phenomenal diversity, beetles are understudied. Scientists are constantly finding new species, such as the adorable fluffy longhorn beetle (Excastra albopilosa) recently discovered in the Gold Coast hinterland.

Unfortunately beetles – like many other insect species – face increasing threats from habitat loss, climate change and the misuse of insecticide.

A few simple actions can help native beetles to thrive.

Planting nectar-rich natives helps provide a reliable food source for flower-feeding beetles. Choose native plants with large, bowl-shaped or flattened flowers which makes the nectar easy for insects to reach. Good examples include the dwarf apple (Angophora hispida), white kunzea (Kunzea ambigua) and rice flower (Ozothamnus diosmifolius).

As a bonus, flowers also attract pest-eating beetles such as ladybirds.

Many beetles rely on decaying leaves and wood for food and shelter. So try to avoid disturbing or removing rotting wood and leaf litter from natural habitats.

Avoid using insecticides in home gardens. Many insecticides commonly used to target pest beetles, such as the invasive Argentinian scarab, indiscriminately kill beneficial ground-dwelling beetle larvae.

And help scientists better understand beetle populations and their conservation needs by uploading beetle sightings to online platforms such as iNaturalist and Canberra Nature Mapr.

Public sightings can have a big impact. Participants in the annual Christmas Beetle Count have rediscovered seven species not seen for decades.

By protecting our valuable – and stunning – Australian beetles, we can ensure they survive for future generations to enjoy.

Tanya Latty, Associate Professor, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney and James Bickerstaff, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Australia National Insect Collection, CSIRO

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

Signed exactly 76 years ago today, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the world’s most translated document. It is widely acknowledged as the foundation of international human rights work, not just in legal settings but in wider civil society.

But few know that among the many social and political freedoms defined by the declaration is a human right to science. Article 27 of the declaration positions this right in the cultural sphere, stating:

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

This right might seem meaningless at a time when governments around the world have slashed funding for science and appear to be ignoring scientific evidence for how to address global problems such as climate change.

But there’s much more to the right to science than what you might immediately think of. It can also serve as a spark for human imagination and curiosity. And this is where its true power resides.

The evolution of the right to science

Interpretations of the right to science have evolved a lot over the past decade.

It was initially interpreted mainly as the right of scientists to do their research and the public’s right to access and benefit from this research. But this led to no small share of conundrums. For example, what if the right to do research is at odds with the human rights of affected communities?

This conflict arises in virtually all fields, from anthropology and archaeology to computer science and the life sciences. For example, building a laboratory or collecting data for research can potentially put a community at risk of losing their heritage, identity or livelihood. Some scholars therefore argue that the right should also include a duty to anticipate and take steps to ameliorate such tensions.

The United States National Academies have also begun to recognise that access and benefit doesn’t automatically follow from biomedical research. In fact, research may increase inequities if it’s not conducted in line with the principles of fairness, justice, equity and the common good.

Equally, what are we forgetting if we treat the public only as a beneficiary of science done by credentialed researchers?

The right to science is also about the right to participate in science and in decisions about research.

For example, it means Indigenous peoples have the right to be recognised as knowledge producers – a sentiment captured in Australia by researchers acknowledging that First Nations peoples are also the First Astronomers.

The International Science Council’s recently released framework nicely captures these nuances. It states that the right allows people to participate in and enjoy the benefits of science.

The right to science as a force for curiosity

Most of these discussions see the right to science as a way to protect fundamental freedoms – conjoined with responsibilities – of both scientists and the public. But a different meaning emerges when we remember the right to science is also a cultural right.

In a keynote address to an international conference in Switzerland in 2015, Farida Shaheed, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur for Cultural Rights, explained how the right to science and the right to culture are inextricably linked. Both entail, she said, the conditions for:

people to reconsider, create and contribute to cultural meanings, expressions, or manifestations and ways of life.

This highlights how the right to science can serve as a force to galvanise the more positive role of curiosity and the imagination. As such, it can be a spark for a new ethos of curiosity-driven research for the planet.

Curiosity in a time of crisis

The role of science in policy making and practice is at a crossroads.

Governments routinely invoke geopolitical competitiveness and commercial success as reasons for supporting research – particularly on so-called “critical technologies” such as quantum computing.

Yet the planet faces interconnected crises of climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss and deepening inequalities. The response to this must therefore include all of humanity while creating space for researchers to be curious about different possible futures and pathways for designing them.

The International Science Council’s initiative on Science Missions for Sustainability is predicated on the understanding that we won’t achieve the ambitions of the United Nations 2030 agenda with siloed thinking or new technologies alone. The council calls for all disciplines to work together to produce actionable knowledge oriented towards practical solutions for our planetary challenges.

Humans thrive on curiosity even in times of crisis. We have many examples from the 20th century of curiosity-driven research yielding a “giant pool of ideas” from which came many of the technologies we take for granted today. The challenge now is to harness and support this curiosity in ways appropriate to the scale and scope of the challenges we currently face.

We know from history that worlds are created and changed not just through new technologies and market-based solutions, but also through culture and social innovation.

The right to science provides a welcome stimulus for thinking more deeply, creatively and curiously about these interrelationships in developing policies for research.

Sujatha Raman, Professor and UNESCO Chair-holder, Australian National University and Brian Schmidt, Distinguished Professor, Australian National University

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