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Articles by PhD Candidate
How diets high in sugar and saturated fat could be harming your brain
A lot of research has been conducted to establish the risks that a high energy diet – high in saturated fat and sugar – poses to our health. The most common known results of such diets include obesity, heart disease and diabetes, but research suggests that a diet high in fat and sugar can also have a significant impact on our cognition – the way we learn, remember, and think.
Moscow-Constantinople split highlighting Estonia's role in Orthodox church
Triggered by a dispute on religious authority over Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church broke off all ties with Constantinople on Monday, 15 October. This step potentially marks one of the biggest ruptures in Christian history. The Patriarch of Moscow heads the largest Orthodox church in the world, while the Patriarch of Constantinople has traditionally served as the universal leader of Orthodox Christians. This dramatic move, however, has also brought attention to Orthodoxy in Estonia.
Senate inquiry calls for tougher rules on pet food in Australia
By Bronwyn Orr, Veterinarian and PhD candidate, University of Sydney Compulsory rules for the standards and labelling of pet food in Australia are among the recommendations in a Senate inquiry report released late Tuesday. The Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee inquiry was set up in June following several cases in which dogs fell ill after eating pet food. Currently, the pet food industry in Australia is self-regulated.
Senate inquiry calls for tougher rules on pet food in Australia
Compulsory rules for the standards and labelling of pet food in Australia are among the recommendations in a Senate inquiry report released late Tuesday. The Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee inquiry was set up in June following several cases in which dogs fell ill after eating pet food. Currently, the pet food industry in Australia is self-regulated. The Australian Standards for the manufacturing and marketing of pet food are voluntary, and published behind a paywall.
Why R2D2 could be your child's teacher sooner than you think
By Kristyn Sommer, PhD Candidate, The University of Queensland C3PO, R2D2 and Wall-E: three distinctly memorable robots that captured our hearts as they rolled and beeped across the silver screen. But pint-sized and friendly, humanoid robots are now more than just fictional characters. They’re finding their way into new roles as teachers, ready to shape the way students learn in the classroom. And the evidence we have to date points to robots as fantastic teachers.
Yes, a tsunami could hit Sydney - causing flooding and dangerous currents
Sulawesi’s recent tsunami is a striking reminder of the devastating, deadly effects that the sudden arrival of a large volume of water can have. Published today, our new research shows what might happen if a tsunami hit Sydney Harbour. A large tsunami could cause significant flooding in Manly. Even very small waves might result in dangerous currents in the entrance of the Harbour and in narrow channels such as at the Spit Bridge.
Weight stigma: 5 unspoken truths
Weight stigma – a negative response to someone based on their weight – is the fourth most common form of social discrimination amongst adults – after age, gender and race. It is the only form of discrimination still widely deemed to be socially acceptable. Weight stigma is also one of the most misunderstood aspects of obesity. As such, it is often ignored. Increasing awareness about stigma and its effects could help to reduce the high levels that currently exist.
First Man: a new vision of the Apollo 11 mission to set foot on the Moon
The Apollo 11 lunar landing was the first time humans stepped on another celestial body, and the events leading up to that historic moment – which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year – are depicted in the new movie First Man, out in cinemas today. Director Damien Chazelle has delivered an intense film about astronaut Neil Armstrong, who made those iconic first steps.
Why some kids are more prone to dental decay
A quarter of children have dental decay by the time they start school. This occurs when bacteria in the mouth break down sugar to produce acid, which attacks and dissolves the teeth. Avoiding sugary food and drinks and brushing regularly with an age-appropriate fluoridated toothpaste remain the best ways to ensure children have healthy teeth. But despite parents’ best efforts, some children’s teeth are inherently weak and decay more easily.
Hayne holds fire, but the banks' day of reckoning is coming
The evidence presented in the first four rounds of the Royal Commission into Banking and Financial Services was harrowing. It would be a mistake to think the appalling misbehaviour uncovered so easily by the Commission was unconnected, just a few bad apples, as the banks and their supporters had been claiming. It’s a mistake Commissioner Hayne doesn’t make in his interim report, describing the misconduct as systemic, orchestrated as a matter of corporate policy, and against the law.
ABC Board Chair over-reaches in a bid to appease hostile government
Reports of the contents of leaked emails written by ABC Board Chair Justin Milne provide a powerful insight into how governments of the day can exert influence over what parliament had intended to be an independent agency. The emails have emerged in the wake of the ABC board’s termination of ABC managing director, Michelle Guthrie.
Study of 1.6 million grades shows little gender difference in maths and science at school
There is a stubborn stereotype that maths and science are masculine. But our study of the school grades of more than 1.6 million students shows that girls and boys perform similarly in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects. The research, published today in Nature Communications, also shows that girls do better than boys in non-STEM subjects.
Your Apple Watch can now record your ECG - but what does that mean and can you trust it?
Apple’s new, fourth-generation watch has an electrical heart rate sensor. This can record your electrocardiogram or ECG, which Apple says: So, what actually is an ECG and can you really rely on a watch to read it? As a quick summary, your heart is divided into four chambers. The two top chambers (called atria) receive blood and push it towards the two bottom chambers (ventricles), which pump blood out to the body (left side) and the lungs (right side).
Ex-offenders in South Africa should get a resettlement grant. Here's why
South Africa’s prison authorities have proposed paying unemployed ex-offenders a social grant for a transitional period after serving their sentences. The grant would provide thousands who re-enter society every year with some income while they try to put their lives back together. Ex-offenders with a criminal record find it hard to reintegrate into society when they’re released. More often than not, they are returned to prison because they can’t make it on the outside.
AI: there's a reason it's so bad at conversation
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that.” Anyone who has ever tried to have a deeper conversation with a virtual assistant like Siri knows how frustrating it can be. That’s despite the fact that AI systems like it are increasingly pushing into our lives, with new success stories on an almost daily basis. Not only do AIs now help radiologists detect tumours, they can act as cat repellent and even detect signals of potential alien technology from space.
Potholes: how engineers are working to fill in the gaps
Potholes are a perennial problem. They are dangerous to road users, and the damage they cause to vehicles can be hugely expensive. The cost of repairing them is also vast. But still they appear, and reappear, in countless places. So why do these pesky crevices pose such a difficult challenge? And is there any light at the end of this pothole-filled tunnel? Potholes often begin as imperceptible microscopic cracks in the road surface.
Curious Kids: if the universe is like a giant brain, then where's its body?
This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children of all ages. The Conversation is asking young people to send in questions they’d like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome: find out how to enter at the bottom. Thanks for the question, Aine. Let’s start by looking at the picture of brain cells on the left. Then take a look at the picture of the cosmic web – which maps out the universe – on the right. The two do seem very similar, when you look at them side by side.
Why AMP and IOOF went rogue
The ‘M’ in AMP stood for Mutual. Like another former mutual, IOOF, it was owned by, and set up to benefit, its members. Both AMP and IOOF were presented with draft findings that they acted against the interests of their members at the conclusion of the round five hearings of the Royal Commission into Banking and Financial Services. Although both are now purely commercial organisations, each has marketed itself as different from the others because of its cooperative history and founding ethos.
#TheBiasFallacy: What is it? How can you avoid it?
“They’re biased, so they’re wrong!” That’s a fallacy. We can call it the bias fallacy. Here’s why it’s a fallacy: being biased doesn’t entail being wrong. So when someone jumps from the observation that So-and-so is biased to the conclusion that So-and-so is wrong, they commit the bias fallacy. It’s that simple. In this post, I’ll give some examples of the fallacy, explain the fallacy, and then suggest how we should respond to the bias fallacy.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it: Australia should stay away from electronic voting
Russia was behind an enormous effort to influence politics in the US and the UK, but was Australia targeted too? In this series, Hacking #auspol, we explore how covert foreign influence operates in Australia, and what we can do about it. The civic experience of interacting with analogue voting interfaces is as Australian as the democracy sausage. Voters are confronted with tiny pencils, plus physical security measures that involve huddling in a cardboard booth and origami-scale folding.
Russian trolls targeted Australian voters on Twitter via #auspol and #MH17
Russia was behind an enormous effort to influence politics in the US and the UK, but was Australia targeted too? In this series Hacking #auspol we explore how covert foreign influence operates in Australia, and what we can do about it. New evidence shows that the infamous Russian “troll factory”, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), targeted Australian politics on social media between 2015 and 2017 – and that other Russian outlets may continue to conduct influence operations.
Ancestor of all life on Earth evolved earlier than we thought, according to our new timescale
Science may have enabled us to travel in space and trace the history of the entire universe, but it has not yet been able to answer exactly how and when life first arose on our planet. Traditionally, scientists have used the fossil record to try to answer these questions. Yet, as palaeontologists are all too aware, fossils are increasingly hard to find as we move backwards in time. In fact, we don’t have a lot of rock available to study that is older than two and a half billion years.
Surprising ways to beat anxiety and become mentally strong - according to science
Do you have anxiety? Have you tried just about everything to get over it, but it just keeps coming back? Perhaps you thought you had got over it, only for the symptoms to return with a vengeance? Whatever your circumstances, science can help you to beat anxiety for good. Anxiety can present as fear, restlessness, an inability to focus at work or school, finding it hard to fall or stay asleep at night, or getting easily irritated.
Is it time to remove the cancer label from low-risk conditions?
Over the past few decades, our understanding of cancer has changed. We now know some cancers don’t grow or grow so slowly that they’ll never cause medical problems. But the way we label disease can harm. The use of more medicalized labels, including cancer, can increase levels of anxiety and the desire for more invasive treatments.
Woody plants on the march: trees and shrubs are encroaching across Africa
Forests are being cleared by humans at an alarming rate. Since 2000, roughly 20% of Africa’s forests have been wiped out. This deforestation has serious consequences, among them a loss of biodiversity and the potential to remove carbon dioxide (CO₂), a greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere. But trees and shrubs, collectively known as woody plants, appear to be fighting back on another front.
Political compromise behind Indonesia's vice presidential nominees: experts respond
Candidates for Indonesia’s presidential election next year recently announced their choice of running mates after months of speculations. The names are a political compromise between political elites that ignores the public’s hopes and survey’s results, experts say.
Sapphire secrets: they aren't all blue, and mining them requires luck plus labour
By Lynda Lawson, PhD candidate , The University of Queensland My favourite gem is an occasional series where we ask a scientist to share the fascinating geological and social features of a beautiful rock. Part 1 is here. I first remember seeing sapphires as a teenager in a jeweller’s shop in Silver Street in pre-Khmer Rouge Phnom Penh – the deep saturated blues of the gems from Palin on the border with Thailand were captivating.
Terry Gilliam's long-awaited cinematic feat keeps Don Quixote's idealistic spirit alive
“Twenty-five years in the making … and unmaking…” Terry Gilliam’s much awaited film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, has finally arrived. Gilliam’s take on Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th-century novel had to overcome the most unlikely obstacles in various shooting attempts, including problems with funding, and health or scheduling issues for the original protagonists, Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp.
Anxiety-stop censoring yourself and learn to lose
Anxiety disorders are some of the most common mental health problems today. In fact, four out of every 100 people around the world have one, and research my colleagues and I were involved in at the University of Cambridge has shown that women and young people under the age of 39 are most affected.
Treasury admits corporate governance is broken but baulks at systemic fixes
With the Banking Royal Commission’s interim report looming, public jockeying to influence what Commissioner Kenneth Hayne might recommend is intensifying. In response to damming evidence at the commission, the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) has doubled down to maintain the policy status quo (which helpfully protects its professional director members).
Trump has no idea what soft power even is -- and he's causing an erosion in American diplomacy
At the recent Helsinki summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the U.S. president used the threat of nuclear war to justify good relations with a bad regime, just as he did in Singapore. His rhetoric included overzealous articulations about how the United States and Russia control more than 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons, demonstrating his penchant for hard power capabilities.
South Africa is starting to accept public breastfeeding. But change is slow
A well-known South African family restaurant chain has grabbed headlines with a new breastfeeding policy that allows patrons to breastfeed freely in their venues. This is encouraging because the chain has been on list of large retail groups that have been publicly shamed for their “anti-breastfeeding” responses. The change of heart by the restaurant group, Spur, has been welcomed by mothers and applauded by health, nutrition and early childhood development bodies across the country.
Diagnosing heart failure with NT-proBNP point-of-care testing: lower costs and better outcomes. A decision analytic study
AbstractBackground Afflicting 1–2% of the adult population, heart failure (HF) is a condition with considerable morbidity and mortality.
Loneliness is contagious - and here’s how to beat it
Loneliness is a common condition affecting around one in three adults. It damages your brain, immune system, and can lead to depression and suicide. Loneliness can also increase your risk of dying prematurely as much as smoking can – and even more so than obesity. If you feel lonely, you tend to feel more stressed in situations that others cope better in, and even though you might get sufficient sleep, you don’t feel rested during the day. Loneliness has also increased over the past few decades.
Aussie jobs aren’t becoming less secure
A common narrative nowadays is that standard, secure full-time work is a thing of the past thanks to increasing casual jobs, labour hire, temping and non-standard work contracts that side-step collective bargaining. The ACTU says insecure work has grown to “crisis levels”. A Senate inquiry rehashed the same themes last year. Much of the academic literature is also toeing this line. Yet there is very little evidence that jobs are any less secure than they were decades ago.
US citizens can now publish models of 3D printed firearms online. What does it mean for us?
By Richard Matthews, PhD Candidate and Councillor, University of Adelaide A landmark case in the United States has been settled out of court, giving gun rights advocate Cody Wilson the right to publish instructions on the web that explain how to 3D print firearms. The suit was filed by the Second Amendment Foundation on behalf of Wilson and his company, Defense Distributed, which was previously instructed by the US government to remove such blueprints.
Canada’s housing crisis reinforces violence against poor women
This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. Disclosure information is available on the original site. Author: Alexandra Collins, Research Associate, British Columbia Centre on Substance Use and PhD Candidate, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University Canadian cities are in the throes of an unprecedented housing crisis.
What should my heart rate be and what affects it?
Humans have been aware of their heart rate for thousands of years. But knowing the meaning behind the beats isn’t so simple. Myriad factors affect our heart rate, including our age, medical conditions, medications, diet, and fitness level. Today, we’re even more aware of our heart rate, thanks to devices such as smartwatches that can measure every beat during rest and exercise. So, what is normal? Surprisingly, there are over twelve places you can feel your pulse.
How native American dogs disappeared -- and left a contagious cancer behind
Portrait of a Mexican hairless dog of xoloitzcuintli breed. (Shutterstock) Cancer can be frighteningly complex and unpredictable. Cancer can evolve, change, evade and resist, but one thing we can usually rely on is that cancer can’t infect. For a handful of unlucky species, however, this isn’t the case.
How suppliers of everyday devices make you vulnerable to cyber attack - and what to do about it
If you run a business, you’re probably concerned about IT security. Maybe you invest in antivirus software, firewalls and regular system updates. Unfortunately, these measures might not protect you from malicious attacks that enter your systems through everyday devices. On the evening of Friday the 24th of October 2008 Richard C. Schaeffer Jr, the NSA’s top computer systems protection officer was in a briefing with US President George W. Bush when an aide passed him a note.
Yes we've got a space agency - but our industry needs 'Space Prize Australia'
By Duncan Blake, PhD candidate, law and military uses of outer space, University of Adelaide The Australian Space Agency commenced operations on July 1 2018 with the ambition of tripling the Australian space economy by 2030. But with the Australian government investment of A$41 million, we should not expect anything like NASA (which has a budget more than 2,000 times greater).
The Mathematics of Machine Learning
By Wale Akinfaderin, PhD candidate in Physics at Florida State University In the last few months, I have had several people contact me about their enthusiasm for venturing into the world of data science and using Machine Learning (ML) techniques to probe statistical regularities and build impeccable data-driven products. However, I’ve observed that some actually lack the necessary mathematical intuition and framework to get useful results. This is the main reason I decided to write this blog post.
Why Cuban doctors in Kenya don’t deserve the treatment they’re getting
Cuban medical missions abroad are perhaps one of the most significant legacies of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. The programme involves Cuban doctors offering health care services in host countries, often in impoverished rural communities where there’s little access. The programme stemmed from Cuba’s foreign policy objectives of anti-colonialism and humanitarianism in the 1960s.
Even a microchipped pet can be lost if your data is out of date
By Bronwyn Orr, Veterinarian and PhD candidate, University of Sydney From July 1st 2018, every state and territory of Australia (excluding the Northern Territory) will have laws making microchipping cats and dogs compulsory. South Australia is the latest state to make microchipping mandatory, part of a series of reforms aimed at increasing responsible pet ownership.
Even a microchipped pet can be lost if your data is out of date
From July 1st 2018, every state and territory of Australia (excluding the Northern Territory) will have laws making microchipping cats and dogs compulsory. South Australia is the latest state to make microchipping mandatory, part of a series of reforms aimed at increasing responsible pet ownership. Microchipping – and appropriate use of associated databases – can help you keep track of your pets, and aid governments in tracking down unethical animal breeding practices.
How a photo research project gives refugee women a voice in resettlement policy
Between 2000 and 2017, the number of refugees and asylum seekers globally increased from 16 to 26 million. In 2016, women made up 49% of global refugees. Dominant representations of refugee women are that of vulnerable and helpless victims. This disregards women’s agency, voice, and deep desire for education and social enterprise. Australia’s refugee intake is expected to increase to 18,750 in 2018-19, the largest intake in 30 years.
On the same page? In Indonesia, some male lawmakers are sceptical of quotas for women in politics
Women make up more than half of Indonesia’s population, but their representation in politics in the past decade has been meagre and unsteady. To increase women’s representation in politics, Indonesia introduced a minimum quota for female political candidates in 2003. And parties have been nominating more women to run since the 2004 elections. But, the percentage of women lawmakers is still far below the 30% expected quota.
More people in Africa need to be insured against natural disasters
Mozambique was the site of one of Africa’s most devastating natural disasters in recent times. In the year 2000 floods killed 700 people, displaced 60,000, and left more than 500,000 needing humanitarian assistance. The disaster also inflicted economic damage totalling over US$273 million – that’s six times Mozambique’s GDP. Unfortunately, neither the citizens nor the government had disaster insurance. This meant that the country had to seek donations and humanitarian aid to rebuild.
Fossil fish with platypus-like snout shows that coral reefs have long been evolution hotspots
Coral reefs are well known today for their incredibly diverse and abundant marine life, including fish species ranging from delicate butterflyfish to huge humphead wrasse and ornate lionfish. Published today, my new paper written with co-authors Gavin Young and John Long provides evidence that even 400 million years ago, life on coral reefs was already diverse. The research describes Brindabellaspis, a bizarre fossil fish with a platypus-like snout.
The Way History Is Taught In South Africa Is Ahistorical - And That's A Problem
History may soon be a compulsory school subject until Grade 12 in South Africa. A task team established by the country's minister of basic education made this bold recommendation in a report released in early June. The task team credits history education with three grand tasks. The first is developing critical thinking skills, particularly those relating to "evidence" and the unique concepts necessary to becoming an academic historian.
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