Science

The discovery of an Earth-like planet 4,000 light years away in the Milky Way galaxy provides a preview of one possible fate for our planet billions of years in the future, when the sun has turned into a white dwarf, and a blasted and frozen Earth has migrated beyond the orbit of Mars.

This distant planetary system, identified by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers after observations with the Keck 10-meter telescope in Hawaii, looks very similar to expectations for the sun-Earth system: It consists of a white dwarf about half the mass of the sun and an Earth-size companion in an orbit twice as large as Earth’s today.

That is likely to be Earth’s fate. The sun will eventually inflate like a balloon larger than Earth’s orbit today, engulfing Mercury and Venus in the process. As the star expands to become a red giant, its decreasing mass will force planets to migrate to more distant orbits, offering Earth a slim opportunity to survive farther from the sun. Eventually, the outer layers of the red giant will be blown away to leave behind a dense white dwarf no larger than a planet, but with the mass of a star. If Earth has survived by then, it will probably end up in an orbit twice its current size.

The discovery, to be published in the journal Nature Astronomy, tells scientists about the evolution of main sequence stars, like the sun, through the red giant phase to a white dwarf, and how it affects the planets around them. Some studies suggest that for the sun, this process could begin in about 1 billion years, eventually vaporizing Earth’s oceans and doubling Earth’s orbital radius—if the expanding star doesn’t engulf our planet first.

Eventually, about 8 billion years from now, the sun’s outer layers will have dispersed to leave behind a dense, glowing ball—a white dwarf—that is about half the mass of the sun, but smaller in size than Earth.

“We do not currently have a consensus on whether Earth could avoid being engulfed by the red giant sun in 6 billion years,” said study leader Keming Zhang, a former doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, who is now an Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego.

“In any case, planet Earth will only be habitable for around another billion years, at which point Earth’s oceans would be vaporized by the runaway greenhouse effect—long before the risk of getting swallowed by the red giant.”

The planetary system provides one example of a planet that did survive, though it is far outside the habitable zone of the dim white dwarf and unlikely to harbor life. It may have had habitable conditions at some point, when its host was still a sun-like star.

“Whether life can survive on Earth through that (red giant) period is unknown. But certainly the most important thing is that Earth isn’t swallowed by the sun when it becomes a red giant,” said Jessica Lu, associate professor and chair of astronomy at UC Berkeley. “This system that Keming’s found is an example of a planet—probably an Earth-like planet originally on a similar orbit to Earth—that survived its host star’s red giant phase.”

Microlensing makes stars brighten a thousandfold

The far-away planetary system, located near the bulge at the center of our galaxy, came to astronomers’ attention in 2020 when it passed in front of a more distant star and magnified that star’s light by a factor of 1,000. The gravity of the system acted like a lens to focus and amplify the light from the background star.

The team that discovered this “microlensing event” dubbed it KMT-2020-BLG-0414 because it was detected by the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network in the Southern Hemisphere. The magnification of the background star—also in the Milky Way, but about 25,000 light years from Earth—was still only a pinprick of light.

Nevertheless, its variation in intensity over about two months allowed the team to estimate that the system included a star about half the mass of the sun, a planet about the mass of Earth and a very large planet about 17 times the mass of Jupiter—likely a brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs are failed stars, with a mass just shy of that required to ignite fusion in the core.

The analysis also concluded that the Earth-like planet was between 1 and 2 astronomical units from the star—that is, about twice the distance between the Earth and sun. It was unclear what kind of star the host was because its light was lost in the glare of the magnified background star and a few nearby stars.

To identify the type of star, Zhang and his colleagues, including UC Berkeley astronomers Jessica Lu and Joshua Bloom, looked more closely at the lensing system in 2023 using the Keck II 10-meter telescope in Hawaii, which is outfitted with adaptive optics to eliminate blur from the atmosphere. Because they observed the system three years after the lensing event, the background star that had once been magnified 1,000 times had become faint enough that the lensing star should have been visible if it was a typical main-sequence star like the sun, Lu said.

But Zhang detected nothing in two separate Keck images.

“Our conclusions are based on ruling out the alternative scenarios, since a normal star would have been easily seen,” Zhang said. “Because the lens is both dark and low mass, we concluded that it can only be a white dwarf.”

“This is a case of where seeing nothing is actually more interesting than seeing something,” said Lu, who looks for microlensing events caused by free-floating stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way.

Finding exoplanets through microlensing

The discovery is part of a project by Zhang to more closely study microlensing events that show the presence of a planet, in order to understand the types of stars around which exoplanets live.

“There is some luck involved, because you’d expect fewer than one in 10 microlensing stars with planets to be white dwarfs,” Zhang said.

The new observations also allowed Zhang and colleagues to resolve an ambiguity regarding the location of the brown dwarf.

“The original analysis showed that the brown dwarf is either in a very wide orbit, like Neptune’s, or well within Mercury’s orbit. Giant planets on very small orbits are actually quite common outside the solar system,” Zhang said, referring to a class of planets called hot Jupiters. “But since we now know it is orbiting a stellar remnant, this is unlikely, as it would have been engulfed.”

The modeling ambiguity is caused by so-called microlensing degeneracy, where two distinct lensing configurations can give rise to the same lensing effect. This degeneracy is related to the one Zhang and Bloom discovered in 2022 using an AI method to analyze microlensing simulations. Zhang also applied the same AI technique to rule out alternative models for KMT-2020-BLG-0414 that may have been missed.

“Microlensing has turned into a very interesting way of studying other star systems that can’t be observed and detected by the conventional means, i.e. the transit method or the radial velocity method,” Bloom said. “There is a whole set of worlds that are now opening up to us through the microlensing channel, and what’s exciting is that we’re on the precipice of finding exotic configurations like this.”

One purpose of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2027, is to measure light curves from microlensing events to find exoplanets, many of which will need follow up using other telescopes to identify the types of stars hosting the exoplanets.

“What is required is careful follow up with the world’s best facilities, i.e. adaptive optics and the Keck Observatory, not just a day or a month later, but many, many years into the future, after the lens has moved away from the background star so you can start disambiguating what you’re seeing,” Bloom said.

Zhang noted that even if Earth gets engulfed during the sun’s red giant phase in a billion or so years, humanity may find a refuge in the outer solar system. Several moons of Jupiter, such as Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, and Enceladus around Saturn, appear to have frozen water oceans that will likely thaw as the outer layers of the red giant expand.

“As the sun becomes a red giant, the habitable zone will move to around Jupiter and Saturn’s orbit, and many of these moons will become ocean planets,” Zhang said. “I think, in that case, humanity could migrate out there.”

Other co-authors are Weicheng Zang and Shude Mao of Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, who co-authored the first paper about KMT-2020-BLG-0414; former UC Berkeley doctoral student Kareem El-Badry, now an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena; Eric Agol of the University of Washington in Seattle; B. Scott Gaudi of The Ohio State University in Columbus; Quinn Konopacky of UC San Diego; Natalie LeBaron of UC Berkeley; and Sean Terry of the University of Maryland in College Park.

More than half of the detainees in Police Watch Houses are there because they have violated their bail conditions. A first of its kind study by Edith Cowan University (ECU) has provided insights into the key reasons for those breaches.

In Australia, the bail system permits most people accused of a crime to remain in the community while they await their court date, under various conditions, because they are considered innocent until proven guilty.

However, a high number of people on bail breach the orders placed on them, resulting in additional charges and incarceration, without even having their day in court.

A new study published in the Journal of Criminology, led by criminology researchers Associate Professor Natalie Gately and Dr. Suzanne Rock, surveyed 230 police detainees at the Perth Watch House about their orders and the reasons behind their recent breaches.

Key findings:

• Homelessness, family responsibilities, and procedural challenges were identified as primary barriers to adhering to bail conditions.
• No significant differences in breach rates were found based on Indigeneity, though allowances for cultural obligations were recommended to reduce breaches.

Associate Professor Gately said most of the detainees understood their orders but shared a range of complex issues in their lives which interfered with compliance.

“A public misconception may be that people breach bail due to committing further crimes,” she said.

“However, our study has shown that most breaches are the result of administration difficulties and situations outside the bailees control, such as homelessness.”

Impact of breaches

Granting bail in Australia’s justice system upholds human rights, allows people to keep their jobs, maintain family obligations and relationships, and helps avoid overcrowding in prisons.

Dr. Rock said people may underestimate the impact that breaching bail orders has on both the detainee and the wider community.

“It can be highly disruptive for people when they breach bail and can’t remain in the community,” she said.

“For women on remand, it often means leaving their children, who may then go into foster care, which can damage family relationships.

“And for people with stable employment it can mean a risk of losing their job.

“There is a significant cost to the community when people breach bail conditions, especially if they might not even end up with a prison sentence once their case is heard.”

Recommendations

Dr. Rock said removing some of the procedural roadblocks to compliance would reduce additional charges, workloads of police and court staff and assist with delays in the administration of justice.

The study outlined the following strategies to address the barriers to compliance identified in the research:

• Establish a specific court outreach service to help those on orders navigate and adhere to their conditions.
• Set up court reminders in the most appropriate method for the bailee (e.g., mobile phone texts).
• Provide a phone number/email specific for bailees so if they are having trouble attending, they can notify the right person and avoid a breach.
• Set up a formalized “extension tracker” to record the date, time and reason why an extension or alternative court date or reporting method is being sought (this could also monitor trends and protect the public).

“When low risk people on bail breach their conditions, they are re-criminalized and take up valuable court and police time and resources that could be used for high-risk offenders,” Associate Professor Gately said.

“For Australia’s justice system of granting bail to be effective, conditional orders must be achievable, and the current system’s rigidity does not account for the complex realities of those on bail.

“By adopting a more flexible approach, we can reduce the strain on individuals, decrease additional charges, and ultimately improve the efficiency and fairness of our justice system.”

Given that 77 percent of people in Canada and 57 percent of people in the United Kingdom watch a sports team regularly—compared to the 60 percent of people who turn out to vote in Canada and the U.K.—it’s clear sports have an important and persistent influence on people’s lives.

Sports can serve as a beacon to provide societal leadership or reflect changes in wider society in significant ways. A historical example would be how the integration of sports leagues in North America paralleled the Civil Rights Movement.

But how can sports influence politics today?

Similar to supporting a political party, sports fandom aids in the formation of social identity. This happens when people look to form attachments with other individuals who they believe are similar to them in some way to cultivate positive self-esteem.

Men’s professional sports teams have historically engaged with certain political causes, namely the military and law enforcement, while neglecting others, such as the plight of marginalized members of local communities. Sports engagement with the military has been shown to boost military enrollment and support for government spending on the military in peace times.

Women’s professional sport, meanwhile, has drawn positive attention through its engagement with marginalized community members. The Women’s National Basketball League, for example, has engaged with the LGBTQ+ community to create safe fan spaces for the league.

Men’s sports protests

My preliminary research into these issues has shown that in men’s professional sports, there has often been hostility towards the introduction of newer, more inclusive causes into sporting events. In the National Hockey League, for example, some players refused to participate in Pride Night events on religious grounds.

Former professional quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s non-violent protest of police brutality in the United States resulted in his exile from the National Football League for the apparent “distraction” it created. A crucial element of the backlash against Kaepernick was allegations by conservatives that he disrespected the military and the American flag.

The power of this backlash was surprising given that in the U.S., Democrats and Republicans are equally likely to be avid sports fans, with no meaningful differences in the strength of their fandom. However, Republican sports fans tend to be more vocal about what causes should receive representation in sports.

Essentially, that means those who say athletes should “stick to sports” or “shut up and dribble” aren’t suggesting they don’t want any politics in sports. What they’re really saying is that they don’t want to see political views they oppose being represented in professional sports.

The patriotic causes that have routinely been championed by sports leagues and used for nation-building, such as the military, are viewed as apolitical and therefore appropriate in sports settings. Conversely, messages that are critical of a country or focus on historical inequalities have been deemed “inappropriate” and are excluded by sports because of potential fan backlash.

Can sports influence politics?

More recently, however, sports leagues and teams have begun to engage with social justice causes, such as LGBTQ+ rights in the U.K., Canada and the U.S..

These causes also include Indigenous rights and anti-racism messaging.

As sports organizations adapt to changing social norms and embrace newer social causes, they hold tremendous potential to impact political attitudes. They can showcase the acceptance of marginalized groups in previously hostile spaces, and provide valuable representation.

Furthermore, sports fandom identity has been shown to hold a strong psychological connection that can create feelings of inclusion which, in turn, can boost self-esteem.

This is why athletes make easy role models for children, and why watching sports events is a valued leisure activity for many people of all ages. Finally, sports fandom can also teach people how to cope with negative emotions or feelings of disappointment over time through emotional regulation.

How sports could influence attitudes

The representative and psychological value of sports fandom suggests sport is an understudied area of political science, one I hope to build on in my future research.

For example, we do not yet fully understand the impact that sports teams holding Pride Nights have on attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community.

Nor do we know how soccer clubs in England, as local symbols of a migrant workforce, may impact immigrant attitudes.

Finally, we do not know why certain women’s national soccer teams, like Canada, have been successful in protesting for equal pay while others, like the Spanish team, have failed.

Sport could have a valuable role to play in unpacking these political questions about protest and identity—and represents an exciting emerging research area in political behavior.

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

As the occurrence of weather extremes continues to escalate, the climate change movement now grapples with a new challenge, “climate burnout.”

The troubling trend of despair and fatigue among those who work for environmental and climate change, this climate burnout could jeopardize vital commitment to the cause.

New Flinders University research published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology explored the exacerbating and attenuating factors of despair-induced climate burnout to learn how people can overcome despair and maintain motivation to fight climate change.

“Our research highlights the growing issue of climate burnout, where people involved in the climate justice movement experience sheer exhaustion and disengagement due to feelings of despair about the crisis,” says lead author, Dr. Lucy Bird from the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work.

“We found that people are more likely to experience burnout when they feel despair and exhaustion about tackling climate change.

“But importantly, our findings show that when people contemplated pragmatic steps, such as using their car less and reducing waste, as well as acting collectively to encourage organizations to make changes, they felt markedly less disengaged.

“When people focus on actionable steps and fostering a sense of community and shared purpose, they can combat burnout and continue to make meaningful progress in addressing one of humanity’s most defining challenges,” she says.

The research involved two studies using more than 1,200 participants to examine whether despair about the climate crisis is associated with experiencing burnout.

It also explored whether thinking about a positive future where the climate crisis has been addressed (utopian thinking) or considering the steps necessary to address climate change (pragmatic thinking) could reduce climate burnout.

In some instances, the findings show that simply imagining a climate utopia could reduce peoples’ urge to disengage from the climate movement.

“Given the urgent need to address the climate crisis, it is important to protect people from experiencing despair-induced burnout and disengaging from the climate movement,” says Dr. Bird.

“This approach aligns with evolving strategies within the climate advocacy community, focusing on actionable solutions rather than overwhelming sentiments of despair.

“As communities around the globe strive for impactful climate policies and initiatives, it is imperative that they foster an environment that encourages sustained engagement and mutual support.”

She says that future research needs to consider different interventions to reduce peoples’ exhaustion and fatigue regarding climate change as this was not always reduced by engaging in pragmatism and utopian thinking.

Dr. Bird sums up her research by referencing street artist Banksy’s mural near London’s Hyde Park in support of Extinction Rebellion protests in 2019, “From this moment despair ends and tactics begin.”

Human remains recovered from the British Royal Navy’s doomed Franklin expedition have been identified as Captain James Fitzjames using DNA and genealogical evidence. The unfortunate officer has also been confirmed as the first known victim of cannibalism among the expedition members.

In 1845, an expedition led by Sir John Franklin set out to find a navigable North-West Passage through the Arctic with 129 men aboard the ships HMS Terror and HMS Erebus. But in 1848, Captain James Fitzjames, commander of the HMS Erebus, left a report in a stone cairn recording how the survivors had decided to abandon the ships. Later, the unidentified skeletal remains of many sailors were discovered in various locations across the Canadian Arctic.

Now researchers have put a name to some of those remains. “Identifying an individual using molecular methods often takes time because descendants need to be involved in the process,” says Treena Swanston at MacEwan University in Canada, who was not involved in the study.

Douglas Stenton at the University of Waterloo in Canada and his colleagues identified Fitzjames by comparing the Y chromosome profiles from a tooth that was found on Canada’s King William Island with cheek swabs taken from one of Fitzjames’s descendants. The descendant donor had a demonstrated genealogical relationship with Fitzjames through the captain’s great-grandfather.

The discovery also makes Fitzjames the first identified victim of cannibalism among the Franklin expedition’s members. Earlier analysis by the late bioarchaeologist Anne Keenleyside had revealed cut marks on many of the recovered remains, with one lower jawbone – now identified as belonging to Fitzjames – having multiple cut marks.

This indicates some of the last survivors who were trekking overland resorted to eating parts of Fitzjames’s body and those of several other sailors. The finding “reveals the desperation of the Franklin sailors”, says Swanston.

Such research also reinforces the importance of testimony from Indigenous Inuit people, she says. The Inuit reported seeing about 40 men dragging a ship’s boat on a sledge and made the first discoveries of bodies showing signs of cannibalism.

In Australia and most countries, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Because of this, keeping someone in detention before trial comes with serious legal, practical and human-rights consequences, not just for the person accused but also for their family and for society.

That’s why most people accused of a crime are usually released on bail.

Bail is essentially a written promise where a person is released, on the agreement they return to court on a set date. It can also be granted to those who have been found or pleaded guilty while they wait for sentencing.

Bail allows the accused to keep their job, maintain their home, and support their family, while eliminating the costs of imprisonment.

However, bail comes with conditions that the person must follow, including curfews, regular check-ins, restrictions on whom they can talk to or where they can go, drug or alcohol testing, and staying at a specific address.

These conditions may seem easy to understand and follow, but breaches of orders were the third most common offense in Australian courts in 2022 and 2023. They made up 10% of adult court appearances, using valuable time and resources.

There’s a widespread belief that people on bail who breach their conditions commit more crimes—sometimes violent ones—that put others at risk and threaten public safety. This has fueled demands for stricter bail laws or to stop granting bail altogether.

Many also think that when someone breaches their bail conditions, it’s because they’re deliberately defying or ignoring the rules. With this in mind, we wanted to look deeper.

We spoke to 230 police detainees about what led to their bail breaches. The results were surprising: very few (just 11%) breached by committing new offenses.

Instead, most explained their breaches happened because of things beyond their control.

Homelessness

A fixed residential address is a fundamental condition for getting bail.

However, many of our participants shared that becoming homeless or returning to homelessness was common for them. Some said they left the address they provided because of family tensions:

“I’m meant to stay at my sister’s house under my bail conditions, it’s for my curfew […] she kicked me out because we had an argument. Now I’ve breached my conditions and have nowhere to go.”

It’s well known that chronic homelessness makes it tough to comply with bail conditions, and we found the same. A detainee told us, “It was an honest mistake and a mix-up of the days.”

Another said, “I was homeless at the time I was meant to go to court and dealing with a lot.”

A third person told us, “I’m homeless and I’ve got bigger issues than going to court. I’m living in a tent in the park at the moment with no job.”

The mental stress meant people focused on meeting basic needs such as food and shelter, which took priority over following bail conditions.

Family responsibilities

Participants also shared their personal responsibilities of caring for sick children, parents or other dependents. This often prevented them from attending court or reporting. One person told us, “I’m my nan’s caregiver […] I needed to look after her and my brother wasn’t there. I couldn’t go to court or make it. I’m the one who washes her and does everything for her […]”

Family commitments clashing with reporting requirements led to feelings that the system was stacked against them and they had few options but to breach.

Work commitments

Employment often interfered with reporting on time and attending court. “I have to report Monday, Wednesday and Friday but I’m a truck driver. I have no problems with coming in to report, but I couldn’t make it because I was working. When I went in to report, they arrested me […]”

Keeping a job is crucial for financial and housing stability. Having a stable job also deepens community connections to reduce the chances of getting involved in criminal activity.

Procedural barriers

When these kinds of everyday issues derailed compliance, many said they had tried to let the court, police or their lawyer know, either before or right after they missed reporting in or a court date but were faced with an inflexible system.

For some, even when they did manage to get through, they were told that by not reporting or attending court they had already breached their bail and a warrant would be issued for their arrest. A study participant told us:

“I told them (the police) that I’d been kicked out (of the nominated accommodation) and wasn’t there and they locked me up here. I’ve got an extra charge now because I breached bail and probably won’t get let back out tomorrow. It wasn’t in my control. I was meant to be doing my medical to start work on the mines too tomorrow, so I won’t be working there now.”

We recommend considering of the complexities of bailees’ lives when setting bail. More flexible reporting conditions for when “life happens” will reduce charge pile ups and pressures on the criminal justice.

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

It seems that every few months we discover microplastics in a new part of the body. We have found them in our liver, kidneys, lungs and gut. They have even shown up in human breast milk and blood. Last week, they turned up again in eight people’s olfactory bulb, a brain structure crucial for smell.

These plastic fragments are so small – less than five millimetres in size – that they can make their way into our bodies through food, water and even…

The ongoing war in Gaza will set children and young people’s education back by up to five years and risks creating a lost generation of permanently traumatized Palestinian youth, a new study warns.

The report, by a team of academics working in partnership with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is the first to comprehensively quantify the war’s toll on learning since it began in October 2023. It also details the devastating impact on children, young people and teachers, supported by new accounts from frontline staff and aid workers.

The full report, “Palestinian Education Under Attack in Gaza: Restoration, Recovery, Rights and Responsibilities in and through Education,” is published on the REAL Center website.

The study was a joint undertaking involving UNRWA and researchers at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and the Center for Lebanese Studies. It shows that Gaza’s children have already lost 14 months of education since 2019 due to COVID-19, earlier Israeli military operations, and the current war.

On this basis and using information such as global post-COVID-19 education recovery data, the researchers model several potential futures for Gaza’s younger generation, depending on when the war ends and how quickly the education system is restored.

The most optimistic prediction—assuming an immediate ceasefire and rapid international effort to rebuild the education system—is that students will lose two years of learning. If the fighting continues until 2026, the losses could stretch to five years. This does not account for the additional effects of trauma, famine and forcible displacement, all of which are deepening Gaza’s education crisis.

Without urgent, large-scale international support for education, the researchers suggest that there is a significant threat not just to students’ learning, but their overall faith in the future and in concepts such as human rights. Despite this, the study shows that education has been deprioritised in international aid efforts, in favor of other areas. “Education, simply put, is not seen as lifesaving,” the report warns.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Center, University of Cambridge, said, “Palestinian education is under attack in Gaza. Israeli military operations have had a significant effect on learning.”

“As well as planning for how we rebuild Gaza’s shattered education system, there is an urgent need to get educational support for children now. Education is a right for all young people. We have a collective responsibility to protect it.”

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 10,600 children and 400 teachers had been killed in Israeli military operations by August 2024, and more than 15,300 students and 2,400 teachers injured. Hundreds of thousands of young people have been displaced and are living in shelters.

Satellite images analyzed by the Occupied Palestinian Territory Education Cluster have verified that over 90 percent of schools have been damaged, many beyond repair. Since August, UNRWA has provided education in the shelters, reaching about 8,000 children, but the study warns that much more is needed to mitigate lost learning, which was already considerable following COVID-19.

The researchers calculate that 14 months of lost schooling so far have increased “learning poverty”—the proportion of children unable to read a basic text by age 10—by at least 20 percentage points. The accurate figure may be even higher, as the calculation does not account for the wider impacts of the war on children and teachers.

The study draws together information from different sources and includes a comprehensive involvement of the Education Cluster and Cluster partners sharing their inputs, challenges and progress to enrich the report. The report provides a comprehensive overview of those broader effects.

It highlights the devastating psychological consequences for Palestinian children who were already living “in constant fear and lack of hope” after 17 years of blockade, according to a 2022 report by Save The Children.

Professor Maha Shuayb, Director of the Center for Lebanese Studies, said, “Young people’s prospects in Gaza are being extinguished and our findings show that with it they are losing hope. Education is central to stabilizing that spiral of decline. If it is simply erased, the consequences will be far-reaching.”

Save The Children has estimated that more than 10 children per day have lost limbs since the war began. The report warns of rising numbers of less visible disabilities, which will put further strain on an education system ill-equipped to support children with special needs.

The study suggests that continuous shock and suffering are now shaping children’s outlook and world views. Interviewees reported some children questioning values such as equality, human rights and tolerance when these are taught in the shelters. “This is a full generation of trauma,” one humanitarian aid official said; “it will take a generation to overcome it.”

The report highlights the immense suffering teachers and counselors have endured physically and mentally. The killings, displacement and daily realities of life during the war have taken a tremendous toll on their ability to engage meaningfully in education and will, it says, adversely affect reconstruction efforts.

Professor Yusuf Sayed, from the University of Cambridge, said, “It is important to recognize teachers and counselors have, like the rest of the population, suffered immensely. There is evidence of extraordinary commitment from educators striving to maintain learning, but inevitably the deprivation, killings and hardship are affecting their ability to do so.”

Despite a flash appeal from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the analysis shows that just 3.5 percent of aid for Gaza has been invested in education. Major donors like the US and Germany have neglected education in their aid packages, and blockades continue to hinder the delivery of resources on the ground.

Without more funding and access to learning, structured play and other forms of support, the report warns, the long-term repercussions for Gaza’s next generation will only worsen.

It calls for immediate steps focusing on the resumption of education, which include providing counseling, safe learning spaces, and support for students and educators with disabilities. It also calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to occupation, in line with the International Court of Justice advisory opinion and UN recently-adopted resolution, as only then can Gaza’s education system be rebuilt. This will require a focus on recruiting more teachers and counselors to cope with the scale of learning loss and trauma suffered by children and young people.

“Education is the only asset the Palestinian people have not been dispossessed of. They have proudly invested in the education of their children in the hope for a better future. Today, more than 625,000 deeply traumatized school-aged children are living in the rubble in Gaza. Bringing them back to learning should be our collective priority. Failing to do that will not only lead to a lost generation but also sow the seeds for more extremism, hatred and violence,” said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner General.

The study also stresses that Palestinians themselves must lead the education recovery. “A ceasefire is the key for the success of any human development activity in Gaza, including education,” the authors write.

“Children have seen that the international community will sit idly by as they are killed. This has left them with questions about values that schools and learning aim to instill around humanitarian principles that teachers will have to navigate.”

From contraception access to safe abortion, there is growing awareness about reproductive health and rights.

Around the world, reproductive rights and justice are issues of political debate and on the electoral ballot. But for some, the greatest threat to their reproductive autonomy is being wielded by those closest to them.

Last week, preliminary findings were presented from the Australian Study of Health and Relationships on the prevalence of reproductive coercion and abuse nationally. This form of gender-based violence is where someone seeks to control another person’s reproductive choices using physical, sexual, and/or emotional violence or threats. The study included 4,540 participants aged 16–69 years.

Early analysis showed 1 in 20 reported experiencing controlling behaviors over contraception, pregnancy and abortion.

So what makes these controlling behaviors different from other forms of abuse? And how can we find out more?

What is it?

Reproductive coercion and abuse is mostly perpetrated against women, girls and LGBTQIA+ people, usually by a partner, parent or in-law.

Someone might do this by trying to coerce or force the other person to become pregnant or have an abortion. This can look like:

• relentlessly pressuring the person to have a baby when they don’t want to
• refusing to let them use birth control, or withholding or destroying it
• harassing or stalking them to find out if they had an abortion.

The recent rapid review for government on approaches to prevent gender-based violence does not mention the words “reproductive coercion and abuse.” But it has been clearly identified in several domestic and family violence-related deaths in Australia.

These controlling behaviors intersect with domestic, family and sexual violence. However, reproductive coercion is unique, because it weaponizes someone’s reproductive capacity in order to control them.

What we don’t know

The Australian Study of Health and Relationships is only undertaken every ten years and the latest survey is the first to estimate how common controlling another person’s reproductive rights might be on a national scale. The results of the survey provide essential data for sexual and reproductive health policies and programs across Australia.

However, there are no data for comparison yet to look for trends over time.

The reported 1-in-20 prevalence is likely an underestimation. This is because we know people tend to under-report abuse and might not recognize or process what’s happening to them at the time, a typical trauma response.

And subtle emotional manipulation or pressure can be difficult to capture in broad population surveys.

Previous studies have conflated reproductive coercion and abuse with sexual violence or have failed to ask about abortion or the different types of relationships where this abuse occurs.

Any measure should be developed with people with lived experience and designed so communities like First Nations Australians, LGBTQIA+ people, people living with disability, migrants and refugees, and young people are properly represented. Too often they are not included in co-design processes or their experiences are made invisible by data gaps.

Last month, the report into Missing and murdered First Nations women and children revealed that Closing the Gap data on violence against women and children is out of date and the actual number of Indigenous women and children murdered or disappeared is unknown.

Last year’s Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability similarly drew attention to the increased prevalence of abuse suffered by women with disability and the lack of proper consultation to involve them in solutions.

Our La Trobe and University of Melbourne team is developing a new rigorous measure to better capture the complex behaviors missed by other measures. It’s intended to compare reproductive coercion and abuse prevalence across different countries and strengthen how we measure the effect of future interventions.

Once developed, testing will start in maternal and child health settings. This is because the risk of abuse is heightened around childbirth and nurses and midwives are well positioned to safely identify and support patients.

Additional steps will be needed to determine what questions are best for health-care workers to ask to identify at-risk patients and respond—without putting them in more danger.

Where to from here? And where to get help

Reproductive coercion and abuse needs to have a larger focus in the current national discussion on gender-based violence and prevention.

A 2023 Senate inquiry into universal access to reproductive health care called for more research into reproductive coercion and abuse to inform guidelines and training for health-care workers. This will require better measurement of the full extent and patterns of the problem. We hope policy makers appropriately resource these areas critical to ending gender-based violence.

People experiencing reproductive coercion and abuse can contact 1800 My Options (VIC), Children by Choice (QLD) or 1800 Respect (National) for professional help.

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

Our current economic system is based on poor science and should not be used to guide government decision-making when faced with threats to existence like climate change. That’s the conclusion of a new paper led by UNSW Sydney sustainability scientists that finds our economic system is driving environmental damage and social inequality and needs substantial reform.

The research, published recently in the journal Global Sustainability, critically reviews, from a natural science perspective, the basis of neoclassical economics—the theory that underpins the neoliberal ideology of free markets, deregulation, and minimal government expenditure and taxes. Many countries, including Australia, follow neoliberalism in policymaking.

The research found that hypotheses underlying neoclassical economics—including supply-demand determined pricing, and claims like Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a meaningful measure of well-being and markets can solve major environmental and social problems—are based on invalid assumptions and lack empirical support.

“Neoclassical economics is fundamentally flawed, bad science, and irrational in the common meaning of the word,” said Honorary Associate Professor Mark Diesendorf, lead author of the study from the School of Humanities & Languages at UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture.

“It is doing more harm than good by supporting politically powerful corporations that are driving environmental destruction and social inequality, and therefore must no longer be used for government socioeconomic policies.”

Misconceptions of neoclassical economics

For the study, the research team, consisting of sustainability experts from across scientific disciplines, refuted 10 key hypotheses and four claims of neoclassic economics on the grounds they are either contradicted by observation, lead to different results from those reported by neoclassical economics, are ill-defined, or are inconsistent. The review found each hypothesis or claim failed to satisfy one or more of these conditions—basic requirements of good scientific practice.

Co-author Thomas Wiedmann, Professor of Sustainability Research in the School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, said that neoliberal ideologies and many neoclassical economists strongly support the notion that endless growth on a finite planet is feasible and desirable.

“[However] science shows that growth in GDP is closely correlated with growth in the consumption of materials and energy,” said Prof. Wiedmann. “This leads to major environmental impacts that are threatening our life support system, the biosphere.

“The assumptions that the natural environment is an infinite resource and an infinite reservoir for waste and that it can be separated from the economic system are refuted by the findings of Earth System Science, which show that six out of nine planetary boundaries have been exceeded.”

Another claim the researchers contest is that wealth trickles down from the rich to the poor. While not all neoclassical economists accept this claim, the review cites a major study finding that tax cuts for the rich of OECD countries are correlated with higher income inequality and have no effect on economic growth and unemployment in the short and medium term.

Other hypotheses and claims challenged scientifically in the review include:

• Existential environmental threats can be managed by pricing alone when the market has failed to curb global heating and other major environmental threats.
• Humans can be credibly modeled as entirely self-interested, economically “rational,” competing individuals and able to process all available information on prices, despite scientific findings in anthropology and sociology showing that cooperation is fundamental and coexists with competition in all societies.
• Government budget deficits are generally inflationary, even though many countries, such as Japan, have historically had significant budget deficits without inflation.
• The economic efficiency ideal of neoclassical economics, Pareto efficiency, is useful, even though it’s unattainable in practice and fosters socially unjust policies.

“While a common defense of neoclassical economics is that it has advanced and no longer depends on all the assumptions critiqued, it still depends on at least three hypotheses that are not generally true,” A/Prof. Diesendorf said.

“These are the hypotheses that individual decisions can be separated from social influences, that economic systems are generally in or near equilibrium, and that neoclassical economics theory doesn’t need to explain or predict economic phenomena such as the Global Financial Crisis.”

A new economic approach is needed

The researchers said neoclassical economics can be replaced with an improved mixed economic system. However, this will require pressure on governments from community organizations and academics.

“Leaving it to the market alone is another way of saying leaving it to the 1%, that is, the big corporations and super-rich that control the market,” said A/Prof. Diesendorf. “It’s too late for the market to solve a major problem like climate change and the market cannot reduce the increasing gap between the rich and poor. We need stronger government intervention guided by genuine community consultation.”

The researchers recommend a new economic system that prioritizes ecological sustainability and social justice over economic efficiency. This would move beyond striving for increased GDP to include well-being indexes such as educational attainment and public health measures.

“If we look at Scandinavian countries, their quality-of-life measures are the highest because their governments don’t leave everything to the market,” said A/Prof. Diesendorf. “They simply spend more to provide universal basic services to their people.

“To achieve ecological sustainability, it is necessary, but not sufficient, to limit the scale of human activity in a considered way and, with it, policies to support managed de-growth. At a fundamental level, we must reduce our physical consumption of energy, land and other natural resources, which could be done while still improving the quality of life for all.”