Mind over anger - the value of mindfulness

Feeling mad? New research suggests mindfulness could help manage anger and aggression

Kaboompics.com/Pexels

Siobhan O'Dean, University of Sydney; Elizabeth Summerell, University of Adelaide, and Tom Denson, UNSW Sydney

There’s no shortage of things to feel angry about these days. Whether it’s politics, social injustice, climate change or the cost-of-living crisis, the world can feel like a pressure cooker.

Research suggests nearly one-quarter of the world’s population feels angry on any given day. While anger is a normal human emotion, if it’s intense and poorly managed, it can quickly lead to aggression, and potentially cause harm.

Feeling angry often can also have negative effects on our relationships, as well as our mental and physical health.

So how should you manage feelings of anger to keep them in check? Our new research suggests mindfulness can be an effective tool for regulating anger and reducing aggression.

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the ability to observe and focus on your thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations in the present moment with acceptance and without judgement.

Mindfulness has been practised for thousands of years, most notably in Buddhist traditions. But more recently it has been adapted into secular programs to support mental health and emotional regulation.

Mindfulness is taught in a variety of ways, including in-person classes, residential retreats and through digital apps. These programs typically involve guided meditations, and practices that help people become more aware of their thoughts, feelings and surroundings.

Mindfulness is linked to a range of mental health benefits, including reduced anxiety, depression and stress.

Neuroscience research also suggests mindfulness is associated with reduced activity in brain regions linked to emotional reactivity, and greater activity in those involved in self-regulation (the ability to manage our thoughts, emotions and behaviours).

In this way, mindfulness could foster emotional awareness essential for the effective regulation of emotions such as anger. And when people are less overwhelmed by anger, they may be better able to think clearly, reflect on what matters and take meaningful action, rather than reacting impulsively or shutting down.

Anger is a normal human emotion – but it can sometimes have destructive consequences. Inzmam Khan/Pexels

We reviewed the evidence

To better understand whether mindfulness actually helps with regulating anger and aggression, we conducted a meta-analysis. This is a study that combines the results of many previous studies to look at the overall evidence.

We analysed findings from 118 studies across different populations and countries, including both people who were naturally more mindful and people who were randomly assigned to take part in interventions aimed at increasing mindfulness.

People who were naturally more mindful were those who scored higher on questionnaires measuring traits such as present-moment awareness and non-judgmental thinking. We found these people tended to report less anger and behave less aggressively.

However, mindfulness isn’t just something you have or don’t have – it’s also a skill you can develop. And our results show the benefits of lower anger and aggression extend to people who learn mindfulness skills through practice or training.

We also wanted to know whether mindfulness might work better for certain people or in particular settings. Interestingly, our results suggest these benefits are broadly universal. Practising mindfulness was effective in reducing anger and aggression across different age groups, genders and contexts, including whether people were seeking treatment for mental health or general wellbeing, or not.

Some anger management strategies aren’t backed by science

To manage feelings of anger, many people turn to strategies that are not supported by evidence.

Research suggests “letting off steam” while thinking about your anger is not a healthy strategy and may intensify and prolong experiences of anger.

For example, in one experiment, research participants were asked to hit a punching bag while thinking of someone who made them angry. This so-called “cathartic release” made people angrier and more aggressive rather than less so.

Breaking things in rage rooms, while increasingly popular, is similarly not an evidence-based strategy for reducing anger and aggression.

On the other hand, our research shows there’s good evidence to support mindfulness as a tool to regulate anger.

Mindfulness may reduce anger and aggression by helping people become more aware of their emotional reactions without immediately acting on them. It can foster a non-judgmental and accepting stance toward difficult emotions such as anger, which may interrupt the cycle whereby anger leads to aggressive behaviour.

Mindfulness can help people become more aware of their emotions. New Africa/Shutterstock

Mindfulness is not a magic bullet

All that said, it’s important to keep in mind that mindfulness is not a magic bullet or a quick fix. Like any new skill, mindfulness can be challenging at first, takes time to master, and works best when practised regularly.

It’s also important to note mindfulness may not be suitable for everyone – particularly when used as a standalone approach for managing more complex mental health concerns. For ongoing emotional challenges it’s always a good idea to seek support from a qualified mental health professional.

However, if you’re looking to dial down the impact of daily frustrations, there are plenty of accessible ways to give mindfulness a go. You can get started with just a few minutes per day. Popular apps such as Smiling Mind and Headspace offer short, guided sessions that make it easy to explore mindfulness at your own pace — no prior experience needed.

While mindfulness may not solve the problems that make us angry, our research shows it could help improve how we experience and respond to them.

Siobhan O'Dean, Research Fellow, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney; Elizabeth Summerell, Lecturer, School of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Adelaide, and Tom Denson, Professor of Psychology, UNSW Sydney

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

ANZAC Day 2025

                                                                                            Shutterstock

ANZAC Day falls on the 25th April each year and originally commemorated the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces in World War One at the landings on the Gallipoli peninsula (ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps).  This year will mark 110 years since that military event and in more recent decades ANZAC Day has come to commemorate all Australian participation in military and peacekeeping operations.

In 2025, the World has never seemed so fractured. Conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and the Gaza Strip and ongoing civil wars in the Sudan, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo bring misery and suffering to millions.

ANZAC Day's message of the sacrifice and losses from war continues to be profound. Lest we forget.

Earth Day 2025 - 22nd April

(c) EarthDay.Org/Alexis Rockman 

 
Earth Day Links: Earth Day 2025 link

The theme for Earth Day is 'Our Power, Our Planet'.

Pope Francis - legacy

Pope Francis has died, aged 88. These were his greatest reforms – and controversies

Joel Hodge, Australian Catholic University and Antonia Pizzey, Australian Catholic University

Pope Francis has died on Easter Monday, aged 88, the Vatican announced. The head of the Catholic Church had recently survived being hospitalised with double pneumonia.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell’s announcement began:

Dear brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis. At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the Father.

There were many unusual aspects of Pope Francis’ papacy. He was the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas (and the southern hemisphere), the first to choose the name “Francis” and the first to give a TED talk. He was also the first pope in more than 600 years to be elected following the resignation, rather than death, of his predecessor.

From the very start of his papacy, Francis seemed determined to do things differently and present the papacy in a new light. Even in thinking about his burial, he chose the unexpected: to be placed to rest not in the Vatican, but in the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome – the first pope to be buried there in hundreds of years.

Vatican News reported the late Pope Francis had requested his funeral rites be simplified.

“The renewed rite,” said Archbishop Diego Ravelli, “seeks to emphasise even more that the funeral of the Roman Pontiff is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ and not of a powerful person of this world.”

Straddling a line between “progressive” and “conservative”, Francis experienced tension with both sides. In doing so, his papacy shone a spotlight on what it means to be Catholic today.

The day before his death, Pope Francis made a brief appearance on Easter Sunday to bless the crowds at St Peter’s Square.

Between a rock and a hard place

Francis was deemed not progressive enough by some, yet far too progressive by others.

His apostolic exhortation (an official papal teaching on a particular issue or action) Amoris Laetitia, ignited great controversy for seemingly being (more) open to the question of whether people who have divorced and remarried may receive Eucharist.

He also disappointed progressive Catholics, many of whom hoped he would make stronger changes on issues such as the roles of women, married clergy, and the broader inclusion of LGBTQIA+ Catholics.

The reception of his exhortation Querida Amazonia was one such example. In this document, Francis did not endorse marriage for priests, despite bishops’ requests for this. He also did not allow the possibility of women being ordained as deacons to address a shortage of ordained ministers. His discerning spirit saw there was too much division and no clear consensus for change.

Francis was also openly critical of Germany’s controversial “Synodal Way” – a series of conferences with bishops and lay people – that advocated for positions contrary to Church teachings. Francis expressed concern on multiple occasions that this project was a threat to the unity of the Church.

At the same time, Francis was no stranger to controversy from the conservative side of the Church, receiving “dubia” or “theological doubts” over his teaching from some of his Cardinals. In 2023, he took the unusual step of responding to some of these doubts.

Impact on the Catholic Church

In many ways, the most striking thing about Francis was not his words or theology, but his style. He was a modest man, even foregoing the Apostolic Palace’s grand papal apartments to live in the Vatican’s simpler guest house.

He may well be remembered most for his simplicity of dress and habits, his welcoming and pastoral style and his wise spirit of discernment.

He is recognised as giving a clear witness to the life, love and joy of Jesus in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council – a point of major reform in modern Church history. This witness has translated into two major developments in Church teachings and life.

Love for our common home

The first of these relates to environmental teachings. In 2015, Francis released his ground-breaking encyclical, Laudato si’: On Care for Our Common Home. It expanded Catholic social teaching by giving a comprehensive account of how the environment reflects our God-given “common home”.

Consistent with recent popes such as Benedict XVI and John Paul II, Francis acknowledged climate change and its destructive impacts and causes. He summarised key scientific research to forcefully argue for an evidence-based approach to addressing humans’ impact on the environment.

He also made a pivotal and innovative contribution to the climate change debate by identifying the ethical and spiritual causes of environmental destruction.

Francis argued combating climate change relied on the “ecological conversion” of the human heart, so that people may recognise the God-given nature of our planet and the fundamental call to care for it. Without this conversion, pragmatic and political measures wouldn’t be able to counter the forces of consumerism, exploitation and selfishness.

Francis argued a new ethic and spirituality was needed. Specifically, he said Jesus’ way of love – for other people and all creation – is the transformative force that could bring sustainable change for the environment and cultivate fraternity among people (and especially with the poor).

Synodality: moving towards a Church that listens

Francis’s second major contribution, and one of the most significant aspects of his papacy, was his commitment to “synodality”. While there’s still confusion over what synodality actually means, and its potential for political distortion, it is above all a way of listening and discerning through openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

It involves hierarchy and lay people transparently and honestly discerning together, in service of the mission of the church. Synodality is as much about the process as the goal. This makes sense as Pope Francis was a Jesuit, an order focused on spreading Catholicism through spiritual formation and discernment.

Drawing on his rich Jesuit spirituality, Francis introduced a way of conversation centred on listening to the Holy Spirit and others, while seeking to cultivate friendship and wisdom.

With the conclusion of the second session of the Synod on Synodality in October 2024, it is too soon to assess its results. However, those who have been involved in synodal processes have reported back on their transformative potential.

Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, explained how participating in the 2015 Synod “was an extraordinary experience [and] in some ways an awakening”.

Catholicism in the modern age

Francis’ papacy inspired both great joy and aspirations, as well as boiling anger and rejection. He laid bare the agonising fault lines within the Catholic community and struck at key issues of Catholic identity, triggering debate over what it means to be Catholic in the world today.

He leaves behind a Church that seems more divided than ever, with arguments, uncertainty and many questions rolling in his wake. But he has also provided a way for the Church to become more converted to Jesus’ way of love, through synodality and dialogue.

Francis showed us that holding labels such as “progressive” or “conservative” won’t enable the Church to live out Jesus’ mission of love – a mission he emphasised from the very beginning of his papacy.

Joel Hodge, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Theology and Philosophy, Australian Catholic University and Antonia Pizzey, Postdoctoral Researcher Research Centre for Studies of the Second Vatican Council, Australian Catholic University

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

Easter 2025

                                                                                               Shutterstock

Easter is the Christian commemorative festival that both acknowledges the crucifiction and death of Jesus Christ (Good Friday) and his resurrection three days later. It is a time of both darkness and light within a single period each year. In 2025, Easter is occuring when the world situation is one of turmoil and semi chaos, some of which is new and other aspects being ongoing conflicts which commenced in previous years. It is a diffcult time across all continents on the planet and portends further negative events through the coming years. Wherever you are, and whatever your faith, may you enjoy strength in the period ahead.

Climate change and the loss of coral reefs

Reality check: coral restoration won’t save the world’s reefs

A coral ‘rope’ nursery in the Maldives. Luca Saponari/University of Milan, CC BY-ND

Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Flinders University; Clelia Mulà, The University of Western Australia, and Giovanni Strona, University of Helsinki

Coral reefs are much more than just a pretty place to visit. They are among the world’s richest ecosystems, hosting about a third of all marine species.

These reefs also directly benefit more than a billion people, providing livelihoods and food security, as well as protection from storms and coastal erosion.

Without coral reefs, the world would be a much poorer place. So when corals die or become damaged, many people try to restore them. But the enormity of the task is growing as the climate keeps warming.

In our new research, we examined the full extent of existing coral restoration projects worldwide. We looked at what drives their success or failure, and how much it would actually cost to restore what’s already been lost. Restoring the reefs we’ve already lost around the world could cost up to A$26 trillion.

Bleached Acropora corals in the Maldives. Davide Seveso/University of Milan

Global losses

Sadly, coral reefs are suffering all over the world. Global warming and marine heatwaves are the main culprits. But overfishing and pollution make matters worse.

When sea temperatures climb above the seasonal average for sustained periods, corals can become bleached. They lose colour as they expel their symbiotic algae when stressed, revealing the white skeleton underneath. Severe bleaching can kill coral.

Coral bleaching and mass coral deaths are now commonplace. Last month, a massive warm-water plume bleached large areas of Ningaloo Reef on Australia’s northwest coast just as large sections of the northern Great Barrier Reef were bleaching on the northeast coast.

Since early 2023, mass coral bleaching has occurred in throughout the tropics and parts of the Indian Ocean.

Over the past 40 years, the extent of coral reefs has halved. As climate change continues, bleaching events and coral deaths will become more common. More than 90% of coral reefs are at risk of long-term degradation by the end of the century.

Dead corals in the Maldives following a bleaching event. Simone Montano/University of Milan

Direct intervention

Coral reef restoration can take many forms, including removing coral-eating species such as parrot fish, transferring coral spawn, or even manipulating the local community of microbes to improve coral survival.

But by far the most common type of restoration is “coral gardening”, where coral fragments grown in nurseries are transplanted back to the reef.

The problem is scale. Coral restoration can only be done successfully at a small scale. Most projects only operate over several hundred or a few thousand square metres. Compare that with nearly 12,000 square km of loss and degradation between 2009 and 2018. Restoration projects come nowhere near the scale needed to offset losses from climate change and other threats.

Conservationists work to garden coral and help preserve these unique life forms.

Sky-high costs

Coral restoration is expensive, ranging from around $10,000 to $226 million per hectare. The wide range reflects the variable costs of different techniques used, ease of access, and cost of labour. For example, coral gardening (coral fragments grown in nurseries transplanted back to the reef) is relatively cheap (median cost $558,000 per hectare) compared with seeding coral larvae (median $830,000 per hectare). Building artificial reefs can cost up to $226 million per hectare.

We estimated it would cost more than $1.6 billion to restore just 10% of degraded coral areas globally. This is using the lowest cost per hectare and assuming all restoration projects are successful.

Even our conservative estimate is four times more than the total investment in coral restoration over the past decade ($410 million).

But it’s reasonable to use the highest cost per hectare, given high failure rates, the need to use several techniques at the same site, and the great expense of working on remote reefs. Restoring 10% of degraded coral areas globally, at $226 million a hectare, would cost more than $26 trillion – almost ten times Australia’s annual GDP.

It is therefore financially impossible to tackle the ongoing loss of coral reefs with restoration, even if local projects can still provide some benefits.

Rope nurseries nurture coral fragments until they’re ready to be planted out. Luca Saponari/University of Milan

Location, location, location

Our research also looked at what drives the choice of restoration sites. We found it depends mostly on how close a reef is to human settlements.

By itself, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But we also found restoration actions were more likely to occur in reefs already degraded by human activity and with fewer coral species.

This means we’re not necessarily targeting sites where restoration is most likely to succeed, or of greatest ecological importance.

Another limitation is coral gardening normally involves only a few coral species – the easiest to rear and transplant. While this can still increase coral cover, it does not restore coral diversity to the extent necessary for healthy, resilient ecosystems.

Measuring ‘success’

Another sad reality is that more than a third of all coral restoration efforts fail. The reasons why can include poor planning, unproven technologies, insufficient monitoring, and subsequent heatwaves.

Unfortunately, there’s no standard way to collect data or report on restoration projects. This makes it difficult – or impossible – to identify conditions leading to success, and reduces the pace of improvement.

Succeed now, fail later

Most coral transplants are monitored for less than 18 months. Even if they survive that period, there’s no guarantee they will last longer. The long-term success rate is unknown.

When we examined the likelihood of extreme heat events immediately following restoration and in coming decades, we found most restored sites had already experienced severe bleaching shortly after restoration. It will be difficult to find locations that will be spared from future global warming.

Sometimes the young coral is bleached before the restoration project is complete. Davide Seveso/University of Milan

No substitute for climate action

Coral restoration has the potential to be a valuable tool in certain circumstances: when it promotes community engagement and addresses local needs. But it is not yet – and might never be – feasible to scale up sufficiently to have meaningful long-term positive effects on coral reef ecosystems.

This reality check should stimulate constructive debate about when and where restoration is worthwhile. Without stemming the pace and magnitude of climate change, we have little power to save coral reefs from massive losses over the coming century and beyond.

Other conservation approaches such as establishing, maintaining and enforcing marine protected areas, and improving water quality, could improve the chance a coral restoration project will work. These efforts could also support local human communities with incentives for conservation.

Reinforcing complementary strategies could therefore bolster ecosystem resilience, extending the reach and success of coral restoration projects.

Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Matthew Flinders Professor of Global Ecology and Node Leader in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous and Environmental Histories and Futures, Flinders University; Clelia Mulà, PhD student in Marine Ecology, The University of Western Australia, and Giovanni Strona, Doctoral program supervisor, University of Helsinki

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

Fake images - real or not ?

 Can you tell the difference between real and fake news photos? Take the quiz to find out

A (real) photo of a protester dressed as Pikachu in Paris on March 29 2025. Remon Haazen / Getty Images

T.J. Thomson, RMIT University

You wouldn’t usually associate Pikachu with protest.

But a figure dressed as the iconic yellow Pokémon joined a protest last week in Turkey to demonstrate against the country’s authoritarian leader.

And then a virtual doppelgänger made the rounds on social media, raising doubt in people’s minds about whether what they were seeing was true. (Just to be clear, the image in the post shown below is very much fake.)

This is the latest in a spate of incidents involving AI-generated (or AI-edited) images that can be made easily and cheaply and that are often posted during breaking news events.

Doctored, decontextualised or synthetic media can cause confusion, sow doubt, and contribute to political polarisation. The people who make or share these media often benefit financially or politically from spreading false or misleading claims.

How would you go at telling fact from fiction in these cases? Have a go with this quiz and learn more about some of AI’s (potential) giveaways and how to stay safer online.

---

---

How’d you go?

As this exercise might have revealed, we can’t always spot AI-generated or AI-edited images with just our eyes. Doing so will also become harder as AI tools become more advanced.

Dealing with visual deception

AI-powered tools exist to try to detect AI content, but these have mixed results.

Running suspect images through a search engine to see where else they have been published – and when – can be a helpful strategy. But this relies on there being an original “unedited” version published somewhere online.

Perhaps the best strategy is something called “lateral reading”. It means getting off the page or platform and seeing what trusted sources say about a claim.

Ultimately, we don’t have time to fact-check every claim we come across each day. That’s why it’s important to have access to trustworthy news sources that have a track record of getting it right. This is even more important as the volume of AI “slop” increases.

T.J. Thomson, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication & Digital Media, RMIT University

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

Goodbye to the Gaia telescope

The best space telescope you never heard of just shut down

ESA / Gaia / DPAC, CC BY-SA

Laura Nicole Driessen, University of Sydney

On Thursday 27 March, the European Space Agency (ESA) sent its last messages to the Gaia Spacecraft. They told Gaia to shut down its communication systems and central computer and said goodbye to this amazing space telescope.

Gaia has been the most successful ESA space mission ever, so why did they turn Gaia off? What did Gaia achieve? And perhaps most importantly, why was it my favourite space telescope?

Running on empty

Gaia was retired for a simple reason: after more than 11 years in space, it ran out of the cold gas propellant it needed to keep scanning the sky.

The telescope did its last observation on 15 January 2025. The ESA team then performed testing for a few weeks, before telling Gaia to leave its home at a point in space called L2 and start orbiting the Sun away from Earth.

L2 is one of five “Lagrangian points” around Earth and the Sun where gravitational conditions make for a nice, stable orbit. L2 is located 1.5 million kilometres from Earth on the “dark side”, opposite the Sun.

L2 is a highly prized location because it’s a stable spot to orbit, it’s close enough to Earth for easy communication, and spacecraft can use the Sun behind them for solar power while looking away from the Sun out into space.

It’s also too far away from Earth to send anyone on a repair mission, so once your spacecraft gets there it’s on its own.

Keeping L2 clear

L2 currently hosts the James Webb Space Telescope (operated by the USA, Europe and Canada), the European Euclid mission, the Chinese Chang’e 6 orbiter and the joint Russian-German Spektr-RG observatory. Since L2 is such a key location for space missions, it’s essential to keep it clear of debris and retired spacecraft.

A final status update from Gaia. ESA, CC BY-SA

Gaia used its thrusters for the last time to push itself away from L2, and is now drifting around the Sun in a “retirement orbit” where it won’t get in anybody’s way.

As part of the retirement process, the Gaia team wrote farewell messages into the craft’s software and sent it the names of around 1,500 people who worked on Gaia over the years.

What is Gaia?

Gaia looks a bit like a spinning top hat in space. Its main mission was to produce a detailed, three-dimensional map of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

To do this, it measured the precise positions and motions of 1.46 billion objects in space. Gaia also measured brightnesses and variability and those data were used to provide temperatures, gravitational parameters, stellar types and more for millions of stars. One of the key pieces of information Gaia provided was the distance to millions of stars.

A cosmic measuring tape

I’m a radio astronomer, which means I use radio telescopes here on Earth to explore the Universe. Radio light is the longest wavelength of light, invisible to human eyes, and I use it to investigate magnetic stars.

But even though I’m a radio astronomer and Gaia was an optical telescope, looking at the same wavelengths of light our eyes can see, I use Gaia data almost every single day.

I used it today to find out how far away, how bright, and how fast a star was. Before Gaia, I would probably never have known how far away that star was.

This is essential for figuring out how bright the stars I study really are, which helps me understand the physics of what’s happening in and around them.

A huge success

Gaia has contributed to thousands of articles in astronomy journals. Papers released by the Gaia collaboration have been cited well over 20,000 times in total.

Gaia has produced too many science results to share here. To take just one example, Gaia improved our understanding of the structure of our own galaxy by showing that it has multiple spiral arms that are less sharply defined than we previously thought.

Not really the end for Gaia

It’s difficult to express how revolutionary Gaia has been for astronomy, but we can let the numbers speak for themselves. Around five astronomy journal articles are published every day that use Gaia data, making Gaia the most successful ESA mission ever. And that won’t come to a complete stop when Gaia retires.

The Gaia collaboration has published three data releases so far. This is where the collaboration performs the processing and checks on the data, adds some important analysis and releases all of that in one big hit.

And luckily, there are two more big data releases with even more information to come. The fourth data release is expected in mid to late 2026. The fifth and final data release, containing all of the Gaia data from the whole mission, will come out sometime in the 2030s.

This article is my own small tribute to a telescope that changed astronomy as we know it. So I will end by saying a huge thank you to everyone who has ever worked on this amazing space mission, whether it was engineering and operations, turning the data into the amazing resource it is, or any of the other many jobs that make a mission successful. And thank you to those who continue to work on the data as we speak.

Finally, thank you to my favourite space telescope. Goodbye, Gaia, I’ll miss you.

Laura Nicole Driessen, Postdoctoral Researcher in Radio Astronomy, University of Sydney

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

How plants breath

Plants breathe with millions of tiny mouths. We used lasers to understand how this skill evolved

Stomata – the breathing ‘mouths’ of leaves – under the microscope. Barbol / Shutterstock

Tim Brodribb, University of Tasmania

Plant behaviour may seem rather boring compared with the frenetic excesses of animals. Yet the lives of our vegetable friends, who tirelessly feed the entire biosphere (including us), are full of exciting action. It just requires a little more effort to appreciate.

One such behaviour is the dynamic opening and closing of millions of tiny mouths (called stomata) located on each leaf, through which plants “breathe”. In this process they let out water extracted from the soil in exchange for precious carbon dioxide from the air, which they need to produce sugar in the sunlight-powered process of photosynthesis.

Opening the stomata at the wrong time can waste valuable water and risk a catastrophic drying-out of the plant’s vascular system. Almost all land plants control their stomata very precisely in response to light and humidity to optimise growth while minimising the damage risk.

How plants evolved this extraordinary balancing act has been the subject of considerable debate among scientists. In a new paper published in PNAS we used lasers to find out how the earliest stomata may have operated.

Tiny valves, global consequences

Much depends on the way stomata behave: plant productivity, sensitivity to drought, and indeed the pace of the global carbon and water cycles.

However, they are difficult to observe in action. Each stomata is like a tiny, pressure-operated valve. They have “guard cells” surrounding an opening or pore which lets water vapour out and carbon dioxide in.

When pressure increases in stomata guard cells, the pore opens – and vice versa. Artemide / Shutterstock

When fluid pressure increases inside the stomata’s guard cells, they swell up to open the pore. When pressure drops, the cells deflate and the pore closes. To understand stomata behaviour, we wanted to be able to measure the pressure in the guard cells – but it’s not easy.

Lasers, bubbles and evolution

Enter Craig Brodersen of Yale University with a newly developed microscope-guided laser. It can create microscopic bubbles inside the individual cells that operate the stomatal pore.

When Brodersen spent a sabbatical at the University of Tasmania (where I am based), we found we could determine the pressure inside stomatal cells by tracking the size of these bubbles and how quickly they collapsed. This involved theoretical calculations guided by bubble expert Philippe Marmottant, of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Grenoble.

This new tool gave us the perfect opportunity to explore how the behaviour of stomata is different among major plant groups. The aim was to test our hypothesis that the evolution of stomatal behaviour follows a predictable trajectory through the history of plant evolution.

We argue it began with a relatively simple ancestral passive control state, currently represented in living ferns and lycophytes, and developed to a more active hormonal control mechanism seen in modern conifers and flowering plants.

Against this hypothesis, some researchers have previously reported complex behaviours in some of the most ancient of stomata-bearing plants, the bryophytes. We wanted to test this finding using our newly developed laser instrument.

400 million years of development

What we found was firstly that our laser pressure probe technique worked extremely well. We made nearly 500 measurements of stomatal pressure dynamics in the space of a few months. This was a marked improvement on the past 45 years, in which fewer than 30 similar measurements had been made.

Secondly, we found that the stomata of our representative bryophytes (hornworts and mosses) lacked even the most basic responses to light found in all other land plants.

The stomata of hornworts and mosses showed no response to changes in light. Gondronx Studio / Shutterstock

This result supported our earlier hypothesis that the first stomata found in ancestors of the modern bryophytes 450 million years ago should have been very simple valves. They would have lacked the complex behaviours seen in modern flowering plants.

Our results suggest that stomatal behaviour has changed substantially through the process of evolution, highlighting critical changes in functionality that are preserved in the different major land plant groups that currently inhabit the Earth.

How plants will survive the future

We can now say with confidence that stomata in mosses, ferns, conifers and flowering plants all behave in very different ways. This has an important corollary: they will all respond differently to the heaving changes in atmospheric temperature and water availability that they face now and into the near future. Predicting stomatal behaviour in the future will help us to predict these impacts and highlight plant vulnerability.

In terms of agricultural benefit, our new laser method should be fast and sensitive enough to reveal even small differences in the the behaviour of closely related plants. This may help to identify crop variants that use water in a more efficient or productive way, which will assist plant breeders to find varieties that better translate increasingly unpredictable soil water supplies into food.

So next time you look upon a leaf, consider the frantic pace of dynamic calculation and adjustment of millions of little mouths, reacting as your breath falls upon them. Realise that our own fate, tied to the performance of forests and crops in future climates, hangs on the behaviour of the stomata of different species. A good reason for us to understand these unassuming little valves.

Tim Brodribb, Professor of Plant Physiology, University of Tasmania

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

Scientific misconduct

 Scientific misconduct is on the rise. But what exactly is it?

PowerUp/Shutterstock

Nham Tran, University of Technology Sydney

German anaesthesiologist Joachim Boldt has an unfortunate claim to fame. According to Retraction Watch, a public database of research retractions, he is the most retracted scientist of all time. To date, 220 of his roughly 400 published research papers have been retracted by academic journals.

Boldt may be a world leader, but he has plenty of competition. In 2023, more than 10,000 research papers were retracted globally – more than any previous year on record. According to a recent investigation by Nature, a disproportionate number of retracted papers over the past ten years have been written by authors affiliated with several hospitals, universities and research institutes in Asia.

Academic journals retract papers when they are concerned that the published data is faked, altered, or not “reproducible” (meaning it would yield the same results if analysed again).

Some errors are honest mistakes. However, the majority of retractions are associated with scientific misconduct.

But what exactly is scientific misconduct? And what can be done about it?

From fabrication to plagiarism

The National Health and Medical Research Council is Australia’s primary government agency for medical funding. It defines misconduct as breaches of the Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.

In Australia, there are broadly eight recognised types of breaches. Research misconduct is the most severe.

These breaches may include failure to obtain ethics approval, plagiarism, data fabrication, falsification and misrepresentation.

This is what was behind many of Boldt’s retractions. He made up data for a large number of studies, which ultimately led to his dismissal from the Klinikum Ludwigshafen, a teaching hospital in Germany, in 2010.

In another case, China’s He Jiankui was sentenced to three years in prison in 2019 for creating the world’s first genetically edited babies using the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR. His crime was that he falsified documents to recruit couples for his research.

The “publish or perish” culture within academia fuels scientific misconduct. It puts pressure on academics to meet publication quotas. It also rewards them for greater research output, in the form of promotions, funding and recognition. And this can mean research quality is sacrificed for quantity.

Honest mistakes

But not all research misconduct is premeditated. Some is the result of honest mistakes made by scientists.

For example, Sergio Gonzalez, a young scientist at the Institute for Neurosciences of Montpellier in France, mistakenly uploaded several wrong images to an academic paper and its supplementary material. This didn’t have any effect on the findings of the paper, which were based on the correct images.

But it still represented a case of image duplication and misrepresentation of data. This lead to the journal retracting the paper and launching an investigation. The investigation concluded the breach was unintentional and resulted from the pressures of academic research.

Fewer than 20% of all retractions are due to honest mistakes. Researchers usually contact the publisher to correct errors when they are detected, with no major consequences.

The need for a national oversight body

In many countries, an independent national body oversees research integrity.

In the United Kingdom, this body is known as the Committee on Research Integrity. It is responsible for improving research integrity and addressing misconduct cases. Similarly, in the United States, the Office of Research Integrity handles allegations of research misconduct.

In contrast, Australia lacks an independent body directly tasked with investigating research misconduct. There is a body known as the Australian Research Integrity Committee. But it only reviews the institutional procedures and governance of investigations to ensure they are conducted fairly and transparently – and with limited effectiveness. For example, last year it received 13 complaints, only five of which were investigated.

Instead Australia relies on a self-regulation model. This means each university and research institute aligns its own policy with the Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. Although this code originated in medical research, its principles apply across all disciplines.

For example, in archaeology, falsifying an image or deliberately reporting inaccurate carbon dating results constitutes data fabrication. Another common breach is plagiarism, which can also be applied to all fields.

But self-governance on integrity matters is fraught with problems.

Investigations often lack transparency and are carried out internally, creating a conflict of interest. Often the investigative teams are under immense pressure to safeguard their institution’s reputation rather than uphold accountability.

A 2023 report by the Australia Institute called for the urgent establishment of an independent, government-funded research integrity watchdog.

The report recommended the watchdog have direct investigatory powers and that academic institutions be bound by its findings.

The report also recommended the watchdog should release its findings publicly, create whistleblower protections, establish a proper appeals process and allow people to directly raise complaints with it.

Research credibility is on the line

The consequences of inadequate oversight are already evident.

One of the biggest research integrity scandals in Australian history involved Ali Nazari, an engineer from Swinburne University. In 2022 an anonymous whistleblower alleged Nazari was part of an international research fraud cartel involving multiple teams.

Investigations cast doubt on the validity of the 287 papers Nazari and the other researchers had collectively published. The investigations uncovered numerous violations, including 71 instances of falsified results, plagiarism and duplication, and 208 instances of self-plagiarism.

Similarly, Mark Smyth, formerly of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, fabricated research data to support grant applications and clinical trials. An independent inquiry concluded he used his reputation, status and authority to bully and intimidate junior colleagues.

If Australia had a independent research integrity body, there would be a clear governance structure and an established and transparent pathway for reporting breaches at a much earlier stage.

Timely intervention would help reduce further breaches through swift investigation and corrective action. Importantly, consistent governance across Australian institutions would help ensure fairness. It would also reduce bias and uphold the same standards across all misconduct cases.

The call for an independent research integrity watchdog is long overdue.

Only through impartial oversight can we uphold the values of scientific excellence, protect public trust, and foster a culture of accountability that strengthens the integrity of research for all Australians.

Nham Tran, Associate Professor, School of Biomedical Engineering, University of Technology Sydney

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

World Sleep Day 2025 - Friday 14 March

 

Worsening diets in Australia

Fresh fruit down, junk food up: our modelling suggests Australians’ diets will get worse by 2030

Farknot Architect/Shutterstock

Matthew Ryan, CSIRO and Gilly Hendrie, CSIRO

The age-old saying “you are what you eat” rings true – diet quality affects our health from the inside out. While a healthy diet can improve health and wellbeing, a poor diet increases the risk of chronic health conditions such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

But Australians’ diets appear to be getting worse, not better. Our new modelling study suggests by 2030, our diets will comprise almost 10% less fruit, and around 18% more junk food. This puts us further away from national targets for healthy eating.

A public health priority

A healthy diet is a priority area of the National Preventive Health Strategy. This strategy sets clear goals to improve diet quality by 2030, including increasing fruit and vegetable intake, and reducing consumption of discretionary or “junk” food.

Junk foods (such as cakes, chips, chocolate, confectionery, certain takeaway foods and sugary drinks) are high in saturated fat, salt and sugar, and should only be consumed occasionally and in small amounts.

The preventive health strategy stipulates adults should be consuming two servings of fruit per day and five serves of vegetables, and should be reducing discretionary foods to less than 20% of total energy intake.

Currently, we’re sitting well short of these targets.

We wanted to know whether we might be able to achieve these goals by 2030. So we combined unique data on Australians’ diets with predictive models to map out how our diets are likely to change by 2030.

The CSIRO Healthy Diet Score survey has been running since 2015. This survey uses short questions to measure intake of the five healthy food groups, including fruit and vegetables, as well as discretionary foods. The questions ask about how often people eat certain foods, and how much they eat, to determine an individual’s average daily consumption.

We analysed data from more than 275,000 people who completed this survey between 2015 and 2023. We used predictive modelling techniques called generalised linear models to forecast future diet trends against the national targets. We also broke our findings down by sex and age.

What we found suggests we’re heading in the wrong direction.

Our research analysed data from more than 275,000 Australians. NDAB Creativity/Shutterstock

Fruit intake down, junk food up

Overall, we found fruit consumption is declining. On average, Australians were eating 0.1 fewer serves of fruit in 2023 than they did in 2015. If this trend continues, we expect a further 9.7% decrease in the average serves of daily fruit to 1.3 serves per day by 2030, well below national targets.

While vegetable consumption appears steady at around 3.7 serves per day, this is well below the recommended daily intake of 5 serves per day.

Concerningly, we are also seeing an increase in consumption of discretionary foods. Average daily intake increased by 0.7 serves between 2015 and 2023, with a further 0.8 serve increase predicted by 2030 (an 18% rise). That’s a 1.5 serve (40%) increase in just 15 years.

We can’t put an exact figure on how junk food intake stacks up against the targets, because we looked at serves per day, while the targets are about the proportion of total energy. However, the figures we identified constitute significantly more than 20% of total energy intake.

Things look worse for women. By 2030, women are predicted to be eating 13.2% less fruit and 21.6% more discretionary foods compared to 2023. For men, our predictions suggest a 4.8% decrease in fruit intake and a 19.5% increase in junk foods.

Despite a greater change in women, men are still predicted to be eating more discretionary foods by 2030 (6.3 serves per day for men versus 4.6 for women).

For Australians aged 30 and above, both fruit and vegetable intake are declining. Adults aged 31–50 have the lowest reported fruit and vegetable intake, but the largest change is in adults 71 and older. For these older Australians, we estimate a 14.7% decrease in fruit consumption and a 6.9% decrease in vegetable consumption by 2030. That’s equivalent to a decrease of 0.5 serves of fruit and 0.2 serves of vegetables since 2015.

Junk food intake is on the rise among all age groups. Estrada Anton/Shutterstock

Discretionary food intake is on the rise in all age groups, but particularly in younger adults.

However, young Australians (18–30 years) may be eating more discretionary foods, but they’re also the only ones eating more healthy food as well. Both fruit and vegetable consumption are increasing for young Australians, with our modelling suggesting a 10.7% and 13.2% respective rise in average serves per day by 2030.

Although this is a positive sign, it’s not enough, as these projections still put young Australians below the recommended daily intake.

Some limitations

Our modelling helps us to understand diet trends over recent years and project these into the future.

However, the research doesn’t tell us what’s driving the worrying trends we’ve observed in Australian diet quality. There are likely to be a variety of factors at play.

For example, many Australians understand what a “healthy balanced diet” is, but what we eat could be affected by social and personal preferences.

It could also be related to cost of living and other pressures which can make fresh food harder to obtain. Also, the area where we live can influence how easy or hard it is to make healthy food choices.

Understanding the root causes behind these changes is a vital area of future research.

In terms of other limitations, our study only focused on the diet quality of Australian adults and didn’t investigate trends is children’s diets.

Also, we only looked at fruit, vegetables and junk food in this study. But we are currently studying changes in the whole diet, taking in other food groups as well.

What can we do?

Australian diets are going in the wrong direction, but it’s not too late to correct the path. We need to ensure all Australians understand what constitutes a healthy diet, and can afford to maintain one.

While no one person, sector or organisation can do this alone, by working together we can put a greater focus towards eating a healthy diet. This includes reviewing policy around the availability and price of fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as looking at our own plates and swapping the junk food for healthier options.

Danielle Baird, a Team Leader in Nutrition and Behaviour at CSIRO, contributed to this article.

Matthew Ryan, Postdoctoral CERC Fellow, Human Health, CSIRO and Gilly Hendrie, Research Scientist, Human Health, CSIRO

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