Griffith University researchers have found weaker neck strength is a risk factor for concussion and higher head impacts in rugby league, rugby union and soccer athletes.
Dr Felix Leung using a portable setup to test for neck strength.
Researchers published a series of papers on the topic of concussion and worked closely with adolescent athletes from St Laurence’s College and elite athletes from Brisbane Broncos Rugby League Club, finding neck strength was an important factor.
Clinical and research physiotherapist at Griffith’s School of Health Sciences and Social Work Dr Felix Leung said players with weaker neck strength had an increased risk of sustaining a concussion during the season.
“Strength training of these muscles should be incorporated into athlete training schedules to contribute to concussion prevention,” Dr Leung said.
“If players have stronger neck muscles, they are able to brace themselves to absorb and dissipate the impact of collision forces.
Dr Felix Leung instructing St Laurence’s College Rugby First athletes in neck resistance strengthening exercises.
“The research findings provide clinical impact for coaches and healthcare practitioners who will be able to use the clinical strength cut-offs to identify the players at greater risk of sustaining a concussion.
“The equipment used to test neck strength is portable, easy-to-use and can be set up in any gym.”
Players with weaker neck extension strength at preseason testing were more likely to sustain a concussion during the season.
One study followed 43 adolescent rugby league and rugby union athletes and found one in four players sustained a concussion during the season.
Researchers established an optimal point where adolescent players with less than 32kg or 37 newtons per kilogram (normalised to their body weight) of neck extension strength were more likely to sustain a concussion.
School of Health Sciences and Social Work Professor Julie Hides said high impact sports such as rugby league and rugby union have a high incidence of concussion and most of these injuries occurred while tackling or being tackled.
Professor Julie Hides and Dr Felix Leung from the School of Health Sciences and Social Work.
“Griffith’s team of researchers advocate for young and old to stay active and involved in sports,” Professor Hides said.
“We want players to continue to participate in sport, and we’re constantly looking at ways to minimise the risks and improve the management of concussion in sports.”
Results from a second study on skilled soccer players aged between 15 – 18 years showed neck strength training may be beneficial to decrease head impacts during soccer ball heading.
The research on adolescent soccer players suggested testing of isometric muscle strength of the cervical spine lateral flexors may be useful and may reflect the role of muscles that were important when heading the ball in soccer, especially for those with increased range of motion.
New student accommodation buildings have been opened at Chinchilla Hospital, enhancing the rural placement experience for Griffith University medical students.
The initiative also aims to boost the town’s essential healthcare services by attracting and retaining medical professionals, providing high-quality training and accommodation for the next generation or rural doctors.
Head of Griffith’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, Professor Julian Archer, said the project reflected Griffith’s commitment to immersing students in the local community.
Professor Julian Archer
“This facility will allow students to live and learn in the very environment where we hope they will choose to make a lasting impact,” he said.
“Our final-year medical students are incredibly fortunate to spend time in this community, gaining invaluable rural healthcare experience in an immersive learning environment, with onsite living close to the hospital and patients, shaping their future careers.”
The opportunity to live by the Chinchilla Hospital will also help students see how important healthcare in rural areas is, with Medical Services Southern Assistant Director Dr James Ware saying doctors who train in the country often return to provide their services to the wonderful communities they become a part of.
“I can attest from firsthand experience, having been trained in rural medicine and worked in the country for many years, that a love of rural medicine grew,” he said.
“It’s just fantastic having medical students training in local areas, rural areas, because we know that’s how we’re going to get them back.”
Funded by the Queensland Government’s Resources Community Infrastructure Fund in association with Rural Medical Education Australia and the Darling Downs Hospital and Health Service, the three purpose-built homes were constructed by a local builder.
Seafaring hunter-gatherers were accessing remote, small islands such as Malta thousands of years before the arrival of the first farmers, a new international study has found.
Published in Nature, the research team – led by Professor Eleanor Scerri of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology (MPI-GEA) and the University of Malta – found hunter-gatherers were crossing at least 100km of open water to reach the Mediterranean island of Malta 8,500 years ago, a thousand years before the arrival of agricultural practises.
This report documented the oldest long-distance seafaring in the Mediterranean, before the invention of boats with sails – an astonishing feat for hunter-gatherers likely using simple dugout canoes.
Dr Mathew Stewart.
At the cave site of Latnija in the northern Mellieħa region of Malta, the research team found the traces of humans in the form of their stone tools, hearths, and cooked food waste.
Small, remote islands were long thought to have been the last frontiers of pristine natural systems.
Humans were not thought to have been able to reach or inhabit these environments prior to the dawn of agriculture, and the technological shift that accompanied this transition.
“Even on the longest day of the year, these seafarers would have had over several hours of darkness in open water,” said Professor Nicholas Vella of the University of Malta, co-investigator of the study.
“At the site we recovered a diverse array of animals, including hundreds of remains of deer, birds, tortoises, and foxes,” Dr Stewart said.
Taxonomic and isotopic analyses of the faunal remains.
“Some of these wild animals were long thought to have gone extinct by this point in time,” added Professor Scerri.
“They were hunting and cooking red deer alongside tortoises and birds, including some that were extremely large and extinct today.”
In addition to this, the team of researchers found clear evidence for the exploitation of marine resources.
“We found remains of seal, various fish, including grouper, and thousands of edible marine gastropods, crabs and sea urchins, all indisputably cooked,” said Dr James Blinkhorn of the University of Liverpool and MPI-GEA, one of the study’s corresponding authors.
“The incorporation of a diverse range of terrestrial and, especially, marine fauna into the diet likely enabled these hunter-gatherers to sustain themselves on an island as small as Malta,” added Dr Stewart.
These discoveries also raised questions about the extinction of endemic animals on Malta and other small and remote Mediterranean islands, and whether distant Mesolithic communities may have been linked through seafaring.
“The results add a thousand years to Maltese prehistory and force a re-evaluation of the seafaring abilities of Europe’s last hunter-gatherers, as well as their connections and ecosystem impacts,” Professor Scerri said.
In the largest study of its kind to date, a team of international researchers has investigated how pharmaceutical pollution affects the behaviour and migration of Atlantic salmon.
The study, led by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, revealed that commonly detected environmental levels of clobazam – a medication often prescribed for sleep disorders – increased the river-to-sea migration success of juvenile salmon in the wild.
Dr Marcus Michelangeli in the field. Credit: Michael Bertram
The researchers also discovered that clobazam shortened the time it took for juvenile salmon to navigate through two hydropower dams along their migration route – obstacles that typically hinder successful migration.
Dr Marcus Michelangeli from Griffith University’s Australian Rivers Institute, who was a key contributor to the study published in Science, emphasised the increasing threat of pharmaceutical pollution to wildlife and ecosystems worldwide.
“Pharmaceutical pollutants are an emerging global issue, with over 900 different substances having now been detected in waterways around the world,” Dr Michelangeli said.
“Of particular concern are psychoactive substances like antidepressants and pain medications, which can significantly interfere with wildlife brain function and behaviour.
Dr Michelangeli noted that the study’s real-world focus sets it apart from previous research.
“Most previous studies examining the effects of pharmaceutical pollutants on wildlife have been conducted under controlled laboratory conditions, which don’t fully capture the complexities of natural environments,” he said.
“This study is unique because it investigates the effects of these contaminants on wildlife directly in the field, allowing us to better understand how exposure impacts wildlife behaviour and migration in a natural context.
“While the increased migration success in salmon exposed to clobazam might seem like a beneficial effect, it is important to realise that any change to the natural behaviour and ecology of a species is expected to have broader negative consequences both for that species and the surrounding wildlife community.”
Dr Marcus Michelangeli
The research team employed innovative slow-release pharmaceutical implants and animal-tracking transmitters to monitor how exposure to clobazam and the opioid painkiller tramadol – another common pharmaceutical pollutant – affected the behaviour and migration of juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) in Sweden’s River Dal as they migrated to the Baltic Sea.
A follow-up laboratory experiment also found that clobazam altered shoaling behaviour, indicating that the observed migration changes in the wild may result from drug-induced shifts in social dynamics and risk-taking behaviour.
Dr Michelangeli explained that predicting the full extent of these impacts remains challenging
“When you consider realistic exposure scenarios where entire ecosystems are exposed – encompassing multiple species and a diversity of contaminants – the potential consequences become even more complex,” he said.
Tracking juvenile Atlantic salmon shoaling behaviour. Credit: Marcus Michelangeli
While the recent decline of Atlantic salmon is primarily attributed to overfishing, habitat loss, and fragmentation – leading to their endangered status – the study highlights how pharmaceutical pollution could also influence key life-history events in migratory fish.
Dr Michelangeli pointed out that many pharmaceuticals persist in the environment due to poor biodegradability and insufficient wastewater treatment. However, there is hope.
“Advanced wastewater treatment methods are becoming more effective at reducing pharmaceutical contamination, and there is promising potential in green chemistry approaches,” he said.
“By designing drugs that break down more rapidly or become less harmful after use, we can significantly mitigate the environmental impact of pharmaceutical pollution in the future.”
A new study published in Naturereveals the modern arid desert between Africa and Saudi Arabia was once regularly lush and green with rivers and lakes over a period of 8 million years, allowing for the occupation and movements of both animals and hominins.
The findings, led by an international team of researchers supported by the Saudi Heritage Commission, Ministry of Culture, shed new light on this hitherto unrecognised but important crossroad for biogeographic exchange between Africa and Eurasia.
The Saharo-Arabian Desert is one of the largest biogeographic barriers on Earth, limiting the dispersal of early humans and animals between Africa and Eurasia.
Recent research suggested the desert had been in place since at least 11 million years ago.
But Professor Michael Petraglia, Director of Griffith University’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution and co-author on the new study, said fossil evidence from the Late Miocene (marked by an increase in global temperatures) and Pleistocene (which contained multiple ice ages) suggested the episodic presence within the Saharo-Arabian Desert interior of water-dependent animals.
Animals such as crocodiles, equids, hippopotamids, proboscideans, were likely sustained by rivers and lakes that were largely absent from today’s arid landscape.
“These wetter conditions likely facilitated these mammalian dispersals between Africa and Eurasia, with Arabia acting as a key crossroads for continental-scale biogeographic exchanges.”
Professor Michael Petraglia
Dr Monika Markowska of Northumbria University, UK, and Dr Hubert Vonhof of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Germany, conducted new work on cave speleothems (mineral deposits such as stalagtites and stalagmites) that led to the realisation that there were numerous humid phases in Arabia during the last 8 million years.
Dr Markowska, who was lead author on the study, explained that little was known about Arabia’s palaeoclimate before this time, noting: “The findings highlighted that precipitation during humid intervals decreased and became more variable over time, as the monsoon’s influence weakened, coinciding with enhanced Northern Hemisphere polar ice cover during the Pleistocene.”
Dr Faisal al-Jibrin, lead Saudi archaeologist of the Heritage Commission, said: “Arabia has traditionally been overlooked in Africa-Eurasia dispersals, but studies like ours increasingly reveal it central place in mammalian and hominin migrations.”
Harnessing stress effectively can help boost an individual’s productivity or motivation levels, with a new Griffith University study allaying fears the technique could negatively affect feelings of empathy or willingness to support others.
Dr Jacob Keech is an expert in stress management and has been researching stress mindset — the way people perceive and believe stress affects them — since 2014, with the aim of improving people’s wellbeing and performance when faced with stress.
While stress has long been viewed in a negative light, recent research has suggested reframing it as a potential motivator can lead to better outcomes, including improved problem-solving skills and personal growth.
With this in mind, Dr Keech developed a stress mindset intervention — a 15-minute, online program where participants are first educated about the positive and negative aspects of stress, then taken through a series of imagery-based exercises where they visualise the positive consequences of stress in their own lives.
Dr Jacob Keech
“Stress mindset interventions have shown promise in helping individuals manage their own stress more effectively,” Dr Keech said.
“There are likely to be benefits of viewing stress in a more balanced way, considering both the positives and the negatives, as opposed to strictly negative.”
Since starting his research however, questions have been raised as to whether there could be negative consequences to viewing stress as a productivity booster, in particular regard to managers putting undue pressure on their staff.
“The idea that fostering a more positive stress mindset could lead people to downplay the struggles of others or be less supportive is an important concern,” Dr Keech said.
“Our findings suggest this is not the case though.”
Participants who underwent the stress mindset intervention were asked to evaluate the distress levels of a close friend and a colleague in hypothetical scenarios and indicate their likelihood of providing support.
The results showed participants in the intervention group were equally receptive to others’ stress and just as likely to offer assistance.
“While it may be beneficial to embrace stress as a motivational tool for personal growth, we must always be cautious not to overload others with stress, especially in managerial roles,” Dr Keech said.
“Our study showed we can promote a healthier mindset towards stress without creating negative consequences for the social or emotional wellbeing of those around us.”
The results of the study were recently published in the International Journal of Stress Management, contributing to the growing evidence supporting the use of stress mindset interventions to improve individual wellbeing and performance, while alleviating concerns of negative impacts on interpersonal relationships.
A team of global ecologists are investigating the decline of insect populations in the world’s tropical forests, with the published review findings revealing that anthropogenic pressures, invasive species and climate change impacts could have disastrous consequences for ecosystems globally.
Broad-nosed weevil beetle at Danum Valley Conservation Area, Borneo. Credit: Marco Chan
The team highlighted the crucial role that insects played and the threats they faced in understudied tropical regions.
“Most studies of insect declines are from modified landscapes in Europe and North America,” Professor Ashton said.
“However, most insect biodiversity is in the tropics. Due to a lack of long-term monitoring data, we do not fully understand how insect diversity changes over time.
“This review and our related projects highlight this issue and bring together new long-term insect data to help understand potential tropical insect declines and their consequences for ecological functioning.”
Insects on tropical islands were particularly vulnerable to invasive species, with many unique species already extinct.
Other threats included urbanisation, habitat loss and fragmentation, and pollution from agriculture and urban areas.
More broadly, climate change poses a huge threat to insect populations across the tropics, not just through rising temperatures but through disruptions to crucial weather cycles such as El Niño and La Niña.
“Declining insect biodiversity may have knock-on consequences for ecosystem processes such as carbon cycling and pollination, which could impact the Earth globally.”
Professor Emeritus Nigel Stork
“Changes in the ecosystem balance could also lead to increased outbreaks of pests and insect-vectored diseases such as dengue and malaria in humans, as well as similar diseases in livestock, affecting global health and reducing food security.”
Praying mantis at Danum Valley Conservation Area, Borneo. Credit: Marco Chan
The team emphasised large gaps remained in understanding due to insufficient data from tropical forests. However, recent advances in artificial intelligence and genetic methods were beginning to address these challenges.
Over the past three years, the team has conducted extensive field research across tropical Australia and Asia, revisiting forests where insect studies were previously undertaken.
Ongoing research in Lamington National Park, and at the Canopy crane at the Daintree Rainforest Observatory involved collecting ants, moths, beetles and butterflies using specialised traps to assess how climate change has re-wired these populations over the last two decades.
Similar studies were being carried out in Yunnan, China and Daintree, Australia, including the use of canopy cranes to collect insects from the rainforest canopy.
“The next stage of this research is to study the ecological roles and functions of insect species to understand how changing populations will impact tropical forest ecosystems,” Professor Kitching said.
“The important processes provided by beneficial insects, including regulating forest growth through herbivory and nutrient cycling, are dwindling over time, so it’s vital that we increase the understanding of insects and their roles in these regions as much as possible and now before it’s too late.”
The review paper ‘Causes and consequences of insect decline in tropical forests’ has been published in Nature Review Biodiversity.
Queensland Theatre’s production of Calamity Jane has galloped into Brisbane, bringing a Griffith University alumnus and an intimacy coordinator along for the ride.
Having graduated from Griffith’s Bachelor of Musical Theatre in December 2024, Juliette Coates plays a split role in the show, as both the fearless, larger-than-life ‘performer-wannabe’ Susan Miller, and the glamorous Hollywood-esque starlet, Adelaide Adams.
Having grown up watching musicals such as Singin’ in the Rain, Oklahoma and Calamity Jane with their grandmother, and their mother even playing Calamity in high school, Mx Coates was no stranger to the characters, but their rigorous training at Griffith prepared them for the extra challenge of playing two.
“The most fun part is probably the two minutes where I run off stage after being Susan and very quickly get changed into a completely different look, then sprint back to appear as a different character in completely opposite colour palette, hair and make-up,” they said.
“It’s been a lot of fun exploring the different roles, with Adelaide Adams being successful and adored, and Susan Miller not, yet she is completely sure of herself and absolutely fearless.
“She’s then got this fun and childlike curiosity when she falls in love with another aspiring performer, and they are just so beautiful together.”
To facilitate the intimacy between those two characters and others, Queensland Theatre also brought in Program Director of Griffith’s Bachelor of Acting, Jacqui Somerville, who specialises in intimacy coordination for theatre and screen.
Originally training under intimacy coordinator and movement director Ita O’Brien in the United Kingdom, Ms Somerville now runs regular workshops with Griffith’s acting students to prepare them for difficult or confronting moments in plays or films.
Often only spending a couple of hours with actors, she makes a big impact creating safe and consensual productions.
“I come in if there’s a kiss, a hug, or a sensitive physical moment that needs to be discussed or unpacked,” Ms Somerville said.
Jacqui Somerville
“I’ll start by asking who is leading the kiss, is it 50/50 or perhaps 70/30, and what the quality of it is to be.
“It’s about working out people’s boundaries and what everyone is comfortable with, but fundamentally, having them realise it is their professional body doing these things, not their personal body, and there is a difference.
“They’ll talk about themselves in the third person, so they’ll say ‘my character would do this’ and we’ll talk through the stages of that movement.”
Intimacy coordination is not limited to kissing or sex scenes, and can in fact include anything from fight scenes to those involving death, childbirth, or even parental interactions with children.
“It’s really just navigating and sculpting the moment,” Ms Somerville said.
“You’re choreographing the moment to look spontaneous and as authentic as possible.”
Calamity Jane is now playing a strictly limited season at the Bille Brown Theatre until 17 April, with tickets available from queenslandtheatre.com.au.
New research led by Griffith University has highlighted more than 43% of Queensland’s current productive aquaculture sites are expected to be impacted by sea level rise.
PhD candidate Marina Christofidis.
Of the projected inundation caused by sea level rise, it is estimated 98 per cent of prawn sites and 50 per cent of prawn production would be impacted.
The estimated annual economic losses of these projected impacts would range between AUD$12.6-22.6 million for barramundi and AUD$36.9-127.6 million for prawns by the year 2100.
Lead researcher Marina Christofidis, a PhD candidate from Griffith’s Australian Rivers Institute, said Queensland was the largest terrestrial aquaculture producer in Australia, largely consisting of coastal pond-based production.
“But, under high-emission scenarios, Queensland is also projected to experience a 0.8m sea level rise by 2100,” she said.
“Aquaculture is central to livelihoods and food security, providing security to meet growing human seafood and protein demand without surpassing environmental limits.
“But the aquaculture industry is vulnerable to climate change impacts, including sea level rise and so this needed to be assessed.”
PhD Candidate Marina Christofidis
Ms Christofidis and her team conducted the assessment by using existing datasets on coastal inundation and erosion from sea level rise from the Queensland government.
They combined this with novel, satellite-derived data on current aquaculture production locations and identified aquaculture development areas, resulting in a dataset covering 647.14 km2, comprising 341 lots and 275 farms.
Among the Local Government areas (LGAs) in Queensland, considering all lots, the areas projected to be most affected by sea level rise were:
Cassowary Coast regional (3.89km2, 71%)
Whitsunday Regional (3.63km2, 39%)
Gold Coast Regional (3.04 km2, 57%)
Mackay Regional (2.42 km2, 100%).
The most vulnerable LGAs regarding productive prawn ponds were:
Gold Coast city (1.12km², 92%)
Burdekin Shire (0.59km², 49%)
Isaac Regional (0.36km², 42%)
Cassowary (0.30km², 20%)
Whitsunday Regional (0.26km², 5%)
Mackay Regional (0.073km², 100%).
Barramundi ponds were most exposed across:
Current productive aquaculture risk due to 0.8 m sea level rise by species and number of lots exposed in Queensland.
Whitsunday Regional (0.43km², 73%)
Douglas Shire (0.23 km2, 44%)
Cassowary Coast Regional (0.085km², 97%).
“These results are an early warning sign for Queensland’s aquaculture industry. We need to integrate climate risks into planning and mitigation strategies in coastal industries like aquaculture both in Australia and globally,” Ms Christofidis said.
“For the future of aquaculture in the region, careful considerations should be taken for high-risk aquaculture developments areas located in low elevation coastal zones; developing these areas needs to be adaptable to potential sea level rise in the future to avoid mis-investment.
“And transitioning from traditional aquaculture to more resilient systems such as integrating prawn ponds with nature-based solutions for coastal protection – such as mangroves, green seawalls, artificial reefs, fencing and netting – could help to protect coastal aquaculture and infrastructure.”
The desert that we see today in Arabia was once a region that repeatedly underwent ‘green’ periods in the past, as a result of periods of high rainfall, resulting in the formation of lakes and rivers around 9,000 years ago.
The area at which the lake was once brimming with life is now part of the world’s largest deserts.
This is the key finding from an international, interdisciplinary team that documented an ancient water-sculpted landscape in the Empty Quarter, one of the largest and driest deserts in the world today.
The scientific team, which was led by Dr Abdallah Zaki and Professor Sébastien Castelltort of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and Professor Abdulkader Afifi of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), included Professor Michael Petraglia from Griffith University, documented the presence of an ancient lake, rivers and a large water-formed valley.
“Based on a series of ages, it appears the lake peaked about 9,000 years ago during a wet Green Arabia period that extended between 11,000 to 5,500 years ago,” said the first author, Dr Abdallah Zaki.
The lake is estimated to have been massive, measuring 1,100sqkm in extent and 42m in depth.
Professor Sébastien Castelltort added: “Owing to increased rainfall, the lake eventually breached, causing a great flood and carving out a 150km long valley in the desert floor.”
The scientists believed the source of the monsoonal rains was from the African monsoon, shown by sediments that could be traced over a distance measuring 1,100km, extending from the Asir Mountains along the Red Sea, in close proximity to Africa.
Professor Petraglia, who is the Director of Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, said the research demonstrated that rainfall was not weak but rather sometimes strong and intensive, resulting in rapid and large-scale landscape changes.
The map displays the modeled streams – Wadi ad Dawasir, Wadi al Batin, and Wadi Sahba – and the dominant moisture-bringing atmospheric systems (monsoons, Westerlies)
“The formation of lake and riverine landscapes, together with grasslands and savanna conditions, would have led to the expansion of hunting and gathering groups and pastoral populations across what is now a dry and barren desert,” Professor Petraglia said.
“This is borne out by the presence of abundant archaeological evidence in the Empty Quarter and along its ancient lake and river networks.
“By 6,000 years ago, the Empty Quarter experienced a strong decline in rainfall, which would have created dry, arid conditions, forcing populations to move into more hospitable settings and changing the lifestyle of nomadic populations.”
