Researchers are investigating whether the COVID virus can affect vision and depth-perception of those infected.
The study, co-led by Griffith University’s Menzies Health Institute and South Korea’s Center for Convergent Research for Emerging Virus Infection, Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology, aims to understand how SARS-CoV-2 affects the eyes and whether it could serve as a virus infection route.
It found the eyes and the trigeminal nerves are susceptible to the virus and that (in animal models) SARS-CoV-2 can infect the eye through the respiratory tract, via the brain.
Principal Research Leader and co-lead author Professor Suresh Mahalingam said the virus can begin to affect vision when inflammation of the optic nerves, abnormal fluid build-up, and immune cell infiltration cause the retina to get thicker.
Professor Suresh Mahalingam
“The virus can infect the eye through nerve tissues at the back of the eye that play a role in the visual aspects of the eye and sending signals for visual purposes,” Prof Mahalingam said.
“The result of this retinal inflammation was a reduction in depth perception due to blurred vision.”
This blurred vision does appear to be symptomatic only, not a permanent degeneration of the eye tissue.
It is also only likely to affect a very small number of people.
Griffith University PhD student Mr Ng Wern Hann said that while a lot of COVID research has been focused on respiratory infection, particularly in the lungs and nasal region, there has not been much focus on the eyes.
“We found the virus can indeed infect the eye through a normal intranasal approach, but also if droplets of the virus make direct contact with the eye,” he said.
“The ACE2 receptor is what the virus attaches to in order to infect a particular cell in a tissue or organ, and this receptor is found in abundance in the lungs, tonsils, nasal cavity, kidneys and
heart, which is why a lot of reports have been published for those organs, but we found ACE2 receptors are also present in the eye, therefore facilitating infection.”
The findings, published in Nature Communication give new insights into COVID-19 disease and may facilitate the development of treatment strategies for patients.
If you thought Australia was home to only one ancient ‘giant wombat’, think again.
While the Diprotodon – the extinct megafauna species that is distantly related to wombats but was the size of a small car – is commonly (but incorrectly) thought of as Australia’s ‘giant wombat’, researchers from Griffith University have shed light on a large species that does belong in the modern-day wombat family.
Associate Professor Louys said the discovery provided unprecedented insights into the biology and appearance of these previously little known ‘gentle giants’.
“The extinct megafauna of Australia never ceases to amaze and intrigue not just Australians, but people all over the world,” he said.
“Although one of the most charismatic of the giant mammals to go extinct, Diprotodon is commonly referred to as a ‘giant wombat’. But this is incorrect as Diprotodon belongs to an entirely different family – equivalent to saying a hippo is just a giant pig.
“There were however, true giant wombats. These have traditionally been poorly known, but the discovery of the most complete skull of one of these giants, Ramsayia, has provided us with an opportunity to reconstruct what this creature looked like, where and when it lived, and how the evolution of giant wombats took place in Australia.”
The cranium and mandible of the Ramsayia magna fossil was discovered from the rear of the front chamber of Lower Johansons Cave in Rockhampton in the early 2000s, but it was only through subsequent excavations and analysis by Associate Professor Louys’s team that is was confirmed as belonging to a previously described but very poorly known species.
Extinct giant wombats of the family Vombatidae (broadly defined as twice the size of modern wombats) are rarer than the fossil diprotodontids that are often popularly – and incorrectly – referred to as giant wombats.
Associate Professor Louys said this giant wombat – Ramsayia – had extensive cranial sinuses, which had not been previously reported for a wombat.
The skull fragments were found in a cave near Rockhampton, Qld.
“This indicates that the wombat had a large, rounded skull for the attachment of specific and strong chewing muscles,” he said.
“The giant wombat also possessed a ‘premaxillary spine’, an indication that it had a large, fleshy nose.
“In this paper, we show that all true giant wombats evolved large body sizes first, then individually became quite specialised to eat different types of grasses.
“We also dated this species as being about 80,000 years old. This is the first date for this species and is much earlier than human arrival in Australia, although we still don’t know exactly when or why this species became extinct.”
The research ‘Cranial remains of Ramsayia magna from the Late Pleistocene of Australia and the evolution of gigantism in wombats (Marsupialia, Vombatidae)’ has been published in Papers In Palaeontology.
Restoring tidal flow to enclosed freshwater wetlands is key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping reach Australia’s carbon reduction targets a Griffith-led study found.
Published in Restoration Ecology, the study compared the greenhouse gas emitted by impounded freshwater coastal wetlands with those from tidally connected mangrove and saltmarshes in the Queensland’s Burdekin catchment.
Lead author Charles Cadier, a PhD candidate at Australian Rivers Institute and the Coastal & Marine Research Centre
“The freshwater impounded wetlands, created when tidal flows to coastal wetlands are artificially restricted, had more than a 100-fold higher methaneemissions compared to mangroves and saltmarsh,” said lead author Charles Cadier, a PhD candidate at Australian Rivers Institute and the Coastal & Marine Research Centre.
Tidally influenced coastal wetlands, made up of mangroves, tidal marshes, and seagrass meadows, are known as “blue carbon” ecosystems for the ability of their soils to accumulate significant amounts of carbon. Although they occupy less than 2% of the ocean area, they’re responsible for nearly 50% of carbon burial in marine sediments.
“Globally wetlands have been rapidly decreasing over the last century with the change in land use affecting coastal wetlands’ capacity to sequester carbon,” said co-author Dr Fernanda Adame Vivanco, a senior research fellow at Australian Rivers Institute and the Coastal & Marine Research Centre.
“When the carbon stored in soils are disturbed and exposed to oxygen, carbon dioxide is liberated to the atmosphere, converting them from sinks to sources of greenhouse gases.”
Freshwater wetlands are also the single largest natural source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Freshwater wetlands are thought to account for a quarter of the global methane emissions.
“The waterlogged conditions in these enclosed wetlands promotes methane production by soil bacteria, emitting significantly more methane than mangroves and saltmarsh,” Mr Cadier said.
“Our research found that freshwater impounded wetlands emitted about 100-times the CO2equivalents from mangroves and saltmarshes.”
Dr Adame suggests that “restoring the tidal flow to freshwater-impounded wetlands, is likely to result in significantly less greenhouse gas emissions, specifically from reduced methane production.”
“This is generally a result of modified soil properties, favouring bacterial communities that will outcompete methane producers.”
Mr Cadier concludes that, “Although tidal restoration projects in the Great Barrier Reef should consider the values of each wetland type and avoid the “one size fits all” approach, the restoration of impounded freshwater wetlands can provide an emission reduction option that helps meet Australia’s carbon reduction emission targets, particularly for incentives to avoided methane emissions.”
Griffith University has been helping farmers and co-operatives in Binh Thuan Province train for export expansion to Australia.
The province has historically concentrated on the export and distribution of dragon fruit across South-East Asia, but key stakeholders are now looking to expand to wholesalers and supermarkets in Melbourne, Australia.
Associate Professor Robin E Roberts, from the Griffith Asia Institute, is leading the initiative by delivering training that focuses on key concepts such as understanding demand, consumer buying behaviours, supply chain development and export entry protocols.
Associate Professor Robin E Roberts
The program provides practical training, with activities designed specifically to assist the Binh Thuan traders to supply Australian export markets. Associate Professor Roberts discusses the economic, social, and environmental considerations and draws on her agribusiness expertise to help build the capacity of the local stakeholders and improve their development skills.
“Vietnamese dragon fruit production is embedded in Binh Thuan’s cultural and economic history,” Associate Professor Roberts said.
“The locals tell the story of Hoang Tu Canh, a crown prince who led the province from a nearby citadel in the late 1700’s. When fresh produce was in short supply, the Binh Thuan people shared their local fruits to help sustain the army against the dragons of the East. The prince acknowledged their generosity and bestowed the name dragon fruit in their honour.
“Despite the historic connection to dragon fruit, production of the fruit in Binh Thuan province only emerged in the 1970’s. But the increased production, combined with the opening of the country to foreign tourists, has meant that the fruit has been in high demand ever since.
Robin E Roberts with dragon fruit growers and traders in Phan Thiet, Binh Thuan Province
“Dragon fruit is already extremely popular in Vietnam but what we’re hoping, by helping the Binh Thuan exporters through these programs, is that the Australian consumers will have more opportunity to fall in love with the fruit too.”
Associate Professor Roberts is eager to continue her collaboration with farmers and co-operatives in the province, with the intention to one day expand the program to include the export of other tropical fruits such as mango and passion fruit.
Our society faces the grand challenge of providing sustainable, secure and affordable means of generating energy, while trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to net zero around 2050.
To date, developments in fusion power, which potentially ticks all these boxes, have been funded almost exclusively by the public sector. However, something is changing.
Private equity investment in the global fusion industry has more than doubled in just one year – from US$2.1 billion in 2021 to US$4.7 billion in 2022, according to a survey from the Fusion Industry Association.
So, what is driving this recent change? There’s lots to be excited about.
Before we explore that, let’s take a quick detour to recap what fusion power is.
Merging atoms together
Fusion works the same way our Sun does, by merging two heavy hydrogen atoms under extreme heat and pressure to release vast amounts of energy.
It’s the opposite of the fission process used by nuclear power plants, in which atoms are split to release large amounts of energy.
Sustaining nuclear fusion at scale has the potential to produce a safe, clean, almost inexhaustible power source.
Our Sun sustains fusion at its core with a plasma of charged particles at around 15 million degrees Celsius. Down on Earth, we are aiming for hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius, because we don’t have the enormous mass of the Sun compressing the fuel down for us.
Scientists and engineers have worked out several designs for how we might achieve this, but most fusion reactors use strong magnetic fields to “bottle” and confine the hot plasma.
Generally, the main challenge to overcome on our road to commercial fusion power is to provide environments that can contain the intense burning plasma needed to produce a fusion reaction that is self-sustaining, producing more energy than was needed to get it started.
A donut-shaped magnetic confinement device called a tokamak is one of the leading designs for a working fusion power generator, with many such experiments running worldwide. Christopher Roux, EUROfusion Consortium, CC BY
Joining the public and private
Fusion development has been progressing since the 1950s. Most of it was driven by government funding for fundamental science.
Now, a growing number of private fusion companies around the world are forging ahead towards commercial fusion energy. A change in government attitudes has been crucial to this.
The US and UK governments are fostering public-private partnerships to complement their strategic research programs.
In addition to public-private resourcing, the technologies we need for fusion plants have come along in leaps and bounds.
In 2021, MIT scientists and Commonwealth Fusion Systems developed a record-breaking magnet that will allow them to build a compact fusion device called SPARC “that is substantially smaller, lower cost, and on a faster timeline”.
These incredible feats demonstrate an unprecedented ability to replicate conditions found inside our Sun and keep extremely hot plasma trapped long enough to encourage fusion to occur.
By focusing nearly 200 powerful lasers to confine and compress a target the size of a pencil’s eraser, they produced a small fusion “hot spot” generating fusion energy over a short time period.
We can afford to expand adoption of current renewable energy technology like solar, wind, and pumped hydro while also developing next-generation solutions for electricity production.
This exact strategy was outlined recently by the United States in its Net-Zero Game Changers Initiative. In this plan, resource investment will be targeted to developing a path to rapid decarbonisation in parallel with the commercial development of fusion.
History shows us that incredible scientific and engineering progress is possible when we work together with the right resources – the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines is just one recent example.
It is clear many scientists, engineers, and now governments and private investors (and even fashion designers) have decided fusion energy is a solution worth pursuing, not a pipe dream. Right now, it’s the best shot we’ve yet had to make fusion power a viable reality.
Authors
Dr Nathan Garland is a Lecturer in Applied Mathematics and Physics at Griffith University, Australia. Prior to joining Griffith, Nathan was a post-doctoral researcher in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA. His areas of research interest are based around computational modelling of plasmas in various applications, and the integration of high-quality atomic input data into plasma modelling frameworks. His research has explored applications including the modeling of low-temperature plasmas and electron transport in liquid discharges, tokamak fusion plasmas, collisional-radiative modelling, deep-learning in plasma modelling, and scattering data and physics of electrons, positrons, muons with atoms and molecules.
Associate Professor Matthew Hole holds degrees in Physics, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering, and completed a PhD on plasma centrifuge physics at the University of Sydney. During 2001-2002 Dr Hole worked for the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority on fusion power on the innovative spherical tokamak concept. From 2003-2004 Dr Hole worked on space plasma physics in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. Since 2005, he has worked with Prof. Dewar of the Plasma Theory Modelling Group at ANU, which A/Prof. Hole now leads.
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Griffith’s Climate Ready Initiative (CRI) board has gained a formidable force in former Federal MP, Terri Butler, putting her sharp political faculties towardclimate readiness and resilience.
Developing Australia’s plan for climate readiness is not a big stretch from Butler’s typically socially diverse projects which include working toward the prevention of family and domestic violence, the environment and water portfolio and co-sponsoring a bill to introduce marriageequality.
Terri Butler with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese inspecting the devastation along the Brisbane River after the 2022 flood.
“I chose to join the advisory board because CRI’s work is crucial in the face of the challenges that communities are facing because of climate change,” Butler said.
“Universities like Griffith University can be instrumental in climate action because they are trusted and have significant authority and capacity.
“The success of Griffith’s Climate Action Beacon demonstrates that Universities can and should be leaders in relation to climate action.
“Leadership, collaboration and action are all of fundamental importance, right now.”
Terri Butler, keeping domestic violence in public focus, at a Red Rose Bench unveiling.
CRI is developing bold projects like its flagship project Climate Ready Australia 2030, which brings together partners from across society to develop a shared agenda to drive climate action.
Collaboration between peak bodies will work to progress common priorities, facilitate priority projects, enhance national capability, and drive the necessary investment.
CRI projects include working with local, state, and national government to advance climate risk management such as the Queensland Climate Ready Program, and projects that work to progress climate readiness in and with industry and community sectors.
Examples include the creation of a podcast revealing first-hand climate change observations from Indigenous communities on country, and partnering with the aviation sector to progress zero emission aviation and delivery of an Aviation Reimagined webinar series.
Terri Butler after the passing of the Marriage Equality Bill.
Focusing on strategic and coordinated progress toward net-zero emissions and climate readiness, CRI identifies the importance of community resilience, placing social impact high on the agenda with an aim to deliver positive social outcomes through participation, inclusion and equity, building agency through all levels of society.
“I am particularly passionate about the way that taking a development approach to communities here in Australia can enable climate action,” Butler said.
“As a partnership-based social impact initiative, CRI can bring together people and organisations with complementary expertise, interests, and influence, and I hope to contribute to that important work.
“Local communities have specific needs, and their capacity to address those needs can be increased through building community connection and creating social capital.”
Professor Brendan Mackey, Director of the Griffith Climate Action Beacon
Climate Action Beacon Director, Professor Brendan Mackey said the Climate Ready Initiativeisprogressingambitiousclimateaction for Australia, and Butler’s political expertise will be invaluable in building new partnerships which focus on future-fit industries, innovation and quality jobs so Australia’s communities and ecosystems can flourish.
“We are delighted to have a person of Terri Butler’s experience joining our CRI advisory board,” Professor Mackey said.
“Terri’s insights intohowto develop and implement integrated policy and programs across sectors will greatly advance our goal of enabling effective climate action.”
Terri Butler joins the eminent CRI board, sitting alongside Rosemary Addis, Professor Brendan Mackey, Professor John Hewson, Tony McAvoy, Dr Helen Szoke, Leona Murphy and Sophia Hamblin Wang.
Almost one in three voters cast their ballot for minor parties or independent candidates in the 2022 federal election, the highest number in almost 100 years, Australia’s largest and longest-running study on elections has found.
The 2022 Australian Election Study (AES), prepared in partnership with Griffith University and The Australian National University (ANU), found Anthony Albanese was the most popular party leader since Kevin Rudd in 2007.
In contrast, Scott Morrison was found to be the least popular major party leader in the history of the AES, which has been tracking Australians’ political opinions since 1987.
Study co-author Dr Sarah Cameron, from Griffith University’s School of Government and International Relations (GBS), said the conditions for the rise of alternative actors in Australian politics have been brewing for some time.
Study co-author Dr Sarah Cameron (SGIR, GBS)
“Voter disenchantment with the major political parties alone is not enough to see a change in outcomes; there also needs to be a viable alternative for these disenchanted voters to support,” Dr Cameron said.
“The 2022 election combined several factors which supported the success of the so-called Teal independents.
“Voters were dissatisfied with the major parties generally, and the incumbent Coalition government and prime minister in particular.
“The Teals also ran well-funded, well-organised campaigns that were widely covered in the media, and these campaigns tapped into frustrations with the incumbent Coalition government on issues where they were perceived as weak, including climate change, political integrity, and gender equality.
“The medium-term success of the Teals will depend on how much they can create a distinct political identity to carry to the 2025 federal election.”
Study co-author Professor Ian McAllister, from ANU, said the 2022 federal election saw a “large-scale abandonment” of major political parties.
“The vote for the two major parties fell to historic lows in the 2022 election. The key beneficiaries of this seismic shift in voting behaviour were the Greens and independent candidates,” Professor McAllister said.
“While the 2022 election might be heralded as a ‘breakthrough’ for the independents, the conditions for their election have been building over several decades. Voters are now less ‘rusted on’ to the major political parties and becoming more independently minded in their political choices.
“In 1967, 72 per cent of voters said they always voted for the same party. In 2022, this dropped to a record low of 37 per cent.
“This trend has been driven by wider societal changes, such as the huge expansion of higher education, the turnover of generations, the rise of social media, and shifting issue priorities.
“Support for independents and minor parties will only continue to grow.”
The report found most Teal voters were not ‘disaffected Liberals’, but tactical Labor and Greens voters. Less than one in five Teal voters previously voted for the Coalition. And on average, Teal voters are ideologically close to Labor voters – placing themselves just left of centre.
The 2022 AES also shows now Prime Minister Albanese scored 5.3 on a zero to 10 popularity scale among voters. This ranks him as the 10th most popular party leader out of the 26 that have contested elections since 1987 and the eighth most popular election winner out of 13.
“Labor entered the election with a leader, Anthony Albanese, who was more popular than both Scott Morrison, and his Labor predecessor, Bill Shorten,” Dr Cameron said.
“With Anthony Albanese as party leader, Labor attracted more votes based on leadership than in the 2016 and 2019 elections.”
Professor McAllister said: “Anthony Albanese was evaluated more favourably than Scott Morrison in eight of nine leader characteristics, with the biggest differences in perceptions of honesty, trustworthiness and compassion.
“While Albanese scored 5.3 on a scale of 10 when it came to popularity, Scott Morrison became the least popular major party leader in the history of the AES, scoring 3.8. This was down from his score of 5.1 in the 2019 election.”
The 2022 Australian Election Study, which includes a report on the 2022 federal election, as well as Trends in Australian Political Opinion 1987-2022 was officially launched in early December.
Professor AJ Brown, Centre for Governance and Public Policy (CGPP), convened a webinar on 7 December to discuss the new Australian national anti-corruption commission. Drawing on the contributions of CGPP and other Griffith researchers over many years, the webinar examined key elements of the final legislative outcome on this historic reform – the passage of the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act just a week earlier. Against the backdrop of political history and community drivers outlined by Cathy McGowan AO, Griffith experts discussed the translation of Australia’s state-based ‘standing royal commission’ model to the national level for the first time.
Strengths such as the broad scope or definition of corrupt conduct, and new scale of prevention functions, were analysed against final controversies over new limitations – symbolic and actual – on the role of public hearings and guarantees for the political independence of appointments. The discussion provided a rich resource for those seeking to understand and monitor the implementation of these once-in-a-generation reforms.
Speakers:
Professor AJ Brown, Centre for Governance and Public Policy
Cathy McGowan AO,
Gary Sturgess AM
Professor Janet Ransley, Griffith Criminology Institute
Deborah Stokes, Transparency International
For biodiversity to thrive, conservation efforts must be ‘nature- and people-positive’, a recent study has found.
Despite decades of increasing investment in conservation, ‘bending the curve’ of biodiversity decline has not succeeded. Scientists argue that stronger outcomes for biodiversity conservation can be attained if conservation actions are combined with justice measures to tackle the underlying causes of decline.
Published in the journal One Earth, an international team of scientists from the Earth Commission, convened by Future Earth, say that efforts to meet new biodiversity targets and goals for the next three decades risk repeating past failures unless we: 1) focus attention to direct and indirect drivers of decline; 2) address unrealistic objectives and timelines for biodiversity response; and 3) address fundamental inequities of past and current conservation, and share nature’s benefits.
Potential biodiversity recovery curves for business as usual (gray), conservation only (yellow), and integrated scenarios are that combine conservation with reduced pressures on biodiveristy through reduced resourcedemand and production (green). The dashed red curve shows zero net loss of nature from 2020.
“Our research identifies the key drivers of biodiversity decline that need to be addressed, including inequality, increasing per capita consumption of resources, unsustainable technologies, investment and trade patterns, and governance systems that don’t promote care for nature,” said co-authorDr Ben Stewart-Koster, a Senior Research Fellow at theAustralian Rivers Instituteand a Research Scientist for the Earth Commission.
“We applied a new framework of ‘safe and just Earth system boundaries’ that brings together the quantification of nature (intact and semi-intact) with a set of criteria aimed at achieving justice for all humans.”
Professor Johan Rockström, co-chair of the Earth Commission and Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research explains that, “Safe and just Earth system boundaries provide scientific support for the necessity of halting biodiversity loss and conserving nature as a strategy to ensure a stable planet.”
“Staying within those boundaries will improve the chances for a just future for all people.”
Dr Ben Stewart-Koster, a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Rivers Institute and a Research Scientist for the Earth Commission
Lead author and Earth Commissioner David Obura from Coastal Oceans Research Development – Indian Ocean (CORDIO) East Africa said, “As the urgency and challenges in resolving the biodiversity crisis increase, actions to conserve biodiversity must broaden to address root causes and the entire scope of human — nature interactions.”
“We identify ambition and equity shortfalls in dominant conservation paradigms leading up to negotiations of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework in December 2022, [which]… can fundamentally undermine the long-term success for biodiversity conservation.”
Co-author Diana Liverman highlights the importance of transformations that address the drivers of biodiversity decline within a framework of justice that ensures wellbeing for all, including future generations and nature. She stresses the need to reduce pressure on the biosphere by reducing excess consumption and unsustainable trade and investments. “Consumption footprints in richer countries consistently drive biodiversity loss in poorer countries,” she said.
Solutions that avoid trade-offs between human wellbeing and conservation should be a priority. The authors point out that many proposals on conservation emphasize the importance of minimizing drivers of biodiversity loss in order to stem their impacts.
The authors state that whilst decadal targets designed to encourage behaviour change can play an important role in motivating action on difficult issues, if in 2030 targets fail to be met, as occurred in 2020, it could undermine the actions and commitments needed to achieve success in more realistic time frames.
The 22 targets contained in the draft Global Biodiversity Framework cut across most of the areas in which action is needed, so setting realistic targets and outcomes for achievement may be essential to build and maintain the commitment to achieve them.
In applying the framework of safe and just Earth system Boundaries, they identified six sets of actions aligned with the conceptual framework of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which can support the conservation community and society at large to engage with the deeper societal transformations needed for a safe and just future.
Reduce and reverse direct and indirect drivers causing nature’s decline
Halt and reverse biodiversity loss (i.e. ‘bend the curve’ of decline)
Restore/regenerate biodiversity to a net positive state, to a safe buffer above the Earth system boundary
Raise minimum wellbeing to secure each person’s fair share of the global biodiversity commons
Eliminate over-consumption and excesses associated with accumulation of capital
Uphold and respect the rights, responsibilities, and agency of all, in the present and future
“The proposed actions identified in this study are especially important for freshwater ecosystems, which host remarkable biodiversity, including 40% of the world’s fish species and one third of all vertebrate species,” said Professor Stuart Bunn, co-author and a member of the Earth Commission from the Australian Rivers Institute.
“Freshwater systems across the globe are highly impacted by human activities and have experienced species declines that are twice the rate of those on land and in the sea.”
Wendy Broadgate, Global Hub Director (Sweden) for Future Earth and Executive Director of the Earth Commission said, “The stakes are higher than ever. We are facing unprecedented extinction rates. A healthy biosphere is essential to support life and healthy societies. The goals for the next decade of biodiversity conservation need to consider a just future for all communities – present and future – within Earth system boundaries.”
This new research comes ahead of an associated Earth Commission report due out in early 2023 that will outline a range of ‘Earth System Boundaries’ (ESBs) to safeguard a stable and resilient planet and underpin the setting of science-based targets for businesses, cities, and governments.
The Earth Commission is the scientific cornerstone of the Global Commons Alliance.
Is using the threat of the judgement of Santa Claus for good behaviour year-round really a healthy and effective way to teach children how to display appropriate and socially acceptable behaviour?
He visits children on one night in December and distributes presents and joy in a mystical, logistical feat with thanks to his crew of magical reindeer, or just by himself.
Children who are earmarked by Santa as ‘good boys’ and girls’ are rewarded for a year of good behaviour with whatever they asked for (or at least a version of it), and those who are bad will apparently receive something a lot less exciting.
Positive behaviour and rewards
Let’s start with the adage “if you’re good, Santa will bring you a present”. Research suggests that physical rewards promised far in advance (i.e., future Christmas presents) are not actually linked with positive behaviour or performance and instead have the potential to reduce children’s own internal motivation to do something. In one study, when children were given a physical reward for sharing in the past, they were less likely to share in the future compared to children who were given verbal praise of sharing or given no acknowledgement of the sharing at all. What does this mean? Promising kids Christmas presents if they’re good doesn’t often lead to them actually being “good” and it might actually backfire. They then might expect presents in order to continue behaving well, which is a little trickier to do once Christmas has passed.
Okay, so I’ve told you what you can’t do, and now you’re probably pretty close to yelling at me “BUT WHAT CAN I DO?” So, here’s what you can do to improve your child’s behaviour this festive season (and all year round). You can use natural or logical consequences. These are consequences related to the behaviour you don’t want your children engaging in and they’re much easier for little brains to understand. If they are throwing a toy at their sibling after you have asked them to stop, you remove the toy. The consequence of throwing a toy is no longer having said toy. This way the punishment is linked closely in time with the misbehaviour, rather than the threat of losing a hypothetical Christmas present in a month’s time. So, hang up that phone call to Santa and focus on applying a related consequence to the misbehaviour. I know it sometimes takes a thinking capacity we don’t have at 6pm on the final stretch before bedtime after a toddler has been screaming in our ear for 3 hours, but if you can, it’s significantly more effective in the long run!
You can also focus on their positive behaviour. By pointing out when they are engaging in behaviours you do want to see and praising them for you, you are reinforcing that this is something they should do and you are associating that behaviour with positive attention and praise in their little minds. That connection is important for them but also for you. If you are focusing more on their positive behaviour, you’re more likely to see your child in a positive light and more likely to be patient during more challenging behaviour (this is the magic of gratitude!)
Of course, this has very little to do with Santa and more to do with positive behaviour change, so let’s drill back into Santa to talk about some of the positives Santa affords our children. Children are more likely to behave more generously after thinking about Santa as Santa and Christmas more broadly embody the spirit of giving.
Is Santa ‘real’?
What about finding out that Santa doesn’t exist? Children generally discover Santa is not real (most report they just ‘figured it out’ around 6-8 years old). In one study, most children reported positive reactions to finding out with very minimal distress. Parents said they were much more upset though, with 40% reporting they were sad that their children no longer believe. So, if you are currently torn between engaging in the Santa myth or not, we have some evidence to say that, if done right, the Santa myth can increase generosity and doesn’t harm most kids when they find out.
Okay, now I’ve told you all the things you should and shouldn’t do, but Christmas time can be tense with small (or big) children running underfoot while you just try to bring about a little Christmas cheer. The festive season is beautiful chaos but it leads to more meltdowns from your little ones and unsurprisingly more meltdowns from you too. Fear not, it you lose it and yell, or threaten, or punish in a way that doesn’t sit right with you, there’s some brand-new research that’s here to help you out. Researchers have found that apologising to your children is associated with more prosocial, and less internalising (like anxiety and depression), behaviours in children. So go ahead and apologise for losing your cool and work with your child to figure out how you can both do better.
And remember, despite the screaming, the meltdowns, the wrapping paper everywhere, to look for the beauty in the chaos and the joy in the mayhem.
Author
Kristyn Sommer is a Griffith University Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Prior to joining Griffith University, Kristyn completed her PhD at the University of Queensland (2015-2019) and was a lecturer in Developmental Psychology (2020).
Kristyn explores early cognitive development and has a keen interest in how children learn from technologies, specifically focusing on social robots. Kristyn is a strong advocate of open science and transparent research practices.
Outside of her research, Kristyn is an avid science communicator and engages in many public science activities. Kristyn runs a successful collection of social media platforms where she translates the science of child development into 1 to 3 minute videos for parents of young children.
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Associate Professor Matthew Hole
Kristyn Sommer