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It’s one year since the failed referendum to enshrine a First Nations Voice to Parliament in the Australian Constitution.

The vote represents a moment of deep sadness and frustration for many First Nations people for the lost opportunity to move towards meaningful change in our lives, communities and for our futures. Many elders and old people will likely not live to see change.

I was one of the many people in the Uluru Dialogue at UNSW who worked last year across the country educating on and advocating for the constitutional change. I spoke to communities across New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT, from Boorowa to Melbourne.

I not only saw the campaign first-hand, I also have read every think piece imaginable in the 12 months since about why the referendum failed.

A ceaseless blame game

From the expected pieces blaming the usual suspects (Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, Indigenous peoples, the Yes campaign, the No campaign and the media), there were also some weirder supposed culprits.

Some blamed “wokeness”, Donald Trump and dark money, secret elites, identity politics, and all manner of culture war issues.

To my mind, no single thing doomed the Voice. It was a mix of a lot of the above.

Albanese treating the referendum like an election campaign but without the usual level of resourcing and advocacy. The Coalition’s outright opposition to the idea (despite previous indications of support). The media’s failure to grapple with Indigenous issues and dogmatic insistence on giving prominence to “both sides” of the debate.

The YES23 organisation was also disorganised from the start. Yes campaigners were forced onto the back foot daily by relentless misinformation, seemingly deliberate, from the No campaign.

Read more:
Why did the Voice referendum fail? We crunched the data and found 6 reasons

This built on a distinct lack of civic education among most Australians.

It was further amplified by the No campaign’s very successful “If you don’t know, vote no” slogan – the idea being that their untruths warranted little scrutiny.

That’s on top of a large undercurrent of racism that was never properly called out, and which has never been properly addressed.

Campaigns like this are something we as a nation haven’t come to terms with. We’ve seen in the United States how effective misinformation can be at confusing people, creating false senses of reality and distorting public perception.

Even if Australians supported the ideas behind the Voice in the abstract, neither they nor the media were prepared for the level of dishonesty and bad dealing from the No campaign. It was never a fair fight.

No, no, and no again

The Voice to Parliament represented a consensus plea from Indigenous communities for systemic reform. The idea was that the structure of the Australian political system was, either by design or outcome, causing many of the social and economic issues that we face, and therefore a structural solution was needed.

The No campaign claimed after the referendum that the result was a rejection of this idea of a Voice to Parliament as a solution to issues in Indigenous communities or among Indigenous peoples more generally, “because it wasn’t going to fix the things that needed to be fixed”.

Prominent No campaigner Warren Mundine even called the referendum the “most divisive, most racially charged attack on Australia I’ve ever seen”.

“Australia has voted no to the Voice of division”, was the common refrain from people like Pauline Hanson and other No campaigners. Australians “wanted practical solutions” to Indigenous issues, not a body without any detail that wouldn’t hear “real communities”.

I am not bringing up these issues again to relitigate the issues of the referendum. Instead, I want to ask a very important question: the Voice to Parliament was designed to address our systemic disadvantage, so what solutions to these serious structural issues have any of the No campaigners offered in the past 12 months?

Read more:
A royal commission won’t help the abuse of Aboriginal kids. Indigenous-led solutions will

We have seen some policies from the Coalition. Plans to reduce “fly in, fly out” workers in remote communities. Reforming land rights and native title. A royal commission into child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities. Less need for programs with “a specific Indigenous focus” in urban areas, where most First Nations people live.

Some of these are just a rehash of failed Coalition policies of the past, as many others have mentioned. Some appear to have come personally from Senator Jacinta Price and are seemingly not backed by experts (or many people in Indigenous communities). Others appear to be tied directly into conservative political talking points, rather than really addressing Indigenous need.

The Coalition also abandoned its plan for an alternative second referendum almost immediately after the failed vote.

The Coalition and other leading No campaigners clearly have no plans to address the structural issues facing our peoples. They’re only offering more of the regular policy tinkering and seesawing we have seen far too often before.

Abandoning the cause

The same is true of the government. I have already written for this masthead about the government’s abject failures at implementing the Closing the Gap targets and its lack of meaningful consultation.

The government’s current attempts at Indigenous policy remain exercises in seeking consent over genuine consultation. Its proposed “economic empowerment” agenda for First Nations peoples is a perfect example.

Aside from the lack of codesign and meaningful engagement, such policies have been bandied about for the better part of two decades and still have not substantively moved the dial.

The pursuit of market-based wealth for some privileged few First Nations peoples and communities, under the guise of closing the gap, as well as focusing on the overexaggerated benefits of renewable energy as a driver of Indigenous economic power, is not “economic development” for all mobs.

The policy focus was also announced as Albanese abandoned his commitment to a Makaratta Commission – the Treaty and Truth components that were meant to follow the Voice to Parliament.

These ideas fall into the same tired policy stereotypes of throwing money at some of the usual organisations and peoples who have long benefited, and claiming this solves the systemic problems we face. The problem isn’t money, it’s the very rules of the game.

Charting a way forward

Research following the referendum shows that 87% of Australians think First Nations peoples should be able to decide for ourselves about our way of life. Moreover, 64% think the disadvantages faced by our communities warrant extra government attention, and 68% believe this disadvantage comes from “past race-based policies”.

Only 35% believe Indigenous peoples are now treated equally to other Australians, and only 37% believe injustices faced by our community are “all in the past”.

The Albanese government’s policy focus has been on economic empowerment, not structural reform.
Mick Tsikas/AAP

This clearly shows a level of recognition by the Australian people that something needs to be done about Indigenous policy and the structural issues in this country.

According to the same data, 87% of Australians agree it is “important for First Nations peoples to have a voice/say in matters that affect them”. This jumps to 98.5% among Yes voters, but also is true of 76% of No voters.

This suggests that Australian people see the problem and can identify the structural issues.

The real work, then, is on civics education, getting people to understand that the structural issues they can see need structural change; but also making them more aware of the effects of misinformation. It’s not right that proposals that should get the support of the Australian people can be derailed the way this was.

But what also isn’t right is the current abdication of Indigenous policy by both major parties and their abandonment of any attempt to remedy structural issues. Following the referendum, the major parties have given up.

To paraphrase myself from February’s Closing the Gap announcement: the next time you run into an MP, ask them what their plan for Indigenous people is. Ask them not just about closing the gap, but to fix the structural issues that so clearly disadvantage our people.

That’s the question no one wants to answer, but it’s what we need to do if we are to move on from the 2023 referendum in a positive direction. Läs mer…

Nationwide polls are often of limited relevance, considering the unique structure of the US electoral system. To gain a better understanding of the upcoming presidential election, we need to focus on surveys conducted in the pivotal battlegrounds – the so-called swing states. After the missteps in previous elections, it’s hard to place too much confidence in these polls, as many rely on unrepresentative samples.

As we head toward the 2024 US presidential election, media large and small frequently fall into the trap of “horse race” journalism. Policy questions are rarely treated in depth, and the emphasis is often on the latest polls. One week they announce Kamala Harris as moving ahead, and the next, Donald Trump still has an edge. But how reliable are these polls?

In the United States, rather than being elected by direct popular vote, the president is chosen indirectly through the Electoral College, an institution inscribed in the country’s constitution. Each state is assigned a number of electors based in part on its population, but also on its number of senators. As a result, smaller states get a larger voice than their population would indicate.

One of the implications is that national election polls can be deceiving. In most states with established partisan majorities, the outcomes are predictable due to the winner-takes-all approach. This system awards all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who wins the popular vote in that state (with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, which use a proportional system). As a result, the most relevant polls are those conducted in “swing states”, where neither party holds a consistent advantage.

According to recent analyses, around ten states are expected to be in play for 2024. Based on recent trends, there are seven swing states to watch: Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. In the 2016 and 2020 elections, victory margins in these states were razor-thin, often less than 1%.

With both Harris and Trump within striking distance of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency, these swing states, with a combined 91 votes, will determine the outcome.

Map published on 18 August 2024 by CNN. The number of electors for each state are show. The colors indicate the states that appear to be strongly (dark blue) or probably (light blue) leaning toward Kamala Harris, and strongly (red) or probably (pink) leaning toward Donald Trump. In yellow are the seven pivotal states where victory is likely to come down to a small number of votes. Click to zoom.

The 2016 and 2020 polling failures: flukes or systemic issues?

When the margins are so tight in these key states, accurately measuring voter intentions is an enormous challenge. In 2016, national polls correctly predicted Hillary Clinton’s popular-vote win – she had nearly 3 million more than Trump. However, they failed to foresee Trump’s Electorial College victories in critical states, which ultimately put him over the top.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) pointed out several reasons for these errors, including underrepresentation of Republican voters, over-representation of college-educated voters (who tend to lean Democratic), and an underestimation of undecided voters who eventually voted for Trump or third-party candidates.

Despite efforts to fix these problems, other biases showed up in 2020. While graduate voters were not over-represented and undecideds were evenly split between Biden and Trump, the Covid-19 pandemic had made the pollsters’ task more complicated. AAPOR points out that the states with a higher proportion of Covid-19 cases were the ones with the highest polling errors. As a result, pollsters underestimated Trump’s vote share in key swing states and also overestimated Biden’s national lead, making the 2020 polls the least accurate in 40 years.

Proportion of polling errors in presidential elections since 1936. Click to zoom.
Pew Reseach Center

Despite these errors, Biden still triumphed, winning 4 percent more of the popular vote and taking home 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. Biden’s victories in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin make all the difference.

Polling errors and public distrust

Errors of this magnitude naturally increase the public’s scepticism of polling, especially among Republicans, who are already wary of establishment institutions. Contrary to initial assumptions, Trump voters didn’t hesitate to express their preferences in 2016 and 2020. However, they were less likely to participate in polls due in part to their distrust of mainstream institutions. As a result, working-class white voters – and their opinions – were underrepresented in many polls.

Pollsters also face technical challenges. Getting a respondent on the phone now requires calling hundreds of people, thanks to caller ID and call screening. Polls with smaller samples (fewer than 1,000 respondents) are less reliable. To deal with these hurdles, many pollsters are now using a mix of methods, including e-mail, online surveys, and robocalls.

Though cheaper, online surveys often draw voluntary participants who are compensated, which leads to issues of accuracy and representation. This growing reliance on online polling has contributed to a doubling of polling companies from 2000 to 2022, according to Pew Research Center.

Margin of error and identifying “likely” voters

The margin of error is a critical component of polling that is often misunderstood by the public and media. It typically falls between 3 and 4 percentage points, but for smaller demographic groups (for example, young people, white men, or Hispanics), it can be even higher. Media headlines, however, frequently imply a candidate is leading, even when the difference is within the margin of error. University of California, Berkeley researchers suggest that to ensure 95% accuracy, the margin of error should be closer to 6%.

However, the media sometimes amplify results, particularly in headlines, by implying that a candidate is ahead, even when the difference is within the margin of error. Moreover, researchers at the University of Berkeley have shown that to guarantee 95% accuracy, this margin should be increased to at least 6%. This means a candidate projected to receive 54% of the vote is likely, in reality, to secure anywhere between 48% and 60%, reflecting an actual margin of error of 12 percentage points.

Another significant challenge for pollsters is identifying likely voters. Only around two-thirds of citizens eligible to vote actually go to the polls. In 2016, turnout on the Democratic side was overestimated, giving the false impression that Clinton was a lock for victory. This likely caused some of her supporters to stay home, while Trump’s base showed up in force when polls suggested he was behind. Accurately predicting who will turn out to vote is crucial to polling accuracy.

Lessons from the 2022 midterms: A glimmer of hope for 2024?

Polling showed notable improvements during the 2022 midterm elections, with the results being the most accurate since 1998. Importantly, there was no significant bias toward either party. However, midterm elections operate differently than presidential elections, and the dynamics for 2024 may be very different. That said, many polling institutions have adapted since 2016: as of 2022, 61% of polling firms had changed their methods, such as refining sampling techniques and improving question wording. More than a third have changed their methods after 2020.

While these changes are positive, challenges remain, especially in predicting turnout and combating low response rates.

What good are polls, then?

At the end of the day, election polls offer snapshots – often imprecise – and can only provide general trends. Polling methods vary across firms, introducing biases that make it difficult to compare results.

Survey aggregators offer averages that might be more reliable than individual polls, but they still come with a degree of uncertainty. This is true for FiveThirtyEight, the well-known website founded by statistics guru Nate Silver. After ABC took over in 2023, Silver left, taking his forecasting model with him to his new platform, Silver Bulletin, which continues to attract significant media attention.

With the unpredictability of polls, political betting markets have become popular as polling alternatives. Platforms like Polymarket, which recently hired Silver, have multiplied rapidly. Some people, like Elon Musk, argue that markets provide better forecasts than traditional polls, though this claim is unproven. There are also concerns that these markets could be manipulated to sway public opinion.

While opinion polls aren’t the best tools for predicting elections – as this could be one of the closest in recent history – their value lies in gauging public opinion on key issues. However, even in this role, polls can still be biased, often influenced by how questions are phrased.

For example, in 2019 USA Today ran the headline “Poll: Half of Americans say Trump is victim of a ‘witch hunt’ as trust in Mueller erodes”. This was in reference to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The question asked by the poll was:

“President Trump has called the special counsel’s investigation a ‘witch hunt’ and said he has been investigated more than previous presidents for political reasons. Do you agree?”

The problem with this wording is that it combined two different ideas: whether the investigation was a “witch hunt” and whether Trump had been unfairly targeted for political reasons. On top of that, the question lacked neutrality, presenting only his perspective.

Naturally, Trump used the result to his advantage, even though other polls from sources such as The Washington Post, CBS News, and NPR-PBS told a different story.

To use polling data wisely during this election, it’s crucial to recognize these limitations and pay attention to the fine print – details like the sample size, polling date, margin of error, and methodology. Additionally, consider the poll’s sponsors, who may only release results that align with their particular agenda.

Ultimately, the best way to interpret polling data is with caution, focusing on general trends rather than any single poll. And always remember, election outcomes can be full of surprises. Läs mer…

The lives of people and parrots have been entwined for thousands of years. These colourful, charismatic birds are kept as pets all over the world for companionship and entertainment.

However, today, nearly one-third of the 400 parrot species globally face the threat of extinction. Among them is the endangered African grey parrot. This bird was commonly found in many parts of west and central Africa, but numbers in the wild have collapsed. For instance, in Ghana, its population has dropped by 90% to 99% since the early 1990s.

Read more:
Don’t give up on orange-bellied parrots yet, there’s still hope

In recent years, large commercial farms have sprung up, producing increasing volumes of parrots for sale as pets.

South Africa is now the world’s leading exporter of parrots – the country has exported over a million parrots from more than 120 species since 2020, primarily to countries in the Middle East and South Asia.

Yet, despite the industry’s rapid growth, there are concerns over the effectiveness of legislation to manage its expansion.

As researchers who have spent decades studying wildlife trade and its impact on parrots, we conducted a critical review of the existing literature to evaluate how parrot farming affects the efforts to conserve wild parrots.

Our research uncovered the ways in which parrot farming can affect conservation efforts. We propose ways forward for preventing illegal and unsustainable trade in parrots.

What is commercial parrot farming?

Critically endangered citron-crested cockatoos,
World Animal Protection

Industrial parrot farms can house thousands of parrots in rows of cages for sale to a mass export market. Many, like budgerigars and cockatiels, are common. But threatened species like grey parrots, military macaws, and yellow-crested cockatoos, are also being bred and sold.

Those in favour of commercial captive breeding argue that breeding parrots to sell can relieve pressure on wild populations. Another argument is that breeding parrots for sale benefits local economies. However, the situation is not as simple as it seems.

Our research

Africa’s black-cheeked lovebird.
Vronja Photon/Getty Images

We reviewed all available scientific papers, non-governmental organisation reports and policy documents.

We focused on 16 threatened parrot species that are heavily traded or which have declined because they were unsustainably traded. Two of these species – the grey parrot and black-cheeked lovebird – come from Africa.

We used five criteria to uncover whether parrot farming could be applied as a successful conservation tool.

Preference: Captive-bred parrots must be a suitable substitute for wild-caught ones. If they are not, consumer demand will still create a market for wild parrots.

Supply: Breeding operations must meet consumer demand without stimulating illegal trade. It’s important to fully understand market trends to avoid accidentally increasing pressure on wild populations.

Cost: Captive-bred parrots must be more affordable than those sourced from the wild. If wild birds are cheaper, people may continue to purchase them illegally.

Restocking: Breeding operations must maintain themselves without needing to take more parrots from the wild. They must also be able to successfully breed parrots at a rate that meets consumer demand.

Parrot laundering: Regulatory systems must effectively prevent the illegal trade of wild parrots disguised as captive-bred ones. Effective law enforcement is needed to ensure that legal trade does not act as a cover for criminal activity.

Knowledge gaps

There is a lack of information about how many threatened parrots are successfully bred in captivity around the world, and how demand for these birds as pets is evolving.

We also need a better understanding of how trade in one species can stimulate demand for others. People may start by buying smaller, cheaper parrots, and as their interest develops look to “upgrade” to rarer species.

We also need to know more about whether and how parrot farms can stay financially profitable even after strict measures are put in place to stop illegal activities (such as selling wild caught parrots as captive bred stock).

Associated risks

Many countries across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Oceania are trying to make money by farming threatened parrot species. If rules are relaxed for some more common parrots, it might lead to more demand for rarer species that are already close to extinction.

For example, recent research shows that entrepreneurs in Singapore and the Philippines farm highly endangered parrots like yellow-crested cockatoos, Philippine cockatoos and red-and-blue lories.

China, which was once a major exporter of parrots, is also moving towards loosening laws on the farming of wildlife, including threatened parrots.

While our research focused on the potential conservation impacts, parrot farming can raise animal welfare concerns, spread diseases, and introduce invasive species to areas, which may affect agriculture and human health.

Is there a better way?

Regulating parrot farming is a complex issue that requires very careful and informed consideration to avoid any negative impact on some of the world’s most threatened species.

There are other effective approaches that don’t carry the same risks associated with large-scale commercial captive breeding.

Consumer demand for parrots as pets can be reduced. Law enforcement to combat illegal trade can be strengthened. For communities involved in the parrot trade, alternative livelihoods can be developed and supported.

By combining these approaches, we can still make meaningful progress in protecting threatened parrot species and ensuring their survival in the wild.

This matters because without comprehensive data and evidence, we risk making policy decisions that could unintentionally harm threatened parrot species, and enable the illegal market to thrive.

The authors extend their thanks to Alisa Davies and Angie Elwin for their collaboration on this research and informative insights on this article. Läs mer…

Alex Salmond, possibly one of the most famous Scottish politicians of recent decades, and certainly the best-known face of the Scottish National Party (SNP), has died at the age of 69.

The former first minister of Scotland, a long-standing member of the Westminster parliament and a member of the Scottish parliament, he led the SNP from a small, fringe party within Westminster to become the ruling party of the Scottish government. He was the first Scottish nationalist first minister of Scotland, a post he would hold from 2007 to 2014.

Salmond was born, raised and educated in Scotland. It was while he was a student at St Andrews University that he joined the university branch of the Federation of Student Nationalists in December 1973. As one of only two fully paid-up members of the SNP at the university, he became the branch president.

After graduation, and a couple of years as a civil servant, Salmond moved to the Royal Bank of Scotland and became an economics expert, with a focus on oil. Yet, throughout this career he remained an active and committed member of the SNP.

Leftwing in his views, he was part of the 79 Group, a small faction of the SNP that was very critical of the then leadership, and which advocated a more leftwing stance for the party as a whole. He, along with others, was briefly expelled from the SNP in 1982, but was allowed back in a month later.

By 1985, Salmon was a senior figure in the SNP. His political career truly began in 1987, when he defeated the incumbent Conservative in Banff and Buchan in 1987 to become the consituency’s Westminster MP. He would win re-election four times, and then be elected to Holyrood, all from the north-east of Scotland, for the next three decades.

SNP leadership and independence referendum

Salmond first became leader of the SNP in 1990, and he showed his significant skills as a political strategist on the UK-wide stage. From here, he would become a very visible and recognisable face for the SNP, and for Scotland.

It would be the advent of devolution in 1997, and the creation of the Scottish parliament in 1999 that would change the face of Scottish politics and allow Salmond to reach new heights. But there were many bumps along the way. Just a year into the life of the brand new parliament, Salmond suddenly stood down as SNP leader. There were rumours of fallouts with other leading figures.

Salmond would, however, return as leader in 2004, replacing John Swinney (currently the first minister) after a poor showing for the SNP in Scottish parliament elections. As he was an MP and not an MSP at the time, the party at Holyrood was led by Nicola Sturgeon, at the time a longtime ally.

Not only did he return as an MSP, but the SNP became the largest party in the Scottish parliament by one seat in 2007. It formed a minority government with Salmond as first minister and Sturgeon as his deputy.

Salmond pictured with John Swinney, Nicola Sturgeon and Mike Russell in 1999.
Alamy/PA

Another milestone was reached in 2011, when Salmond would lead the SNP in winning a majority within the Scottish parliament, a task everyone thought impossible given the voting system was, arguably, specifically designed to avoid such outcomes. This win led Salmond to begin negotiations with the UK government of David Cameron to hold a referendum on Scottish independence.

In perhaps one of Salmond’s most effective moments, he came away with an agreement that allowed him many of his specific objectives – a single question on the ballot and a long lead in, of two years, before the referendum itself. Only ten years after he had returned as leader, he led the SNP to a referendum outcome where 45% of voters said yes to independence, a much larger figure than many thought possible.

However, this was still a loss, and Salmond resigned as party leader the next day. He then returned to Westminster in 2015 but lost his seat in 2017.

Further problems arose for Salmond in 2018, when allegations of sexual assault were made, and he resigned from the SNP after being a member for 45 years. Despite being cleared at a trial in 2020 of 14 charges, his relationship with the SNP, and his personal relationships with Sturgeon and other leading SNP figures, were badly damaged.

He directly blamed Sturgeon and her husband, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, for the way in which he was treated. He took the Scottish government to court over the handling of the accusations and won a substantial payout of half a million pounds.

Establishing a new party

Whether it was because of his treatment by the SNP, his disquiet at what he saw as the wrong priorities, or the inability for him to find a role after leaving as first minister, Salmond decided to establish a new political party, Alba, in 2021, only three years after leaving the SNP.

After being on the national, and international, stage for several decades, Salmond remained committed to the political fight for Scottish independence. There were several defections from the SNP – two MPs, one MSP, and a few local councillors – but the party has never won an elected seat at any level.

Salmond also presented a television show on Russian state broadcaster RT, a decision unpopular with many in the SNP. He also wrote as a tipster on horse racing for newspapers for many years.

Salmond speaking to Yes supporters in 2014.
EPA

There can be little doubt that Salmond’s professional and personal lives were characterised by ups and downs. Yet the fact remains that he led the SNP to many victories, and saw them challenge the status quo and the British state in a manner unthinkable when he first became an SNP MP.

Those present during the last few days of the 2014 referendum will remember the distinct feeling that maybe, just maybe, the SNP could pull off a win, and an independent Scotland – a dream he shared with millions of others – could be a possibility.

Salmond reshaped the SNP, he reshaped the political landscape of Scotland, and his legacy cannot be overstated. Läs mer…

Are you a news avoider? Do you turn off the six o’clock TV news, scroll past headlines, skip radio bulletins – or just ignore news entirely?

If you do some or all of these things, you are not alone. A new survey shows New Zealand has some of the highest rates of news avoidance in the world.

With news media already struggling with declining revenues and audiences, this adds to the immense challenges the sector faces in a competitive and politically polarised environment.

Previous research has found news avoidance is increasing around the world. But New Zealanders have also shown something of a love-hate relationship with the news: avoidance rates are high, but so too is general interest in the news. At the same time, trust in the media has been steadily declining.

To make sense of this, we surveyed 1,204 people in New Zealand in February 2023. We asked about news avoidance and the motivation for it, and recorded demographic details such as age, gender and political belief.

We found 60% of survey participants reported they sometimes, often, or almost always avoid the news. This combined total is higher than any other national figure reported in other studies, with Greece and Bulgaria the next highest at 57%.

Women reported higher rates of news avoidance than men. This could be due to a legacy of unequal access to the news, and a perceived lack of diverse voices in New Zealand’s news production, causing some to feel the news just isn’t for them.

We also found people with far-left or far-right political beliefs were more likely to avoid the news than those with centrist views. Those nearer the ends of the political spectrum are less likely to find their views represented in major news outlets and therefore seek alternative news sources that support their worldview.

Avoiding depressing and untrustworthy news

The major reason given for news avoidance is the negative effect news has on mood (32.7%).

Most immediately, New Zealand had been hit by severe floods in Auckland and Cyclone Gabrielle in the North Island only a month before our survey. But more generally, there has been increased concern about the impact of news consumption on personal wellbeing since the pandemic.

Similarly, many New Zealanders are experiencing news fatigue, with nearly 20% of respondents saying they were worn out by the sheer quantity of news these days.

The second most popular reason given was a perception the news was untrustworthy or biased (30.1%). People with right-wing political beliefs were more likely to cite this.

This suggests the decline in trust might be more about right-wing audiences perceiving a left-wing bias in the media, rather than a general distrust of New Zealand media overall.

Roughly a quarter of respondents said the news is too sensationalist (25.3%). Ironically, the use of clickbait and alarming headlines to engage audiences may be driving them away in the competitive attention economy.

In contrast, younger people (18–24) were more likely to cite not having enough time as a reason for avoiding the news.

Does news avoidance matter?

Our high rates of news avoidance say several things about audiences. On one hand, skipping the news occasionally can help manage stress and keep people interested in the long run.

This might explain why New Zealanders show high rates of both news avoidance and interest in the news: avoiding the news some of the time might help people manage their overall ability to engage and care.

Furthermore, despite high news avoidance rates, voter turnout at the 2023 general election was 78%. News avoidance may not affect civic participation.

However, we also found New Zealanders have high rates of very low or no news consumption at all. Just over 13% of participants reported they avoid the news “almost always”, more than in any other survey internationally.

Instead of consuming traditional news, many are likely turning to YouTube, social media and blogs, which often lack the more rigorous journalistic standards applied by mainstream media.

Scapegoating the news media

It might be easy to conclude New Zealand’s high rates of news avoidance are an implicit criticism of the media themselves. But this is to overlook the nature of their work and the immense challenges they face.

Holding governments to account and covering crises or divisive issues can be an unpopular and thankless task. Blaming the messenger is perhaps an understandable response.

But we also expect the news media to compete with information giants such as Facebook and Google, which do not employ journalists or recognise any real responsibility in disseminating news.

This feeds a commercial environment where traditional media must compete for attention and revenue against platforms that operate without the same ethical and professional standards.

Our findings also highlight the difficulty of satisfying an increasingly polarised news audience. With diverse groups perceiving bias and untrustworthiness differently, it’s nearly impossible to keep everyone happy.

With Google recently threatening to remove local news from its search engine due to its opposition to the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill (which would require digital platforms to pay for news content), these issues are not going away soon.

Rather than scapegoat the media for high news avoidance rates, we see our survey results as part of a broader argument for supporting and strengthening what is an essential service in a functioning democracy. Läs mer…

Atmospheric rivers – those long, narrow bands of water vapor in the sky that bring heavy rain and storms to the U.S. West Coast and many other regions – are shifting toward higher latitudes, and that’s changing weather patterns around the world.

The shift is worsening droughts in some regions, intensifying flooding in others, and putting water resources that many communities rely on at risk. When atmospheric rivers reach far northward into the Arctic, they can also melt sea ice, affecting the global climate.

In a new study published in Science Advances, University of California, Santa Barbara, climate scientist Qinghua Ding and I show that atmospheric rivers have shifted about 6 to 10 degrees toward the two poles over the past four decades.

Atmospheric rivers on the move

Atmospheric rivers aren’t just a U.S West Coast thing. They form in many parts of the world and provide over half of the mean annual runoff in these regions, including the U.S. Southeast coasts and West Coast, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, northern Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom and south-central Chile.

California relies on atmospheric rivers for up to 50% of its yearly rainfall. A series of winter atmospheric rivers there can bring enough rain and snow to end a drought, as parts of the region saw in 2023.

Atmospheric rivers occur all over the world, as this animation of global satellite data from February 2017 shows. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

While atmospheric rivers share a similar origin – moisture supply from the tropics – atmospheric instability of the jet stream allows them to curve poleward in different ways. No two atmospheric rivers are exactly alike.

What particularly interests climate scientists, including us, is the collective behavior of atmospheric rivers. Atmospheric rivers are commonly seen in the extratropics, a region between the latitudes of 30 and 50 degrees in both hemispheres that includes most of the continental U.S., southern Australia and Chile.

Our study shows that atmospheric rivers have been shifting poleward over the past four decades. In both hemispheres, activity has increased along 50 degrees north and 50 degrees south, while it has decreased along 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south since 1979. In North America, that means more atmospheric rivers drenching British Columbia and Alaska.

A global chain reaction

One main reason for this shift is changes in sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific. Since 2000, waters in the eastern tropical Pacific have had a cooling tendency, which affects atmospheric circulation worldwide. This cooling, often associated with La Niña conditions, pushes atmospheric rivers toward the poles.

The poleward movement of atmospheric rivers can be explained as a chain of interconnected processes.

During La Niña conditions, when sea surface temperatures cool in the eastern tropical Pacific, the Walker circulation – giant loops of air that affect precipitation as they rise and fall over different parts of the tropics – strengthens over the western Pacific. This stronger circulation causes the tropical rainfall belt to expand. The expanded tropical rainfall, combined with changes in atmospheric eddy patterns, results in high-pressure anomalies and wind patterns that steer atmospheric rivers farther poleward.

La Niña, with cooler water in the eastern Pacific, fades, and El Niño, with warmer water, starts to form in the tropical Pacific Ocean in 2023.
NOAA Climate.gov

Conversely, during El Niño conditions, with warmer sea surface temperatures, the mechanism operates in the opposite direction, shifting atmospheric rivers so they don’t travel as far from the equator.

The shifts raise important questions about how climate models predict future changes in atmospheric rivers. Current models might underestimate natural variability, such as changes in the tropical Pacific, which can significantly affect atmospheric rivers. Understanding this connection can help forecasters make better predictions about future rainfall patterns and water availability.

Why does this poleward shift matter?

A shift in atmospheric rivers can have big effects on local climates.

In the subtropics, where atmospheric rivers are becoming less common, the result could be longer droughts and less water. Many areas, such as California and southern Brazil, depend on atmospheric rivers for rainfall to fill reservoirs and support farming. Without this moisture, these areas could face more water shortages, putting stress on communities, farms and ecosystems.

In higher latitudes, atmospheric rivers moving poleward could lead to more extreme rainfall, flooding and landslides in places such as the U.S. Pacific Northwest, Europe, and even in polar regions.

A satellite image on Feb. 20, 2017, shows an atmospheric river stretching from Hawaii to California, where it brought drenching rain.
NASA/Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen

In the Arctic, more atmospheric rivers could speed up sea ice melting, adding to global warming and affecting animals that rely on the ice. An earlier study I was involved in found that the trend in summertime atmospheric river activity may contribute 36% of the increasing trend in summer moisture over the entire Arctic since 1979.

What it means for the future

So far, the shifts we have seen still mainly reflect changes due to natural processes, but human-induced global warming also plays a role. Global warming is expected to increase the overall frequency and intensity of atmospheric rivers because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture.

How that might change as the planet continues to warm is less clear. Predicting future changes remains uncertain due largely to the difficulty in predicting the natural swings between El Niño and La Niña, which play an important role in atmospheric river shifts.

As the world gets warmer, atmospheric rivers – and the critical rains they bring – will keep changing course. We need to understand and adapt to these changes so communities can keep thriving in a changing climate. Läs mer…

The human mind may find it difficult to conceptualize: a cosmic cloud so colossal it surrounds the Sun and eight planets as it extends trillions of miles into deep space.

The spherical shell known as the Oort Cloud is, for all practical purposes, invisible. Its constituent particles are spread so thinly, and so far from the light of any star, including the Sun, that astronomers simply cannot see the cloud, even though it envelops us like a blanket.

It is also theoretical. Astronomers infer the Oort Cloud is there because it’s the only logical explanation for the arrival of a certain class of comets that sporadically visit our solar system. The cloud, it turns out, is basically a gigantic reservoir that may hold billions of icy celestial bodies.

Two of those bodies will pass by Earth in the days leading up to Halloween. Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, also known as Comet C/2023 A3, will be at its brightest, and likely visible to the naked eye, for a week or two after Oct. 12, the day it’s closest to Earth – just look to the western sky shortly after sunset. As the days pass, the comet will get fainter and move to a higher part of the sky.

A view of comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS from the International Space Station.

The second comet, C/2024 S1 (ATLAS), just discovered on Sept. 27, should be visible around the end of October. The comet will pass closest to Earth on Oct. 24 – look low in the eastern sky just before sunrise. Then, after swinging around the Sun, the comet may reappear in the western night sky right around Halloween. It’s possible, however, that it could disintegrate, in part or in whole, as sometimes happens when comets pass by the Sun – and this one will come within 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) of our star.

As a planetary astronomer, I’m particularly curious about the Oort Cloud and the icy bodies inhabiting it. The Cloud’s residents may be a reason why life ignited on Earth; crashing on our planet eons ago, these ice bodies may have supplied at least some of the water that all life requires. At the same time, these same objects pose an ever-present threat to Earth’s continuation – and our survival.

Billions of comets

If an Oort Cloud object finds its way to the inner solar system, its ices vaporize. That process produces a tail of debris that becomes visible as a comet.

Some of these bodies, known as long-period comets, have orbits of hundreds, thousands or even millions of years, like Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. This is unlike the so-called short-period comets, which do not visit the Oort Cloud and have comparatively quick orbits. Halley’s comet, which cuts a path through the solar system and orbits the Sun every 76 years or so, is one of them.

The 20th-century Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, intrigued by the long-period comets, wrote a paper on them in 1950. He noted about 20 of the comets had an average distance from the Sun that was more than 10,000 astronomical units. This was astounding; just one AU is the distance of the Earth from the Sun, which is about 93 million miles. Multiply 93 million by 10,000, and you’ll find these comets come from over a trillion miles away. What’s more, Oort suggested, they were not necessarily the cloud’s outermost objects.

Nearly 75 years after Oort’s paper, astronomers still can’t directly image this part of space. But they do estimate the Oort Cloud spans up to 10 trillion miles from the Sun, which is almost halfway to Proxima Centauri, the next closest star.

The long-period comets spend most of their time at those vast distances, making only brief and rapid visits close to the Sun as they come in from all directions. Oort speculated the cloud contained 100 billion of these icy objects. That may be as numerous as the number of stars in our galaxy.

How did they get there? Oort suggested, and modern simulations have confirmed, that these icy bodies could have initially formed near Jupiter, the solar system’s largest planet. Perhaps these objects had their orbits around the Sun disturbed by Jupiter – similar to how NASA spacecraft bound for destinations from Saturn to Pluto have typically swung by the giant planet to accelerate their journeys outward.

Some of these objects would have escaped the solar system permanently, becoming interstellar objects. But others would have ended up with orbits like those of the long-period comets.

An illustration of the solar system and the Oort Cloud. The numbers on the graph depict AUs, or astronomical units. Note the location of Voyager 2, which will take another 30,000 years to fly out of the Cloud.
NASA

Threats to Earth

Long-period comets present a particular potential danger to Earth. Because they are so far from our Sun, their orbits are readily altered by the gravity of other stars. That means scientists have no idea when or where one will appear, until it does, suddenly. By then, it’s typically closer than Jupiter and moving rapidly, at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Indeed, the fictional comet that doomed Earth in the film “Don’t Look Up” came from the Oort Cloud.

New Oort Cloud comets are discovered all the time, a dozen or so per year in recent years. The odds of any of them colliding with Earth are extremely low. But it is possible. The recent success of NASA’s DART mission, which altered the orbit of a small asteroid, demonstrates one plausible approach to fending off these small bodies. But that mission was developed after years of studying its target. A comet from the Oort Cloud may not offer that much time – maybe just months, weeks or even days.

Or no time at all. ’Oumuamua, the odd little object that visited our solar system in 2017, was discovered not before but after its closest approach to Earth. Although ’Oumuamua is an interstellar object, and not from the Oort Cloud, the proposition still applies; one of these objects could sneak up on us, and the Earth would be defenseless.

One way to prepare for these objects is to better understand their basic properties, including their size and composition. Toward this end, my colleagues and I work to characterize new long-period comets. The largest known one, Bernardinelli–Bernstein, discovered just three years ago, is roughly 75 miles (120 kilometers) across. Most known comets are much smaller, from one to a few miles, and some smaller ones are too faint for us to see. But newer telescopes are helping. In particular, the Rubin Observatory’s decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time, starting up in 2025, may double the list of known Oort Cloud comets, which now stands at about 4,500.

The unpredictability of these objects makes them a challenging target for spacecraft, but the European Space Agency is preparing a mission to do just that: Comet Interceptor. With a launch planned for 2029, the probe will park in space until a suitable target from the Oort Cloud appears. Studying one of these ancient and pristine objects could offer scientists clues about the origins of the solar system.

As for the comets now in Earth’s vicinity, it’s OK to look up. Unlike the comet in the DiCaprio movie, these two will not crash into the Earth. The nearest Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will get to us is about 44 million miles (70 million kilometers); C/2024 S1 (ATLAS), about 80 million miles (130 million kilometers). Sounds like a long way, but in space, that’s a near miss. Läs mer…

You probably missed it, but a few months ago a report was published that inspected how the UK government prepared for major emergencies. What it found has profound implications for the whole country.

The report was written by the UK’s public inquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic and explained how the pandemic was an example of what’s called a “non-malicious threat”. These are major threats to our collective security that arise not from hostile intent – like terrorism or war – but as a result of human error, structural failure, or natural disasters. In this instance it was a novel virus that jumped from animals to humans and then rapidly spread.

The pandemic affected everything. Its impact was so severe that it created what the government calls a “whole-system civil emergency”, a rapidly escalating crisis that significantly affected multiple dimensions of the UK’s security, from the health system, through economic stability, to public trust. This was the UK’s greatest security crisis since the second world war. Yet it had nothing to do with armed conflict.

The inquiry found that successive governments grossly underestimated pandemic threats. They were not given the same priority as security threats coming from hostile action, like Russian aggression or terrorism. The subsequent tragedy proved how much of a mistake this was. When it came to planning and responding to whole-system civil emergencies, the UK government “failed their citizens”, the inquiry said, before concluding that “fundamental reform” was needed.

We have worked on a new report that finds worrying similarities to another, even greater “non-malicious threat” to security: climate change.

Compounding climate risks

Two weeks ago Hurricane Helene crashed into Florida and proceeded to cut a chaotic swathe north. By the time it dissipated over Tennessee two days later, over 200 people were dead and losses amounted to tens of billions of dollars.

Now Florida has been battered by Hurricane Milton too, which may prove to be more destructive in part because it came in the wake of Helene. Much of the region’s road, rail, and power infrastructure was still damaged. Many of the buildings still standing had been seriously weakened. Piles of debris from the clean up quickly became dangerous projectiles in Milton’s powerful winds. Hurricanes such as Helene and Milton are now twice as likely given climate change.

Treasure Island, Florida, after Helene and before Milton.
M Julian Photography / shutterstock

From hurricanes to deadly heatwaves, crippling droughts to crop failures – the consequences of climate change are potentially catastrophic. And while we have improved our resilience to individual extreme weather events, increasing climate change makes it more likely that impacts will pile up with the sum of loss and damages being much higher than the parts. It is these cascading and compounding impacts that not only threaten local communities, but add up to destabilise the security of entire countries and the globalised systems that connect them.

Yet many governments do not routinely consider extreme climate scenarios in their security plans, and instead continue to assume that climate risks will gradually evolve over the long term.

This approach is proving to be grossly insufficient. Take food security for example. Cascading climate effects are estimated to have caused a third of UK food price inflation in recent years, an impact compounded by rising energy prices. Spiking energy prices were the result of our reliance on fossil fuels, which became far more expensive after Russia invaded Ukraine.

These episodes show us how the causes and consequences of climate change supercharge the world’s security problems.

Tipping towards catastrophe

These climate risks create the potential for further “whole-system civil emergencies”. One example is tipping points. For instance, one of the Earth’s key ocean current systems is the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc), which transports vast amounts of heat from the tropics to the northern hemisphere. Yet climate change is weakening the Amoc, a process that could lead it to pass a tipping point and collapse at some point this century, though there is still much debate among climate scientists over exact dates and probabilities.

Collapse would effectively wipe out crop growing in the UK, and devastate food production over much of Europe and North America, while disrupting key weather patterns across the globe. This would be a planetary-scale cataclysm with unmanageable security outcomes. A collapse this century cannot be ruled out without urgent international action to reduce emissions.

Atlantic circulation collapse would create worldwide chaos.
Gertjan Hooijer / shutterstock

Meanwhile, the collapse of a northern section of the Amoc – in the North Atlantic subpolar gyre – could happen much sooner. While less severe, a collapse would upend weather in the UK, destabilising food production, public health, and infrastructure. Evidence suggests that the likelihood of this collapse is alarmingly high – up to a 45% chance of occurring this century – and that it could happen as early as 2040, if not before.

Inadequate assessment

Yet these risks do not appear in the UK government’s national register of security threats. In fact, there isn’t even a dedicated security risk assessment of climate change. The government’s existing climate change risk assessment is not set up to assess broader security threats in the round and is not intended for high level security decision-makers.

There are also important analytical flaws, such as inadequate consideration of cascading and interacting risks like successive hurricanes or a flood that also spreads diseases or disrupts food supplies months later. Individually, these risks might be bearable; together, they could prove unbearable.

Meanwhile, responsibility for climate risks is currently siloed away in non-security departments, marginalising climate change from the top table of decision-making on security.

Thankfully, the new UK government is undertaking a review of its national resilience and security policies. Climate change should be at the heart of its plans. The pandemic inquiry’s findings could represent a warning from a future in which the threat posed by climate change is still not taken seriously in key parts of government.

We face a choice. We can wait until climate impacts spiral out of control, and panicked governments resort to false solutions like more border walls and militarisation. Worryingly, the chances of this are growing as governments continue to effectively fly blind into an increasingly dangerous future. Alternatively, the institutions of government that are intended to protect us against major emergencies can finally act and begin to turn us away from the gathering storm. Läs mer…

A groundbreaking discovery has recently brought hope to millions of people living with type 1 diabetes around the world. In a world first, scientists have successfully used stem cell therapy to reverse type 1 diabetes in a woman.

This achievement is being hailed as a major medical breakthrough, as it offers a potential cure for a disease that, until now, could only be managed but not cured.

Type 1 diabetes is a serious condition that usually starts in childhood or early adulthood. In people with the condition, the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin.

Insulin is a hormone that helps regulate blood sugar levels. Without it, blood sugar can spike to dangerously high levels. Over time, this can lead to severe health complications, such as heart disease, nerve damage, kidney failure and blindness.

People with type 1 diabetes need to take insulin injections or use insulin pumps every day to manage their blood sugar levels. Despite these treatments, managing the disease can be difficult, and patients often face lifelong difficulties. That’s why this new stem cell therapy has generated so much excitement — it could offer a real solution.

The average human body is composed of about 37.2 trillion cells, which is 300 times the number of stars in our galaxy. All our adult cells come from a single cell, called the fertilised egg (or zygote) which during our development will divide and differentiate into specialised cells and adult stem cells. The zygote is the initial stem cell capable of generating a new person.

Adults stem cells are special cells in the body that can turn into a limited number of cell types. Scientists have been studying stem cells for years and trying to re-program specialised cells into stem cells, hoping to use them to treat various diseases.

One of the most exciting aspects of stem cells is that they can replace damaged or missing cells in the body. At the University of Central Lancashire, my research team is using induced-pluripotent brain stem cells which were reprogrammed from skin cells of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. We aim to learn more about the degenerative brain disease and its development in a petri dish without further invasive techniques.

Type 1 diabetes explained.

In the case of type 1 diabetes, scientists wondered if stem cells could be used to replace the insulin-producing cells that the body had destroyed. It is extremely difficult to get stem cells to behave like the specific insulin-producing cells needed in the pancreas.

In a recent trial, scientists at Peking University in Beijing took cells from a donor and modified them in the lab to become insulin-producing cells. These newly developed cells were then implanted into patients with type 1 diabetes.

Remarkably, the cells began producing insulin on their own, allowing the patients to regulate their blood sugar levels after two and a half months without requiring daily insulin injections.

This is why the therapy is being referred to as a potential “cure” for type 1 diabetes. While it’s still early days, the results are incredibly promising, and the therapy could become widely available in the near future if further large trials are successful.

Hurdles still to overcome

One issue is the body’s immune system, which could attack the newly transplanted cells as part of diabetes type 1 conditions. Scientists are working on ways to prevent this and ensure that the transplanted cells are behaving over several years similarly compared to the initial phase in a petri dish.

Making the therapy accessible to more people will be another big challenge. If approved, stem cell treatments are expensive and complicated, so researchers are looking for ways to make the process more scalable while using the patient’s own cells to prevent rejection of the transplanted cells.

Despite these hurdles, the recent discovery has created a wave of hope and optimism for patients suffering from type 1 diabetes. Stem cell therapy is showing us that it might be possible to truly cure diseases that have long been considered only manageable and incurable. Läs mer…

The deep learning machine AlphaFold, which was created by Google’s AI research lab DeepMind, is already transforming our understanding of the molecular biology that underpins health and disease.

One half of the 2024 Nobel prize in chemistry went to David Baker from the University of Washington in the US, with the other half jointly awarded to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper, both from London-based Google DeepMind.

If you haven’t heard of AlphaFold, it may be difficult to appreciate how important it is becoming to researchers. But as a beta tester for the software, I got to see first-hand how this technology can reveal the molecular structures of different proteins in minutes. It would take researchers months or even years to unpick these structures in laboratory experiments.

Read more:
Google Deepmind founder shares Nobel prize in chemistry for AI that unlocks the shape of proteins

This technology could pave the way for revolutionary new treatments and drugs. But first, it’s important to understand what AlphaFold does.

Proteins are produced by series of molecular “beads”, created from a selection of the human body’s 20 different amino acids. These beads form a long chain that folds up into a mechanical shape that is crucial for the protein’s function.

Their sequence is determined by DNA. And while DNA research means we know the order of the beads that build most proteins, it’s always been a challenge to predict how the chain folds up into each “3D machine”.

Nobel prize laureates David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper.
Illustrations: Niklas Elmehed © Nobel Prize Outreach, CC BY-NC-SA

These protein structures underpin all of biology. Scientists study them in the same way you might take a clock apart to understand how it works. Comprehend the parts and put together the whole: it’s the same with the human body.

Proteins are tiny, with a huge number located inside each of our 30 trillion cells. This meant for decades, the only way to find out their shape was through laborious experimental methods – studies that could take years.

Throughout my career I, along with many other scientists, have been engaged in such pursuits. Every time we solve a protein structure, we deposit it in a global database called the Protein Data Bank, which is free for anyone to use.

AlphaFold was trained on these structures, the majority of which were found using X-ray crystallography. For this technique, proteins are tested under thousands of different chemical states, with variations in temperature, density and pH. Researchers use a microscope to identify the conditions under which each protein lines up in a particular formation. These are then shot with X-rays to work out the spatial arrangement of all the atoms in that protein.

Having been trained on these structures, AlphaFold can now predict protein structure at speeds that were previously impossible.

I started out early in my career, from the late 90s, working out protein structures using magnetic properties of their nuclei. I did this with technology called nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, which uses a huge magnet like an MRI scanner. This method had begun to fall out of favour because of certain technical limitations, but is now having a resurgence thanks to AlphaFold.

NMR is one of the few techniques that can probe molecules in motion, instead of keeping them still inside a crystal or on an electron microscope grid.

The author, Rivka Isaacson, holding an atomically accurate, 3D-printed ribosome.
Rivka Isaacson, Author provided (no reuse)

Addictive experience

In March 2024, researchers at DeepMind approached me to beta test AlphaFold3, the latest incarnation of the software, which was close to release at the time.

I’ve never been a gamer but I got a taste of the addictive experience as, once I got access, all I wanted to do was spend hours trying out molecular combinations. As well as lightning speed, this new version introduced the option to include bigger and more varied molecules, including DNA and metals, and the opportunity to modify amino acids to mimic chemical signalling in cells.

Our lab at King’s College London used X-ray crystallography to predict a structure formed by two bacterial proteins that are loosely involved in hospital superbugs when they interact. Previous incarnations of AlphaFold predicted the individual components but could never get the complex right – yet this new version solved it at the first attempt.

Understanding the moving parts and dynamics of proteins is the next frontier, now that we can predict static protein shapes with AlphaFold. Proteins come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes. They can be rigid or flexible, or made of neatly structured units connected by bendy loops.

Dynamics are essential for protein function. As another Nobel laureate, Richard Feynman, said: “Everything that living things do can be understood in terms of the jiggling and wiggling of atoms.”

Another great feature of magnetic resonance techniques is they can measure precise distances between atoms. So, with a few carefully designed experiments, the AlphaFold outputs can be verified in a lab.

In other cases, the results are still ambiguous. It’s a work in progress between experimental structural biologists, like my team, and computational scientists.

The recognition that comes with a Nobel prize will only galvanise the quest to understand all molecular machinery – and hopefully, change the game when it comes to medicines, vaccines and human health. Läs mer…