At first sight these seem like very strange bedfellows. In this chapter, I will explain how seeking to understand swarming in locusts has led to new discoveries on the dietary causes of human obesity and ageing, as well as provided an understanding of locust swarming that links neurophysiological events within the brains of individual insects to continental scale mass migration
The constantly evolving nature and extreme complexities of nutrition science have created an environment and perception of the science that is frequently muddled, misrepresented and often downright incorrect within general public discourse. The inexact nature of nutrition science (as opposed to physics, which has more known knowns) and the time-constrained and agenda-driven media will often poorly report on or misrepresent facts as we know them
Suppose we could live forever? How would we prioritise our time? Would we retire? In Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman playfully and beautifully describes different theories of time. In one of his vignettes, he writes
In a stable, prosperous country such as Australia, it can be easy to take democracy for granted. Democracy has become a somewhat dirty word, especially with the ‘Millennial Generation’ (born 1982–2003)
Although artificial intelligence is already mainstream, experts have only recently started looking into the short- and long-term impacts of AI on human rights. Recently in 2018, artificial intelligence was a key topic at RightsCon, a global conference on the future of the internet hosted by Access Now. There we worked with partners to draft and publish the Toronto Declaration on protecting the rights to equality and non- discrimination in machine learning systems. We then released a report in November 2018, Human Rights in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, as a preliminary scoping of the intersection of AI and human rights
We are all familiar with many instances of statistics in everyday life: the statistics of sport, weather, population, the stock market ... the sort of thing that might appear in the ‘number crunch’ column in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald
Putting children in the centre of our society acknowledges that all aspects of our future capacity depends upon us having the majority of our children and youth able to participate to their full potential
As a child health researcher and advocate, there are many situations which make me anxious in Australia in 2014. Child abuse and neglect is apparently rising, as are substance abuse and mental health problems in both young people and their parents (probably linked) and the resulting irreversible fetal alcohol group of disorders
The health and wellbeing of children and youth are any country’s most crucial future concern (Stanley, Prior, & Richardson, 2005). Measuring health (or ill-health as we usually do!) and wellbeing (or ill-being!) gives us an indication of the success of our society in providing those environments (physical, social, emotional, cultural and economic) that are positive for healthy child development
As we move from the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic into a ‘post-Covid’ world, it gives us an incredible opportunity to move to a more equitable and sustainable world, one that is courageous in making decisions to address climate change. A world that is healthier for our children and for those ‘not yet born’