School

• Some even consider myopia, also known as nearsightedness, an epidemic.
• In the United States alone, spending on corrective lenses, eye tests and related expenses may be as high as US$7.2 billion a year.
• To answer that question, first let’s examine what causes myopia – and what reduces it.

How myopia develops

• Optometrists have learned a great deal about the progression of myopia by studying visual development in infant chickens.
• Just like in humans, if visual input is distorted, a chick’s eyes grow too large, resulting in myopia.
• The more time we spend focusing on something within arm’s length of our faces, dubbed “near work,” the greater the odds of having myopia.

Outside light keeps myopia at bay

• A 2022 study, for example, found that myopia rates were more than four times greater for children who didn’t spend much time outdoors – say, once or twice a week – compared with those who were outside daily.
• In another paper, from 2012, researchers conducted a meta-analysis of seven studies that compared duration of time spent outdoors with myopia incidence.
• The odds of developing myopia dropped by 2% for each hour spent outside per week.

What’s driving the epidemic

• Globally, a big part of this is due to the rapid development and industrialization of countries in East Asia over the last 50 years.
• Around that time, young people began spending more time in classrooms reading and focusing on other objects very close to their eyes and less time outdoors.
• This is also what researchers observed in the North American Arctic after World War II, when schooling was mandated for Indigenous people.

Treating myopia

• Fortunately, just a few minutes a day with glasses or contact lenses that correct for blur stops the progression of myopia, which is why early vision testing and vision correction are important to limit the development of myopia.
• People with with high myopia, however, have increased risk of blindness and other severe eye problems, such as retinal detachment, in which the retina pulls away from the the back of the eye.
• The chances of myopia-related macular degeneration increase by 40% for each diopter of myopia.

Andrew Herbert receives funding from NSF.

• In the heart of this landscape, near the small Northern Cape town of Carnarvon, the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory operates a technological marvel that has transformed our understanding of the cosmos.
• The MeerKAT radio telescope has unlocked cosmic mysteries.
• Read more:
  How the SKA telescope is boosting South Africa's knowledge economy

  Over the past five years, MeerKAT has made remarkable contributions to both South African and international science.

• Here are just four of MeerKAT’s major breakthroughs that I’ve been involved in, and why the findings matter for our understanding of the Universe.

Fascinating findings

• This allowed our team to see for the first time magnetic filaments that surround the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy.
• A supermassive black hole is an extremely dense object with the mass of a million suns.
• The research provided valuable insights into the dynamic processes that shape the galactic environment.
• The Laduma, Mightee and Mhongoose surveys aim to map the distribution of galaxies and neutral hydrogen gas.

Growth and learning

• Members of local communities around the site have been employed during both the construction and operation stages.
• Engagements with those communities, and particularly with schools in the area, are breaking down barriers to participation in astronomy.
• For instance, I have been able to collaborate with astronomers from the UK, Australia, the Netherlands and the US.

Ed Elson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• The source of contamination is believed to be timber waste from construction and demolition sites that was turned into mulch.
• So far, 60 locations in Sydney and 12 in Melbourne have been identified as contaminated with asbestos to various degrees.
• The severity, spread and impact of the issue convince us to call it the largest scandal in the history of Australia’s circular economy.
• A circular economy recycles and reuses materials or products with the goal of being more sustainable.

Scandal is damaging for the circular economy

• Unfortunately, this contaminated mulch raises concerns about the reckless implementation of circular economy principles in Australia.
• More broadly, this scandal could undermine efforts to advance the circular economy in Australia.
• It’s a reminder that the circular economy concept is based on a system-thinking approach, where all elements must work in harmony.

Regulations don’t go far enough

• However, it isn’t mandatory for suppliers to test for contaminants in mulch.
• The fact is existing policies and regulations, such as the NSW Environment Protection Authority’s Mulch Order 2016, failed to prevent mulch contamination.

Read more:
Buildings used iron from sunken ships centuries ago. The use of recycled materials should be business as usual by now

Why isn’t certification standard practice?

• In 2022 and 2023, working with researchers from Griffith and Curtin universities and our industry partners, we explored the use of recycled product certification schemes.
• We specifically asked for their views on certification schemes for these materials.

• He added:
  The cost of certification is a fraction of whatever their marketing budget might be in any single month, let alone a year.
• If they can see that their certification becomes part of their marketing budget, then the cost of certification is a single-digit percentage of most marketing budgets.
• If they can see that their certification becomes part of their marketing budget, then the cost of certification is a single-digit percentage of most marketing budgets.

What more can be done?

• Our research identified seven major drivers for adopting certification schemes when procuring recycled materials, as shown below.
• Read more:
  Trash TV: streaming giants are failing to educate the young about waste recycling.
• In addition, we stress the importance of directories of approved recyclers to ensure end users have access to quality, uncontaminated recycled materials.

Salman Shooshtarian receives funding from the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre Australia Peter S.P. Wong, Professor - construction, RMIT University. He receives funding from Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre. He is affiliated with RMIT University, Australia. Tayyab Maqsood receives funding from the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre.

• The IDF says it has been working on information gleaned from questioning Palestinian fighters captured in the fighting.
• According to a report in the Jerusalem Post on April 17, the Palestinian fighters were hiding out in schools in the area.
• The investigation, by online Israeli magazines +927 and Local Call examined the use of an AI programme called “Lavender”.

• It’s important to note that the IDF is not the only military to be working with AI in this way.
• But one function of the way the IDF is harnessing Lavender in this current conflict is its use alongside other systems.
• Read more:
  Israel accused of using AI to target thousands in Gaza, as killer algorithms outpace international law

The Iranian dimension

• Away from the charnel house that is the Gaza Strip, the focus has been on the aftermath of Israel’s strike on the Iranian embassy in Baghdad on April 1.
• As is his wont, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed revenge, declaring: “The Zionist regime will be punished by the hands of our brave men.
• And this was very much how it was to turn out when Iran’s drones and missiles flew last weekend.
• Read more:
  Could Israel's strike against the Iranian embassy in Damascus escalate into a wider regional war?
• Read more:
  Why Iran's failed attack on Israel may well turn out to be a strategic success

The nuclear option?

One of the possibilities being widely canvassed is that Israel could mount some kind of attack on Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. This has been revitalised in the years since Donald Trump pulled the US out of the deal negotiated by his predecessor Barack Obama.

• He walks us through the history of Iran’s nuclear programme, a story littered with the bodies of Iranian nuclear scientists and the wreckage of its nuclear facilities thanks to fiendish cyberattacks such as the Stuxnet virus developed by Israel and the US that was launched against Iran in 2010.
• Since Trump quit the nuclear deal, Iran has gone full-steam ahead in ramping up its nuclear weapons programme, while reportedly hiding its key installations in deep underground bunkers that are thought impossible to destroy from the air.