< Back to Issue 9 Conferring with Consciousness by Ingrid Sefton 28 October 2025 Illustrated by Heather Sutherland Edited by Steph Liang Down the rabbit hole Indulge me for a moment, will you? I value your opinion. Your opinion, as in, one which has arisen from your mind. I would assume. It would seem unusual to consider that, perhaps, your thoughts are not your own. Stranger still to ponder the possibility that they did not arise from your mind. I digress – or maybe not. For it is this dilemma which I wish to pick your brain on. The mind. The brain. You. Are they one and the same; entwined? What do you think? Again, assuming it is you thinking. Assuming you feel certain enough to agree with this. Really, with what certainty can we say anything? You may be wondering who “I” am. I am but you, of course! I kid, but not entirely. Think of me as the brain; your brain if you wish. An excellent name I gave myself, if you ask me. Before we spiral any deeper into this chasm that is consciousness – because that is what this is about, is that not what this, life, is all about? – I must disclose a few things. One, I do not expect you to have answers to these questions I pose. Because two. We do not have answers. I apologise that I have not come bearing the answers to our existence, that I have not yet unpicked these questions of “who?”, “how?”, “why?”. I come offering an alternative. I wish to present to you these entangled threads of consciousness: of what we currently know, of what we hope to know and of where we can proceed from here. Then it’s back to you. You get to decide what you think (again, with the thinking). Maybe, for you and the workings of your inner mind, consciousness and all it entails will be revealed in full clarity. Maybe not. You certainly won’t know unless you try. A brief neural memoir Many a Nobel prize has been awarded for discoveries relating to the nervous system: from the morphology of neurons (Golgi and Cajal 1906) and their electrical signalling properties (Eccles, Hodgkin and Huxley 1963), to the nature of information processing in the visual system (Hubel and Wiesel 1981) (1). Despite some obvious gaps remaining in what is known about the brain (ahem, that slight issue of consciousness), the field of neuroscience has rapidly progressed over the last century. Gone are the days of thinking I was nothing more than a cooling mechanism for the blood, as Greek philosopher Aristotle once believed (2). How dismissive of my intellect! I assure you, I have far more important things to be doing. Generating the experience of “you”, as one small matter. The techniques developed to study the brain have also rapidly advanced. It was not until the invention of microscopes in the 19 th century that the neuron doctrine even came about . Pioneered by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, this is the (now) well-accepted concept that the nervous system is made up of discrete cells known as neurons, challenging older theories which proposed a continuous neural network (3). Today, neuroscientists have the ability to appreciate my anatomical and functional complexity at a huge range of temporal and spatial resolutions. Whole-brain connectivity can be studied using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), while the electrical activity of single neurons can be recorded using patch-clamp electrode technology. Not to mention optogenetics, chemogenetics, viral transduction: while the available experimental techniques are still unable to address all our brainy questions, the field of neuroscience has never been in a better position to get closer to answers. The potential of neurons Neurons: those special, excitable cells that make up the squishy entity I seem to be. The mechanisms of how neurons detect, generate and transmit signals have been described in utmost precision. When I talk of excitable cells, I am not referring to a bunch of cheerful, eager neurons. Excitability, in this context, refers to the fact that neurons can respond to a sensory stimulus by generating and propagating electrical signals, known as action potentials. Clearly, I am made up of slightly more than two neurons cheerfully signalling to each other back and forth. Try 86 billion, between the cortex and cerebellum combined (4). Yet, despite our deep understanding of neural signalling mechanisms, this has yet to reveal an explanation for consciousness. Individual neurons in isolation, it would appear, don’t hold the answers we want. In turn, a focus of neuroscience research has been on the wider “neuronal correlates of consciousness”, the minimal neuronal mechanisms that are sufficient to generate a conscious experience (5). This relates broadly to the generation of consciousness itself, but also to studying the neural underpinnings of specific conscious experiences. For example, which collective neural substrates support the process of visual object recognition. This is often a focus of fMRI studies, which examine brain activity in an attempt to pin-point where in the brain a particular cognitive function may be performed. Fancy techniques aside, some of the most fundamental insights into my regional specialisations have arisen from careful observation following selective lesions or damage to the brain. The critical, yet specific role of Broca’s area in speech production was discovered in 1861 by surgeon Paul Broca’s observations of his patient “Tan”. Tan had lost his ability to produce meaningful speech, yet was still able to comprehend speech; Broca identified a lesion in Tan’s left frontal lobe post-mortem, drawing the conclusion that this region is selectively involved in speech production (6). But what does all of this show us? Perhaps the only thing that neuroscientists can agree on, is that conscious experience is fundamentally, in some way, somehow, related to my activity: the brain. In turn, the activity of the brain is related to the activity of neurons; firing and signalling and transforming information. A lot is known about neurons. Less can be said about specific cognitive functions, yet we can see correlations between the regional brain activity and particular conscious experiences. Here lies my problem. The elephant in the room. How do we get from individual neurons to conscious experience? A map with no destination Enter “The Connectome” and the Human Connectome Project: a collective attempt to map the neuronal connections of the human brain, in an effort to connect structure to function (7). And in turn, for our purposes, to ideally connect this to consciousness. The rationale is that by modelling and trying to “build” a brain using a bottom-up approach, we may therefore understand the mechanisms of how cognitive functions arise. I’m sure it will come as no surprise that this isn’t the simplest of tasks. To measure, record and model billions of neurons and synapses requires techniques, time, and resources that are incredibly hard to come by in sufficient quantities. Excitingly, scientists have recently managed to successfully map a whole brain. That is, of a fly (8). With 3016 neurons and 548000 synapses, this was no simple feat. In case you had forgotten my own complexity, however, let me remind you of my 86 billion neurons, and estimated 1.5 x10 14 total synapses in the cortex alone (4). Progress has also been made on the human front, nonetheless. It was recently announced that a cubic millimetre of human temporal cortex has been completely reconstructed using electron microscopy, involving 1.4 petabytes of electron microscopy data (1000 Terabytes or one quadrillion bytes) (9). One cubic millimetre down, approximately a million to go. Putting practicalities aside, let us suppose we do, one day, manage to map and model an entire human brain, in all its intricacies. What now? What does one actually do with this data, and how would this allow us to better understand how consciousness arises? Up until now, we have been following the train of thought that consciousness, somehow, results from the activity of neurons, yet does not arise from the activity of individual neurons. This leads us to the notion that perhaps consciousness is due to the collective, computational activity of neurons working together – that with enough complexity, and enough information processing, together this will lead to the first-person experience of being “you”. Does this actually make sense? You tell me. Wishful thinking and conscious rocks The notion that, at a certain level of complex neuronal signal processing, a first-person perspective of “being you” (i.e. consciousness) arises is often termed “strong emergence” or “magical emergence” (10). With what we currently know about the properties of neurons, there is fundamentally no reason why this should happen. The “property” of consciousness, which cannot be predicted from the principles of how individual neurons function, seemingly just emerges. Consciousness, therefore, must somehow be greater than the sum of its parts, only emerging when neurons interact as a wider network. Maybe, the answer to this is merely that we don’t understand the mechanisms of neurons as well as we think we do. It could be that we have missed a fundamental property of how neurons operate and upon discovery of this, it would suddenly be completely explicable how consciousness arises. Or maybe, computation and neural signalling is not all there is to it. An alternative line of thinking is that rather than consciousness being a property that “arises”, it is a basic constituent of the universe that is missing from our current model of standard physics (11). That is, consciousness has been present all along and exists in everything. The philosophical view of ‘panpsychism’ embraces this idea to the extreme, proposing that everything within the universe is, to some degree, conscious (12). As in yes, that rock over there might just be conscious. Other theories suggest that consciousness only emerges in a recognisable form in certain conditions or at some critical threshold; myself and all my neurons apparently being one such example of the “right” conditions. Theories of consciousness don’t just stop at computation and fundamental properties of the universe. Quantum physics, microtubule computations, electromagnetic fields; all have been proposed as part of this web of “why” (13). While some theories arguably veer more towards pseudoscience than well-founded scholarship, they all make one thing clear. At this stage, just about every idea remains fair game in the quest for answers. Pondering hard, or hardly pondering? The question of consciousness is far from limited to the field of neuroscience. Philosophers too have long wracked their brains in an attempt to rationalise and unpick this problem. What unites the work of neuroscientists and philosophers alike, along with the many theories of consciousness, is that nothing provides a satisfactory explanation for why consciousness should emerge from the activity of neurons. Philosopher David Chalmers has termed this the “hard problem”. “Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does” (14). If consciousness is simply the result of high-level processing and the computational activity of neurons, why would we even need to be conscious? If all the brain is doing is computation, and thus everything can be done via computation, there would appear to be no purpose in having a subjective experience of being “you”. Whichever side of consciousness we may be inclined to take, computational, fundamental, or otherwise, the fact remains. We cannot seem to move beyond mere description, to explanation. We have not solved the “hard problem”. A final conundrum, and a sole certainty Physicist Emerson M Pugh once made the somewhat sceptical remark that “if the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.” (15) Is the reason that we have yet to understand consciousness simply, frustratingly, that we are not meant to? Logical conundrums aside, I rest my case. I hope I have given you some food for thought, or at the very least, not set off too dramatic an existential crisis. Somewhere between the neural wirings of the brain and the experience of consciousness lies an answer, regardless of whether we are destined to find it out. Make of this what you will. And if nothing else, let me try reassuring you once again with the wisdom of René Descartes. “ Cogito, ergo sum ” “ I think, therefore I am ” (16). If you are here, and you are thinking, you are conscious. You, my friend, are you. References Nobel Prizes in nerve signaling. Nobel Prize Outreach. September 16, 2009. Accessed October 18, 2025. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/themes/nobel-prizes-in-nerve-signaling-1906-2000/ . Rábano A. Aristotle’ s “mistake”: the structure and function of the brain in the treatises on biology. Neurosciences and History . 2018;6(4):138-43. Golgi C. The neuron doctrine - theory and facts . 1906. p. 190–217. https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/golgi-lecture.pdf Herculano-Houzel S. The human brain in numbers: a linearly scaled-up primate brain. Front Hum Neurosci . 2009;3:31. doi: 10.3389/neuro.09.031.2009 Koch C, Massimini M, Boly M, Tononi G. Neural correlates of consciousness: progress and problems. Nature Reviews Neuroscience . 2016;17(5):307-21. Broca area . Encyclopedia Britannica; 2025. Accessed October 18, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/science/Broca-area Elam JS, Glasser MF, Harms MP, Sotiropoulos SN, Andersson JLR, Burgess GC, et al. The Human Connectome Project: A retrospective. NeuroImage . 2021;244. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118543 Winding M, Pedigo BD, Barnes CL, Patsolic HG, Park Y, Kazimiers T, et al. The connectome of an insect brain. Science . 2023;379(6636). doi: 10.1126/science.add9330 Shapson-Coe A, Januszewski M, Berger DR, Pope A, Wu Y, Blakely T, et al. A petavoxel fragment of human cerebral cortex reconstructed at nanoscale resolution. Science . 2024;384(6696). doi: 10.1126/science.adk4858 Chalmers D. Strong and Weak Emergence. In: Clayton P, Davies P. The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion . Oxford University Press; 2008. Kitchener PD, Hales CG. What Neuroscientists Think, and Don’t Think, About Consciousness. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience . 2022;16. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.767612 Goff P, William Seager, and Sean Allen-Hermanson. Panpsychism . The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Summer 2022. Seth AK, Bayne T. Theories of consciousness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience . 2022;23(7):439-52. doi: 10.1038/s41583-022-00587-4 Chalmers D. Facing up to the hard problem of consciousness . In: Shear J. Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem. MIT Press; 1997. Pugh GE. The Biological Origin of Human Values . Routledge & Kegan Paul; 1978. Descartes R. Principles of Philosophy . 1644. Previous article Next article Entwined back to

Curious what an OmniSci Editor-in-Chief actually does? We spoke to Rachel about drawing anatomy, interviewing a med student hero, and helping build the the science communication universe! Rachel is a writer and Editor-in-Chief at OmniSci, now in her first year of the Doctor of Medicine. For Issue 4: Mirage, she is writing an interview with science communicator, Dr Karen Freilich. Meet OmniSci Writer and Committee Member Rachel Ko Rachel is a writer and Editor-in-Chief at OmniSci, now in her first year of the Doctor of Medicine. For Issue 4: Mirage, she is writing an interview with science communicator, Dr Karen Freilich. interviewed by Caitlin Kane What are you studying? I am currently studying a Doctor of Medicine and I’m in my first year. Before that, I was studying a Bachelor of Biomed. What first got you interested in science? Exposure through education, stuff I’d studied in school. It sparked interests outside of school and I realised it was something that I wanted to pursue as a career. Something that really reinforced my love for science was doing a major in human structure and function, so anatomy. I really enjoyed that I could weave it in with my other passions in things like art and drawing and painting. I was able to look at science in a way that was really the artsy side of science. It's something I’ve tried to pursue with OmniSci as well. Do you have any advice for younger students? Don’t be afraid of trying all areas of science. Because I loved a specific area of science so much, I wanted to make sure that was what reeled me in as compared to other things. I tried a bunch of research projects, some of them I didn’t really love and I had to stick it out to the end, but then I could tick that off my list as having done that, and never have to do it again. But then I did another project which was 3D modelling a bone. It was just me sitting there for hours with a pen, drawing the bone in 3D space, which was very much up my alley. Don’t be afraid of trying everything, even if it feels like a waste of time in the moment. It isn't, it’s the process of filtering out and finding out what you love. And I’m still in that process. I have no idea what kind of medicine I want to go into, but I’m going by process of elimination and finding where I fit in the realm of science in that way. How did you get involved with OmniSci? Like I said, I like the artsy side of science. I actually sought out a few non-science related magazines at uni. I’ve always been into journalism and I love writing as well, so it made sense for me to look into that in my undergrad years. OmniSci emerged during those undergrad years and I thought, “Perfect!” I was a columnist first and I started doing some illustrations as well. Then I dropped my role at Farrago completely just to concentrate on this because I found it was a really nice intersection of what I love to do. My column was about vestigial features, like useless body parts, which I thought would be a fun, light column–I just wanted something cute and fun. So I started that, and now… I’m in the committee. What is your role at OmniSci? I am an Editor-in-Chief at the moment, and I have also written one of the pieces for Issue 4, purely because of my love for writing and contributing. I might step in as an illustrator at some point… I’m hoping in this break I can sit down and draw a little more than I used to. As Editors-in-Chief, we work with the committee to coordinate the things being published and try to envision what role OmniSci plays within the science communication universe. And whilst figuring out what we’re publishing and putting out to the world, we’re also trying to include the rest of the student community. We also have social events so that we can share our love for…whether it’s science or art or writing… any of the parts that OmniSci encompasses. We're there to keep everything chugging along!. What is your favourite thing about contributing at OmniSci so far? The people that you meet along the way. I do eventually want to pursue science communication myself, alongside medicine. I don’t know what that will look like, but I know that the people who will be involved in that space are the people you meet at the moment. Even with the committee, chatting about things and discussing interests has been super enlightening. When you expand that to the rest of the OmniSci community, I think it’s super super rewarding. Also seeing something tangible come out of it all… I just love seeing the magazine come together. When we printed it—though not ideal for the environment for every issue—to have the paper magazine in our hands from last year was super rewarding to see. Can you give us a sneak peak of what you're working on this issue? Well as Editor-in-Chief, the whole issue is kind of our collective baby! Personally I interviewed Dr Karen Freilich, a GP specialising in sexual health and working in education as well. I was lucky enough to have her as one of my sexual health elective tutors. She also started a podcast when she was in medical school called Humerus Hacks. It is basically super famous within the med student community. It sounds like such a simple thing, but just to hear her and the friend she started the podcast with talk things through and make things entertaining… it was such a fresh way of getting the information out. It’s kind of what we do at OmniSci: make science more accessible to people who might feel intimidated by those bigger, wider topics that they might never have ventured into. And the whole point of a magazine is to get information out to more people, and to spark interest, and show people that these things exist. As a med student, I kind of came across it as naturally as you could have. And as she was my tutor, I thought it was such an important opportunity to talk to her about why she did it and where she sees science communication going. What do you like doing in your spare time (when you're not contributing at OmniSci)? Well, there’s the anatomical art. I haven’t had a lot of time to do that… and I’ve been really wanting to try and incorporate it into my study but I spend a lot of time on one painting so it wouldn’t have been time efficient. But my plan for this break is to go to a bar, get myself a drink and just paint on my own… relax in that way. Otherwise, I play the violin, something I like to destress. It’s actually been a surprisingly big part of my life in med because there's a medical student orchestra. The rehearsals are quite long but it’s actually quite worth it to be sitting there not thinking about medicine. And yeah, just catching up with friends, going cafe hopping, bar hopping, that’s what I like to spend time doing. Which chemical element would you name your firstborn child (or pet) after? Let me pull up a visual aid. I actually don’t mind chemistry, but after year twelve I’ve kind of put a line between myself and it. Have you seen that trend online where people are pulling up words that would be really pretty baby names if they didn’t mean what they meant? Ooh, I’m going to go with Livermorium, Liv for short. Element 160. There’s some good ones—you could go Rutherfordium, Ruth for short. Read Rachel's articles Silent Conversations: How Trees Talk to One Another Wiggling Ears Our Microbial Frenemies Hiccups The Evolution of Science Communication Law and Disorder: Medically Supervised Injection Centres “Blink and you’ll miss it”: A Third Eyelid? Mighty Microscopic Warriors!

The Greenhouse Unpacking the Latest IPCC Report - What Climate Science is Telling Us By Sonia Truong The most comprehensive climate science report to date, this sixth assessment report reveals the reality of climate change and stresses that we need to take action urgently. Edited by Jessica Nguy & Yen Sim Issue 1: September 24, 2021 Illustration by Jess Nguyen On the 9th of August 2021, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its first instalment of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report from Working Group I, Climate Change 2021 — The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change. The IPCC is one of the world’s leading authorities on climate change and its reports provide an important scientific framework for governments to develop climate policies. With the collaborative effort of 234 leading climate scientists and more than 1,000 contributors, the latest IPCC report provides the most up-to-date information about the scientific basis of climate change and the effects of human activity on Earth’s systems. The report can be found online — it features a ‘Summary for Policymakers’ document exploring key findings across four topic areas as well as a comprehensive ‘Full Report’ which assesses and compiles peer-reviewed literature on climate science from across the globe. The report also features the IPCC WGI Interactive Atlas which explores observed and projected regional climate changes across different emissions and warming scenarios. Three key takeaways from the IPCC report are described below. #1: Human activity has contributed to climate change It in unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Headline statement from the IPCC’s ‘Summary for Policymakers’, AR6 2021 Advancements in attribution studies have allowed scientists to better simulate Earth’s responses to natural and anthropogenic factors and estimate the extent of human influence on observed climate trends. For the first time, the IPCC report has been able to state with a very high level of certainty that anthropogenic factors have been the main driver of increasing temperature extremes since the mid-19th century. Figure SPM.1 shows that simulated natural factors do not come close to explaining the observed increase in global surface temperature since the mid-19th century. Figure SPM.1: A powerful comparison of changes in global surface temperature since 1850 with and without human factors. This figure shows that the effects of natural climate drivers on global warming have been negligible compared to human influence on the climate. IPCC AR6, ‘Summary for Policymakers’ Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are higher than what they have been in the last two millennia and have been increasing at an unprecedented rate, mainly due to human activities in greenhouse gas combustion and deforestation. According to the report, greenhouse gas emissions from human activities have caused warming of approximately 1.1°C above pre-industrial average. In fact, human activities have caused enough emissions for even greater warming, but this has been partially counteracted by the cooling effect of aerosols in the atmosphere. Some recent heat extremes would have been virtually impossible without the influence of human forcing factors. Siberia’s prolonged heatwaves of 2020, for example, would have occurred less than once every 80,000 years without human-induced climate change. Moreover, the onset of Siberia’s wildfire season saw record-high temperatures throughout 2020 and 2021 as well as the burning of over 16 million hectares of land. Even in today’s climate, such extreme weather events are unlikely, but have been predicted to become more frequent by the end of this century. #2: Every region will experience environmental changes due to climate change The IPCC report states that the “widespread, rapid and intensifying” effects of climate change will be experienced by every region in a multitude of ways. Since the release of the last IPCC report in 2018, the world has observed an increase in acute weather events such as widespread flooding, storms, drought, fire weather and heatwaves. These are predicted to increase in frequency and severity as a result of human-induced climate change. Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming. They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic sea ice, snow cover and permafrost. B.2 from the IPCC’s ‘Summary for Policymakers’, AR6 2021 Several environmental changes due to climate change are already irreversible. Notably, global sea level rise and ocean acidification are set in long-term motion and will proceed at rates which will depend on future emissions. Glacial retreat is occurring synchronously across the world and glaciers will continue to melt for decades or centuries. All emission scenarios within the 21st century described in the report have revealed that global temperature changes will exceed a 1.5ºC increase, even in the lowest emissions scenario (SSP1-1.9). Thus, warming will reach a critical level regardless of actions that the world takes now. We can, however, prevent further temperature increases with deep reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions (especially carbon dioxide and methane). Figure SPM.5: All regions of the world (with one exception) will experience warming as a result of climate change, although not at an equal level. IPCC AR6, ‘Summary for policymakers’ Environmental changes at a 2ºC warming will be more pronounced and widespread, and extremes are likely to exceed critical tolerance thresholds in human health, ecological systems and agriculture. Australia, in particular, is vulnerable to experiencing scarce water resources in drought-prone areas and flooding and landslide events due to heavy rainfall events. Australia’s coastlines are also prone to erosion and flooding from rising sea levels and extreme meteorological events. The IPCC report examines evidence for climate ‘tipping points’ which, due to uncertainty about the Earth’s feedback systems, “cannot be ruled out” in climate projections. These tipping points are key thresholds that will lead to large-scale and irreversible damages to the Earth’s systems if breached. One of these tipping points is the loss of the Greenland ice sheet which is melting at an unprecedented rate. Surface melt of this major ice sheet involves a number of positive feedback loops which exacerbate the melting as the ice surface gets darker and less reflective of solar radiation. Scientists warn that, while highly unlikely, there is a possibility that we will reach a tipping point with current warming trends. #3: We need to make drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions immediately The Sixth Assessment Report tells us, with greater certainty than ever before, that human activities over the past six decades have caused global warming trends and affected climate extremes globally. These trends are likely to continue on a long-term scale. Most importantly, the report stresses that if we want any chance of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels, we must urgently make strong, sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions. The current global carbon budget to remain below 1.5ºC warming is estimated to be at an additional 500 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas. To remain within this budget, we need to achieve net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will only be achieved with meaningful climate action. If we can drastically reduce emissions now, we will still have a chance of averting the climate crisis. The two succeeding instalments of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report will cover the impacts of climate change and mitigation of climate change and are planned to be released in 2022. References: IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [MassonDelmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. In Press.

Exciting technological leaps are being made in the futuristic field of visual prostheses. Australians suffering from visual impairment can be helped by emerging treatments including Bionic Eyes: a sight for sore eyes. This piece takes a look at the prevalent impairments and our ocular opportunities to treat them. Bionics: Seeing into the Future By Joshua Nicholls While the Bionic Eye might seem like a technology of the far future, exciting advancements are being made in the field of visual prostheses. This piece points a keen eye at emerging treatments for some of the most prominent diseases, along with their possible bionic treatments. Issue 1: September 24, 2021 Illustration by Friday Kennedy Visual prostheses, colloquially known as bionic eyes, are a set of experimental devices designed to restore — or partially restore — vision to those with varying levels of blindness (1). While once viewed as “science fiction”, these technologies are becoming a reality for thousands of Australians with visual impairments. Since its inception in 1956 by the Australian inventor Graham Tassicker (2), the idea of restoring vision using electronics has undergone several developments, ranging from rudimentary cortical stimulation to modern advancements in state-of-the-art retinal implants. As of 2018, it was estimated that over 13 million Australians have some form of visual impairment. Of these 13 million, 411,000 have cataracts or the clouding of the lens; 244,00 have macular degeneration, which degrades fine detail vision; and 133,000 are either partially or entirely blind (3,4). The economic burden of blindness in Australia is substantial. In 2009, it was estimated that the total cost of vision loss per person aged 40 and over was $28,905 — a nationwide total of 16.6 billion AUD (5). Figure 1: Categorisation of Total Economic Cost of Vision Loss in 2009 (5) Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is one condition for which visual prosthetics may be applicable. AMD refers to the irreversible loss of high-acuity, colour-sensitive cone cells in the centre field of vision. This structure of the retina is responsible for reading, recognising faces, driving, and other visual tasks that require sharp focal vision. In fact, you are using these cells to read this article right now. Its typical onset is later in life, affecting 12% of people aged 80 or over (6). As the leading chronic eye condition for elderly Australians (7), it accounts for 48% of all cases of blindness nationwide (8). According to AIHW4, there is also a higher prevalence amongst females than in males — between 4.9%–6.8% and 3.6–5.1%, respectively. Macular degeneration exists in two forms: dry and wet. Dry macular degeneration is caused by thinning of the macula; it is the most common form of the disease and progresses slowly over many years. Wet macular degeneration is a potentially more severe variation of the disease which is caused by the sudden development of leaky blood vessels around the macula (9). With no known cure — and most treatments being directed towards prevention and delaying progression — interventions relying on prosthetics may be the best hope for the restoration of lost eyesight (10). Graham Tassicker was the first to realise the potential utility of cortical stimulation in restoring sight to those with vision loss. In 1956, Tassicker developed a photosensitive selenium cell which, when placed behind the retina, resulted in phosphene visualisation — the phenomenon of seeing light without light actually entering the eye (2). This was the first evidence of non-cortical stimulation to elicit visual experience. It was in the 1990s that visual prostheses took a radical development; sophisticated retinal surgeries and the creation of biomaterials led to a surge of novel inventions, including cortical implant miniaturisation and artificial retinas — the latter of which is the most advanced to date. There is currently a state-of-the-art retinal bionic system that has recently undergone clinical trial research: the Argus II Retinal Stimulation System. The Argus is an epiretinal (above the retina) implant which has been designed by SecondSight; as of 2013, it was FDA approved for retinitis pigmentosa (RP) but has potential utility for dry AMD. It consists of a device that is implanted in the patient’s eye and an external processing unit worn by the user. The system consists of sixty electrodes, each of which is two-hundred-micrometres in diameter. Images that have been captured by a small camera on glasses are converted into electrical impulses to stimulate surviving ganglion cells on the retina. It is currently the most widely used retinal prosthetic system in the world, with more than 350 RP patients being treated to date. The cost of this device is 150,000 USD — a price that excludes surgery and post-operative training (11). Figure 2: The design of the Argus II (12) In 2015, a case study was performed by the Argus II study group on the impact the implant would have on restoring visual function to subjects who had complete blindness from RP. The results from this study were quite promising; it showed that of the 30 patients who received the Argus II system, all significantly performed better on a white square test than they did without the prosthesis. (None of the subjects scored any points with the device absent.) The Argus also showed reliability for 29 subjects, all of whom still had functioning devices after three years (13). In 2020, a clinical trial of this device for dry AMD was completed. The study, which consisted of five patients, assessed the safety and feasibility of the device. According to Mills et al. (14), no patients reported confusion when operating the Argus alongside their healthy peripheral vision. Adverse events occurred in two patients who experienced proliferative vitreoretinopathy — or tractional retinal detachment. However, due to recent events surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the company declared that they would be performing “an orderly wind-down of the company’s operations”. SecondSight is now focusing on a new device: The Orion. This device is designed to stimulate the visual cortex of the brain — a return to the original conception of visual prosthetics. The Orion is planned to expand the pool of patients who are eligible for visual prosthetics. It will essentially bypass the requirement for healthy ganglion cells and a functioning optic nerve, which retinal prosthetics require. The only forms of blindness not encompassed by this technique are congenital forms of blindness or people who are ‘cortically blind’ from suffering damage to the visual cortex area V1. The Orion is modelled after the Argus II with its 60 cortical-stimulating electrodes receiving input from a camera on the user’s glasses. Under the Breakthrough Device Pathway, the FDA approved Orion for an early feasibility study. Six human subjects have been fitted with the device — one woman and five men between the ages of 29 and 57. Of these six, one had endophthalmitis, two had glaucoma, and three suffered trauma. After one year of wearing the device, four of the patients could accurately discern the location of a palm-sized white square on a computer screen, and five could locate its movement in space. The Orion has shown a good safety profile after 12 months of use, and follow-ups on its progress will occur for five years (15). Visual prostheses have a promising and bright future of development ahead of them. While it is still in its infancy, the results of ongoing clinical trials show promise for sight restoration. With multiple models and modes of intervention available, artificial vision is slowly becoming a reality for the visually impaired, but further developments in the field are still required. It would be promising to see advancements from mere two-dimensional grey-scale images to the rich, three-dimensional, and full-colour experience that we take for granted as normal vision. For now, two essential factors need to be improved for the full realisation of artificial vision: cost and electrode density. The Argus costs 150,000 USD — an expense that excludes surgery and training. This figure may be unfeasible for the thousands of Australians who would benefit from such a device. If the current trend of Moore’s Law continues, electrode density will increase whilst the cost of the device will decrease — a trend analogous to the increase in power and improved price of computers in the last century. This pixel density will hopefully improve to the point of achieving near-normal visual acuity. The 60 pixels, while helpful in regaining some functionality, cannot compare to the some 96 million photoreceptor cells in the retina — 5 million of which are located in the cone-dense macula. Nevertheless, artificial vision is an exciting and innovative technology currently under development. While much research is still needed, further advancements in bionics will one day make visual prosthetics a ubiquitous and affordable technology to those in need. About the writer: Joshua Nicholls was the 2021 winner of the Let's Torque competition. Joshua : I am a 5th-year neuroscience and biochemistry student at the Swinburne University of Technology. I finished my Health Science degree a few years ago, majoring in neuroscience. I am now completing my final few subjects in my Bachelor of Science, with biochemistry as my major. For the state-wide Let’s torque competition, I changed my pitch to artificial vision, hence its title, Bionics: Seeing into the Future—a catchy pun, if I do say so myself. I made the rather complex topic of visual prosthetics approachable and understandable to the general audience by, as stated previously, conveying a story. I asked my audience to consider losing vision, if not completely, at least partially. Considering this, I then asked them to imagine what life must be like for the some 13 million Australians of whom suffer from some form of visual impairment. This exercise brought home the very real phenomenon of visual impairment, which many of us have—or will—be impacted. The solution for currently untreatable vision loss is already underway: The Bionic Eye, as it is colloquially known. While it may sound like science fiction, bionics (or prosthetics) are nothing new; artificial hearing through the cochlear implant and artificial limbs are becoming rather ubiquitous. I briefly detailed a few diseases for which visual prosthetics may be appropriate, such as age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, and spoke about past and current clinical trials demonstrating their efficacy. To end my pitch, I talked about the lasting impact these devices will have on people’s lives and the future developments required. In doing so, I relayed the past, present, and future of the bionic eye, which detailed a coherent and relatable story to my audience. I was successful in my pitch and won first place among the state! It was an absolute privilege even to have been a part of this competition; coming first place was an added honour and will remain one of the highlights of my life. I believe this experience will serve as a footstone toward my career in science and science communication. If anyone has any desires to get their foot in the door of this field, get your name and face out there and just go for it! References: Ong, J. M., & da Cruz, L. (2012). The bionic eye: a review. Clinical & experimental ophthalmology, 40(1), 6-17. Tassicker, G. (1956). Preliminary report on a retinal stimulator. The British journal of physiological optics, 13(2), 102-105. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2018). National Health Survey: First Results, 2017–18. Canberra: ABS Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/health-conditions-and-risks/national-health-survey-first-results/latest-release Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2021). Eye health. Canberra: AIHW Retrieved from https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/eye-health/eye-health Taylor, P., Bilgrami, A., & Pezzullo, L. (2010). Clear focus: The economic impact of vision loss in Australia in 2009. Vision2020. Retrieved from https://www.vision2020australia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Access_Economics_Clear_Focus_Full_Report.pdf Mehta, S. (2015). Age-related macular degeneration. Primary Care: Clinics in Office Practice, 42(3), 377-391. Foreman, J., Xie, J., Keel, S., van Wijngaarden, P., Sandhu, S. S., Ang, G. S., . . . Taylor, H. R. (2017). The prevalence and causes of vision loss in Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians: the National eye health survey. Ophthalmology, 124(12), 1743-1752. Taylor, H. R., Keeffe, J. E., Vu, H. T. V., Wang, J. J., Rochtchina, E., Mitchell, P., & Pezzullo, M. L. (2005). Vision loss in Australia. Med J Aust, 182(11), 565-568. doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.2005.tb06815.x Calabrese, A., Bernard, J.-B., Hoffart, L., Faure, G., Barouch, F., Conrath, J., & Castet, E. (2011). Wet versus dry age-related macular degeneration in patients with central field loss: different effects on maximum reading speed. Investigative ophthalmology & visual science, 52(5), 2417-2424. Cheung, L. K., & Eaton, A. (2013). Age‐related macular degeneration. Pharmacotherapy: The Journal of Human Pharmacology and Drug Therapy, 33(8), 838-855. Luo, Y. H.-L., & Da Cruz, L. (2016). The Argus® II retinal prosthesis system. Progress in retinal and eye research, 50, 89-107. SecondSight. (2021). SecondSight: Life in a New Light. Retrieved from https://secondsight.com/ Ho, A. C., Humayun, M. S., Dorn, J. D., Da Cruz, L., Dagnelie, G., Handa, J., . . . Hafezi, F. (2015). Long-term results from an epiretinal prosthesis to restore sight to the blind. Ophthalmology, 122(8), 1547-1554. Mills, J., Jalil, A., & Stanga, P. (2017). Electronic retinal implants and artificial vision: journey and present. Eye, 31(10), 1383-1398. Pouratian N., Yoshor D., & Greenberg R. (2019). Orion Visual Cortical Prosthesis System Early Feasibility Study: Interim Results. Paper presented at American Academy of Ophthalmology Annual Meeting.

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How should scientific research and political legislation interact, and what role should they play in public discourse? Climate Change, Vaccines & Lockdowns: How and Why Science Has Become a Polarising Political Debate By Mia Horsfall In light of the compounding climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, the discussion around how we implement scientific research into political realms is growing, and with it, the controversy. But perhaps the debate surrounding such contentious issues reveals more about how we communicate our science than the quality of the science itself. Edited by Yen Sim & Andrew Lim Issue 1: September 24, 2021 Illustration by Janna Dingle The degree to which public rhetoric morphs and formulates enactment of scientific research in topics such as climate change, energy politics and vaccinations has become increasingly evident in recent years, as evidenced by polarising public debates surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and the ‘School Strike’ movements. The ‘apocalyptic narratives’ employed by climate protesters are often combated with condescension and intellectual elitism propagated by political figures, resulting in a remarkably detached exchange of dialogue and a good deal of reticence but an overwhelming lack of progress. Reluctance to accept COVID-19 vaccinations and lockdowns is indicative more of a dogmatic belief in exertion of liberty at all costs rather than a measured comprehension of the implications of such decisions. Likewise, discussions surrounding implementation of nuclear power showcase the disconnect between scientific research and economic policy making, resulting in conflict and frustration as the two struggle to reconcile. The role of science in political, legal and social spheres is contingent upon public discourses surrounding its relevance and remains largely subservient to public opinion. Scientific matters should increasingly, “be studied in relation to how they impact social structures,” (Holmberg & Alvinius, 2020) and it is in this way we can hope to understand the dimorphic nature of research and its intersection with political and social implications. To understand how scientific discourse shifts from a research-centric discussion to a tool to uphold political ideology, it is crucial to deconstruct the rhetoric utilised by opposing sides of the climate debate to advance support for their cause. Examination of the discourse on different sides of the ‘School Strike’ movement ironically reveals that both sides stem from the same source: an analysis of the authority of youth in political spheres. The succinct, punchy statements used to endorse student climate advocacy relish in the youth of the protesters – “you’ll die of old age, we’ll die of climate change”, “I’d be in school if the earth was cool”, “it’s getting hot in here so take off all your coals,'' (Kamarck, 2019). By focusing the targets of the movement on ‘abstract’ actors such as legal, political and economic ecosystems, the movement distances itself from the accepted scientific consensus and focuses on the issue of the mobilisation of policymakers in climate action. These ‘apocalyptic narratives’ do not question the authority of the science communicated, instead hinging their argument upon the challenge of inciting political change from a youth-driven movement. Their narrative relies on the distinct lack of political influence historically held by youth, and satirises the predicted response of politicians such as the then Federal Minister for Education Dan Tehan who asserted that the strikes were orchestrated by professional activists and children were missing valuable class time (Perinotto & Johnston, 2019). The difficulty then posed is that formulating the protester’s messages from a place of pathos drives the argument further away from the scientifically enforced urgency and enables politically interested individuals to divert the argument from one of scientific claim to one about challenging the authority of youth to speak with regards to politics. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s suggestion to the school strikers to, “get a bit of context and perspective,” (Perinotto & Johnston, 2019), is saturated not only with elitism but an enforcement of the notion of political superiority, that some knowledge remains incomprehensible to the public sphere and is privy only to the select few. It remains, then, that the biggest obstacle in the school strikers’ position is the unification of scientific authorities, politicians and the emotionally driven and passionate youth. But perhaps the politicisation of climate change has more to do with political dichotomisation than the controversy of the science itself. Chinn, Hart and Soroka assert that, “beliefs about climate change have become a marker of partisan affiliation,” (Chinn, Hart, & Soroka 2020), and this is not the only realm of scientific contention to become politicised. Opposition to government-mandated lockdowns, vaccinations and regulations of genetic modification of food all stem from one crucial point of difference in belief; the degree to which the government should have the ability to regulate everyday happenings of our lives. This is not a new phenomenon. This key difference is at the heart of bipartisanship and is the central debate in almost every political issue. So perhaps the issue is not inherently the politicisation of scientific discourse, as implementation of policy in reference to new scientific findings will inevitably become politicised, but the monotonous rhetoric employed by the left and the right. As Kamarck upholds, “it is the lack of trust in government that may be one of the foundational barriers to effective environmental action,” (Kamarck, 2019). If we take the intent of science as being to seek a degree of objective insight about the nature of the world and its happenings, it will naturally lead to division in political climates saturated by individual motivation and greed. A 2020 American study utilised word frequency analysis software of articles from four major newspapers (New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post) to quantitatively determine the number of times scientists’ names were mentioned in regard to phrases such as ‘global warming’ or ‘fracking’, in comparison to politicians (see Figure 1 & 2). Whilst this understandably has to do with matters of climate policy making and does not in and of itself convey an image of the politicised nature of the debate, it does provide significant insight into the shifting obstacles faced in attaining climate action. What provides significantly greater insight is an analysis conducted of the language variance within the media of the parties across the years. From this data, we see that whilst the difference in rhetoric across the two major parties is significant, it is also largely unchanging. It is this divide in political narratives that fosters a sense of distrust and scepticism amongst individuals. Where more left-leaning parties emphasise the social inequalities that will be expounded upon as the consequences of climate change compound, conservatively leaning parties perpetuate the notion that climate action stipulates a greater control of the government on energy politics and enables less agency to the individual. In their narrative, the economic consequences outweigh the benefit of transition to renewable energy systems. From such polarised discourse, it becomes apparent that the way science operates within social spheres has more to do with pre-existing flaws in systemic structures than the quality of the science itself. Figure 1 (2) Figure 2 (2) Of course, a key consideration of how political and activist narratives impact the science that is upheld is through the medialisation of science. ‘Medialisation’ is the concept that science and media should engage in a reciprocal relationship, where scientists use media for broader impact and to advocate for more public funding while the media relies on interest to propagate scientific breakthroughs (Scheufele, 2014). The utility of science comes only from what is accepted and implemented in public opinion, hence scientific practice continues to grow into these frameworks, particularly in discussions around climate change or gene editing technologies. Ultimately, as Scheufele asserts, “the production of reliable knowledge about the natural world has always been a social and political endeavour,” (Scheufele, 2014), one that the media capitalises on to make as economical as possible. That is, it is in most media outlets’ interest to frame politics and science as being at odds with each other as, “coverage increases dramatically if and when issues become engulfed in political or societal controversy,” (Scheufele, 2014). Whilst science cannot and should never be removed from subjugation to moral scrutiny, discourse remains dominated by discussion surrounding the legitimacy of those advocating for one side or the other, rather than the quality of the science itself. Of course bias exists in media outlets , but is propagated by the bias of the consumers, as a consequence of ‘motivated reasoning’. That is, individuals subconsciously place more weight upon information that confirms pre-existing viewpoints and divert more energy into finding flawed reasoning for all that does not concur with preconceived perceptions. The result is a positive feedback loop that is hard to curtail. Individuals form opinions from information they are exposed to in the media, subconsciously seek further information to fortify their initial opinion, leading to opinion reinforcement. In this way, microcosmic ‘mediated realities’ form, each individual inhabiting a vastly different scientific landscape than those of the opposite opinion. In these realities, it is the implications of policy making rather than objective reasoning about the science itself that prevails, resulting in scientific breakthrough perpetually existing subserviently to the opinion of the people, irrespective of whether that opinion is informed. This consequently influences what scientific research is allocated what proportion of public funding, inadvertently providing a quantitative discriminator in what ‘sides’ are upheld in the media. So, what role should science play in political discourse? How do we ensure a mediation of scientific advice and democratic decision making? Darrin Durant of the University of Melbourne unpacks this question, deliberating on whether science should assume a ‘servant’ or ‘partner’ role when it exists within public discourse. Durant argues that if science were to assume the role of a servant (acting in an advisory position to politics), public perception would descend into a degree of populism, overrun by conspiracists and anti-pluralists. Rather, if it were to exist as a ‘partner’, legitimising the authority held by scientific figures, a degree of objectivity could be applied to an otherwise dynamic and transient political landscape. It is only by bridging the political dichotomy that prevails in media and social spheres that scientific discourse will cease to fall prey to political weaponization, existing as a level-ground for rational debate rather than morphing in accordance with ideology. References: Alvinius, A & Holmberg, A. (2020). Children’s protest in relation to the climate emergency: A qualitative study on a new form of resistance promoting political and social change. SAGE Journals. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0907568219879970. Chinn, S., Hart, P., & Soroka, S. (2020). Politicization and Polarization in Climate Change News Content, 1985-2017. SAGE Journals. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1075547019900290. Durant, D. (2018). Servant or partner? The role of expertise and knowledge in democracy. The Conversation.https://theconversation.com/servant-or-partner-the-role-of-expertise-and-knowledge-in-democracy-92026. Durant, D. (2021). Who are you calling 'anti-science'? How science serves social and political agendas. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/who-are-you-calling-anti-science-how-science-serves-social-and-political-agendas-74755 . Feldman, H. (2020). A rhetorical perspective on youth environmental activism. Jcom.sissa.it. Retrieved 11 September 2021, from https://jcom.sissa.it/sites/default/files/documents/JCOM_1906_2020_C07.pdf . Kamarck, E. (2019). The challenging politics of climate change. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-challenging-politics-of-climate-change/ . Perinotto, T., & Johnston, P. (2019). What our leaders said about the school climate change strike. The Fifth Estate. https://thefifthestate.com.au/urbanism/climate-change-news/what-our-leaders-said-about-the-school-climate-change-strike/ . Scheufele, D. (2014). Science communication as political communication. Pnas.org. https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/Supplement_4/13585.full.pdf. The best climate strike signs from around the globe – in pictures. The Guardian. (2021). https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/gallery/2019/sep/20/the-best-climate-strike-signs-from-around-the-globe-in-pictures . Image reference - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1075547019900290

Where The Wild Things Were By Ashleigh Hallinan We may consider ourselves to be the most advanced species on the planet, but this has come at the cost of the natural world. Delve into this article to gain insight into how ecosystem restoration plays a role in nature-based solutions for biodiversity loss and climate change mitigation globally. Edited by Niesha Baker & Caitlin Kane Issue 1: September 24, 2021 Illustration by Jess Nguyen The scale of threats posed to humanity and the natural world is confronting and difficult to grasp. The natural world is being pushed towards its brink, but it’s not too late to act. Ecosystem restoration plays an important role in nature-based solutions for biodiversity loss, food insecurity, and climate change. Global discourse and action also need to continue moving towards greater acknowledgement of Traditional Owners and local communities in biodiversity conservation efforts and climate change resilience. Ecosystem degradation is an accelerating calamity of our own making. A recent study from Frontier Forest and Global Change shows that humans have altered 97 per cent of the Earth's land, meaning a mere 3 per cent of land remains untouched, or ‘ecologically intact’ (1). ‘Ecosystem degradation’ refers to the loss of natural productivity from environments as a result of human activity. Many of the world’s ecosystems have been pushed beyond the point of unassisted self-recovery due to a mix of stressors, most of which are human-induced. Ecosystems are made up of interacting organisms and the physical environment in which they are found, so disturbing the balance of an ecosystem can be disastrous for all the living things relying on it, including humans. If trends of ecosystem degradation continue, 95 per cent of the Earth’s land could become degraded by 2050 (2). In this scenario, we would face irreversible damage. But how does this affect you and me? Beyond the role ecosystem degradation plays in accelerating climate change and the loss of countless species from our planet, its impact on ecosystem services is also of great significance. Ecosystem services are the benefits humans derive from the natural environment. These range from the oxygen we breathe to aesthetic appreciation of the natural environments around us. These services are necessary for life to exist on Earth, and without them, our quality of life would decline drastically. Luckily for us, humans are capable of learning from their mistakes, and efforts are being made to address these global concerns. Ecosystem restoration is the process of reversing ecosystem degradation to regain environmental health and sustainability. This often involves re-introducing plant and animal populations that may have been lost, as well as restoring their habitats. Abandoned farmland is one example of where this can be achieved. Farmlands are one of the most vital ecosystems in sustaining humankind. Not only do they provide us with food, but they are also home to a variety of organisms within and above the soil. Many of these organisms play a critical role in soil health, which is essential for agriculture. Agriculture has transformed human societies and fuelled a global population that has grown from one billion to almost eight billion people since around 1804 (3). This has had significant consequences on natural systems worldwide, particularly as farmland has continuously expanded into surrounding landscapes. Agroecosystems now cover around 40 per cent of Earth's terrestrial surface (4). However, despite a growing demand for food due to the world’s rapidly increasing population, the amount of farmland being abandoned outweighs the amount of land being converted to farmland (5). There are an estimated 950 million to 1.1 billion acres of deserted farmland globally (6). This unproductive farmland could be converted to meet conservation goals and mitigate the impacts of climate change. For example, farmland could be regenerated with carbon-capturing forests. These would contribute to sequestering large amounts of anthropogenic CO2, water retention, soil fertility, and providing habitats for a variety of organisms. Abandoned farmland could also be re-established with native vegetation to provide habitats for animals. This was the case at the Monjebup Nature Reserves, located in south-west Western Australia (WA) on Noongar Country, established by Bush Heritage Australia between 2007 and 2014 (7). Despite being a biodiversity hotspot, animals and plants in the Monjebup Nature Reserves have faced many threats. These were mainly in the form of introduced species and land clearing for agriculture. Decades of land clearing resulted in a transition from deep-rooted woody vegetation systems to shallow-rooted annual cropping systems across the south-western Australian landscape. This caused a decrease in natural habitats and accumulation of salt in soil and water, which contributed significantly to biodiversity loss. In 2007, Bush Heritage Australia secured the Monjebup Nature Reserves in a bid to establish important conservation areas. Since then, they have restored nearly 1,000 acres of cleared land in the north of the Reserve (8). An important contributor to the success of this project was Indigenous knowledge, which reflects a long history of close connection with the land. These unique human-land relationships provide opportunities for learning in environmental research, particularly regarding land management and sustainability. The Monjebup Nature Reserves now protect a significant patch of native bushland on the land of the Noongar-Minang and Koreng people. This has been critical in restoring the heavily cleared landscape between WA's Stirling Ranges and Fitzgerald River National Parks, reconnecting remnant bush in the south with that of the Corackerup Nature Reserve further north. It has also provided habitat for vulnerable animal species such as the Malleefowl, Western Whipbird, Carnaby's Cockatoo, and Tammar Wallaby. Local knowledge plays a critical role in re-introducing plants and animals by identifying species suitable to particular environments. In the Monjebup Nature Reserves, re-introduction of native plants involved research on local plant communities and soil conditions in immediately surrounding areas. This research also involved communication with Traditional Owners who had used the area for gathering raw materials, food processing, hunting, stone tool manufacturing, and seasonal movement over millennia (9). Seeds of suitable flora were then collected in and around the site for the restoration works. It is crucial that consultation with Traditional Owners, like that seen in the Monjebup Nature Reserves project, becomes a more common practice. An estimated 37 per cent of all remaining natural lands are under Indigenous management (10). These lands protect 80 per cent of global biodiversity and the majority of intact forests, highlighting the value of Indigenous knowledge (11). We have left ourselves a challenging yet attainable goal. Raising public awareness on the importance of ecosystems and improving our knowledge on the interconnectedness of the natural world will be key to decreasing our impacts on Earth's incredible ecosystems. In March 2019, the United Nations General Assembly announced 2021 to 2030 as the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (12). El Salvador’s Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Lina Pohl, proposed the creation of the Decade in a speech to the General Assembly. More than 70 countries from all latitudes quickly jumped on board, committing to safeguarding and restoring ecosystems globally (13). 2030 also happens to be the deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals, which are a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to address the global challenges we face, and provide a ‘blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all’ (14). 2030 is also the year scientists have identified as the last chance to prevent catastrophic climate change (15). As part of the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the United Nations has called for countries to make the pledge to restore at least 2.5 billion acres of degraded land - an area larger than China (16). This will require international cooperation, led by the UN Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Humans have an essential role in halting and reversing the damage that has been caused so far. Ecosystem restoration is not a quick or easy process. It requires deep, systematic changes to the economic, political, and social systems we currently have in place. But the natural world is finite, and it is important we continue taking steps towards a more sustainable future. References: 1. Plumptre, Andrew J., Daniele Baisero, R. Travis Belote, Ella Vázquez-Domínguez, Soren Faurby, Włodzimierz Jȩdrzejewski, Henry Kiara, Hjalmar Kühl, Ana Benítez-López, Carlos Luna-Aranguré, Maria Voigt, Serge Wich, William Wint, Juan Gallego-Zamorano, Charlotte Boyd . “Where Might We Find Ecologically Intact Communities?” Frontiers in Forests and Global Change 4 (15 April 2021): 1-13. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2021.626635. 2, 4. Scholes, Robert, L Montanarella, Anastasia Brainich, Nichole Barger. “The Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration: Summary for Policymakers”. Bonn, Germany: Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), 2018. https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/2018_ldr_full_report_book_v4_pages.pdf 3. Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations,“FAOSTAT”, Accessed 8 September 2021, http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#home . 5, 6. Yang, Yi, Sarah E. Hobbie, Rebecca R. Hernandez, Joseph Fargione, Steven M. Grodsky, David Tilman, Yong-Guan Zhu, Yu Luo, Timothy M. Smith, Jacob M. Jungers, Ming Yang, Wei-Qiang Chen. “Restoring Abandoned Farmland to Mitigate Climate Change on a Full Earth”. One Earth 3, no. 2 (August 2020): 176–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.07.019. 7, 8, 9. Bush Heritage Australia,“Monjebup Nature Reserves (WA),” Accessed 8 September 2021, https://www.bushheritage.org.au/places-we-protect/western-australia/monjebup . 10. Garnett, Stephen T., Neil D. Burgess, Julia E. Fa, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares, Zsolt Molnár, Cathy J. Robinson, James E. M. Watson, Kerstin K.Zander, Beau Austin, Eduardo S. Brondizio, Neil French Collier, Tom Duncan, Erle Ellis, Hayley Geyle, Micha V. Jackson, Harry Jonas, Pernilla Malmer, Ben McGowan, Amphone Sivongxay, Ian Leiper. “A Spatial Overview of the Global Importance of Indigenous Lands for Conservation‘. Nature Sustainability 1, no. 7 (July 2018): 369–74. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0100-6 . 11. Ogar, Edwin, Gretta Pecl, and Tero Mustonen. ‘Science Must Embrace Traditional and Indigenous Knowledge to Solve Our Biodiversity Crisis’. One Earth 3, no. 2 (August 2020): 162–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.07.006. 12, 13, 14, 15. United Nations Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “About the UN Decade,” Accessed 8 September 2021, http://www.decadeonrestoration.org/about-un-decade . 16. United Nations Environment Management Group, “The UN Sustainable Development Goals – UN Environment Management Group”, Accessed 8 September 2021, https://unemg.org/our-work/supporting-the-sdgs/the-un-sustainable-development-goals/ .

Humans of UniMelb Research - Is it For Me? By Renee Papaluca Thinking about completing your Honours year or a PhD at UniMelb? This column has some advice for you, courtesy of current research students. Edited by Ruby Dempsey & Sam Williams Issue 1: September 24, 2021 Illustration by Gemma Van der Hurk Science is everywhere, but how can we contribute to furthering our knowledge of science? I caught up with some current research students to learn more about the Honours-PhD pathway and their experience studying science at the University of Melbourne. Caitlin Kane Caitlin is a current Honours student at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. In her spare time, she likes to go on bike rides and read. What was the ‘lightbulb moment’ that prompted you to study science? “When I was five, I had all these books that covered basic topics like the human body and the ocean. I thought they were wild! I was just a really curious kid that loved learning things and being certain about things. For me, science was an approach to learning and understanding the world that [was] very investigative. I guess I was just curious about a lot of things and science just took that curiosity and said, ‘now you can do anything with it’". Why did you choose to study Honours? “Honours, at least for me, is a clarifying year.” “Doing a bachelor’s degree in science doesn’t [necessarily] make you a scientist … A lot of the skills you need as a scientist are practical ones; depending on your area [of study] ... Those skills are very different from what you actually learn in university.” “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my degree as there are a lot of options, like doing a PhD or ... going into the workforce… I thought that Honours would really help me clarify what kinds of science I like and give me time to figure out what I wanted to do next.” What’s involved in your research? “There are many variants of HPV (human papillomavirus) circulating in Australia - some of those variants cause cancer, and some are covered by vaccination. To understand how well vaccination is working in Australia, I test for HPV in patient samples, note the patient’s vaccination status, and examine the data to see which HPV variants are prevalent right now. This involves lab skills like pipetting, running polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) and extracting DNA. When I say ‘I’ do all these steps, it’s really like 10 people ... There are a lot of different people who do different parts of the project to keep it running.” What advice would you give to prospective Honours students? “Be informed of your options, don’t be scared of talking to supervisors, and talk to older students. Everytime I would ask an older student … [’what do you wish you would have known?’] they would come out with killer advice. That’s the only trick!” “The best piece of advice I got was that ‘some supervisors only want an extra set of hands’… They just want the work to be done and that is not the kind of supervisor you want.” Alex Ritter Alex is currently completing his 2nd PhD year in the Department of Physics. In his spare time, he enjoys singing in choirs, doing crosswords, and doting over his housemate’s cat. What was the ‘lightbulb moment’ that prompted you to study science? “Going through school, there are always those things you [tend to] gravitate towards...I really liked maths and science... and wanted to do something to do with them. In high school, I also had some opportunities to do extension physics… [which] really got me interested [in tertiary study]... Luckily, it's still something I enjoy so it was the right choice.” Why did you choose to continue to a PhD following your Masters? “I did Masters of Science in Physics straight after undergrad. I really enjoyed it! I loved … really getting into the graduate subjects; diving into more detail” “[The thing] I found the most challenging was the transition into research and that whole different style of thinking. My experience was that your first year is still coursework and learning high level topics and your second year is largely research. So, I found in second year - especially towards the end - finishing the thesis was quite challenging but ultimately rewarding” What are you currently researching? “My general area of research is theoretical particle physics. This describes the tiny, subatomic particles that make us up. So, we look at electrons, inside neutrons and all the forces that hold them together. I work in dark matter ... It doesn’t give off light but it interacts gravitationally. My research generally is introducing new sub-atomic particles and forces to try and explain what dark matter might be.” Can you have a life outside of your PhD? “The thing with a PhD and research, especially in physics, is that you set your own schedule which has its pros and cons. During the pandemic, I found it difficult to keep myself motivated whilst being stuck inside all day. Due to the flexibility, it really depends on how you want to approach your PhD. I still wanted to have a life outside of my PhD. I don’t wake up and think about my PhD 24/7! I still do a fair bit of choral singing as a hobby.” “My advice is that you can balance things in a PhD but it comes down to what your personality is like and how well you can set boundaries. For example, are you someone who gets absolutely absorbed in tasks and spends hours on them? Do you overwork yourself or do you underwork yourself? How good are you at time management? I think the best thing to do is to be self-aware about how you are as a worker and researcher before you get started.” What advice would you give to prospective Masters or PhD students? “Be honest with yourself and be honest with your supervisor. Know who you are and know what your limits are and try to build everything around that.” “I think the hardest part for me was knowing what to do at the start of the process. There isn’t a lot of information [available]... In terms of picking a supervisor, I think the best advice is to try and chat to them as honestly as you can about the things they do and what kinds of students they like.. For example, try and see how busy your supervisor is. Sometimes, a supervisor can be great, their research is great and can be super interesting... But, often they’ll be in high demand with very little time … to be a hands-on supervisor. I think also trying to get an understanding of what the working relationship will be like is also important.”

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